Thomas Sowell is the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Although trained as an economist, he has written on a wide range of subjects. The author of forty-nine books and a syndicated newspaper column, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2002. He is also known for his dislike of self-promotion.Sowell is an advocate of classical liberal economics, a student of the problems that arise from the sustained growth of government, a critic of affirmative action, an expert on the history of the complex social patterns of different racial, religious, and ethnic groups, and a student of the attitudes that motivate intellectuals’ political beliefs.