Knowledge & Decisions
by Thomas Sowell
![Knowledge & Decisions]()
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List Price: $18.50
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Manufacturer: Basic Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780465037360
ISBN: 0465037364
Label: Basic Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 422
Publication Date: 1980
Publisher: Basic Books
Studio: Basic Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Decisions and trade-offs
Comment: Thomas Sowell - brilliant, blunt, relentlessly honest - is a great wrecker of "enlightened" platitudes, the ideas one finds in newsrooms and faculty lounges, or wherever the "deep thinkers" of the Left come to celebrate their own originality and superior wisdom. Using economics as a scalpal - or a wrecking bar - Sowell shows that much of the "60's Liberal" talk about what's wrong with America - the word "discrimination" is often heard - is little more than bad statistics. Even worse, the remedies Liberals propose - e.g. affirmative action, AFDC, etc. - are ineffective and unfair, or worse, by setting up perverse incentives, actually help create the "diseases" they pretend to cure. If Sowell were white, he would have been tagged as a "racist" long ago. But he's black and grew up poor and even had a brief flirtation with Marxism - before becoming what he has been for the last 50 years - the Left's worst nightmare, a tirelessly prolific "conservative" author whose genius is to make deep thinking seem like common sense.
"Knowledge and Decisions", a complex treatise of some 400 pages, is Sowell's least approachable book, but one that is certainly worth the effort of reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic analysis of the deicision-making of the Left.
Comment: Thomas Sowell blew my mind with this book. Excellent analysis brought in a very academic setting. The language is also easy to understand, so all of your friends could read a chapter and understand Sowell's point. As the author points out, this book discusses political policies and decision-making on a much broader scope. "Vision of the Anointed" is an earlier work, and focuses specifically on policies of the American Left. The reader may find that "Knowledge and Decisions" is complemented well by reading "Vision of the Anointed" first.
Customer Rating:
Summary: one of my top 10 all-time books
Comment: this book was well written and clearly thought out. A wonderful explanation of economic priciples in an interesting format
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Comment: I ordered this along with several other books, and was pleased to find it both well written, and offering some thought provoking insights into its subject matter. Well worth the read.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Pseudo-academic polemics
Comment: I can't fault a book for having an opinion. I can fault it for disguising a dogmatic political agenda as serious intellectual analysis. Some people may be deceived because the tone is so boring, they may think the discussion is dry, dispassionate and sincere. The major premise of the book, that knowledge has a cost, is uncontroversial. Sowell then elaborates his opinions, but the connection to the theme is frequently tenuous and seldom considers counterarguments (unless Sowell has a counter-counterargument neatly prepared.)
He does have a justification for every viewpoint, but many arguments are weak. On the whole, it reads as a compilation of his opinions, supporting the Republicans at every turn, without regard to his supposed premises.
If you're interested in an 800 page debate handbook rambling over every subject, (say you're Rush Limbaugh or are running for Congress), this book provides intelligent-sounding arguments. To anybody else, it shows the value of paid ideologues to trick the masses into thinking that the elite know something. They don't want you to slog through this intimidatingly tedious book, just to believe in it. There's no need.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Decisions and trade-offs
Comment: Thomas Sowell - brilliant, blunt, relentlessly honest - is a great wrecker of "enlightened" platitudes, the ideas one finds in newsrooms and faculty lounges, or wherever the "deep thinkers" of the Left come to celebrate their own originality and superior wisdom. Using economics as a scalpal - or a wrecking bar - Sowell shows that much of the "60's Liberal" talk about what's wrong with America - the word "discrimination" is often heard - is little more than bad statistics. Even worse, the remedies Liberals propose - e.g. affirmative action, AFDC, etc. - are ineffective and unfair, or worse, by setting up perverse incentives, actually help create the "diseases" they pretend to cure. If Sowell were white, he would have been tagged as a "racist" long ago. But he's black and grew up poor and even had a brief flirtation with Marxism - before becoming what he has been for the last 50 years - the Left's worst nightmare, a tirelessly prolific "conservative" author whose genius is to make deep thinking seem like common sense.
"Knowledge and Decisions", a complex treatise of some 400 pages, is Sowell's least approachable book, but one that is certainly worth the effort of reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic analysis of the deicision-making of the Left.
Comment: Thomas Sowell blew my mind with this book. Excellent analysis brought in a very academic setting. The language is also easy to understand, so all of your friends could read a chapter and understand Sowell's point. As the author points out, this book discusses political policies and decision-making on a much broader scope. "Vision of the Anointed" is an earlier work, and focuses specifically on policies of the American Left. The reader may find that "Knowledge and Decisions" is complemented well by reading "Vision of the Anointed" first.
Customer Rating:
Summary: one of my top 10 all-time books
Comment: this book was well written and clearly thought out. A wonderful explanation of economic priciples in an interesting format
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Comment: I ordered this along with several other books, and was pleased to find it both well written, and offering some thought provoking insights into its subject matter. Well worth the read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pseudo-academic polemics
Comment: I can't fault a book for having an opinion. I can fault it for disguising a dogmatic political agenda as serious intellectual analysis. Some people may be deceived because the tone is so boring, they may think the discussion is dry, dispassionate and sincere. The major premise of the book, that knowledge has a cost, is uncontroversial. Sowell then elaborates his opinions, but the connection to the theme is frequently tenuous and seldom considers counterarguments (unless Sowell has a counter-counterargument neatly prepared.)
He does have a justification for every viewpoint, but many arguments are weak. On the whole, it reads as a compilation of his opinions, supporting the Republicans at every turn, without regard to his supposed premises.
If you're interested in an 800 page debate handbook rambling over every subject, (say you're Rush Limbaugh or are running for Congress), this book provides intelligent-sounding arguments. To anybody else, it shows the value of paid ideologues to trick the masses into thinking that the elite know something. They don't want you to slog through this intimidatingly tedious book, just to believe in it. There's no need.
With a new preface by the author, this reissue of Thomas Sowell's classic study of decision making updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America's most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making -- a gap that threatens our very freedom because actual knowledge gets replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision of what ought to be. Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a "landmark work" and selected for this prize "because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government." In announcing the award, the center acclaimed Sowell, whose "contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [his] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant." "In a wholly original manner [Sowell] succeeds in translating abstract and theoretical argument into a highly concrete and realistic discussion of the central problems of contemporary economic policy." --F. A. Hayek "This is a brilliant book. Sowell illuminates how every society operates. In the process he also shows how the performance of our own society can be improved." --Milton Friedman
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