MAVERICK ~ A biography of Thomas Sowell, one of America's most influential conservative thinkers.

Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, he has written over thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political theory, race, and culture.

In the first-ever biography of Sowell, Jason L. Riley gives this iconic thinker his due. Maverick showcases Sowell's most significant writings and traces the life events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a Black orphan from the Jim Crow South becoming one of our foremost public intellectuals.

Sowell began his life’s journey in rural North Carolina. As a boy, his family migrated to Harlem, NY, where his intellectual hunger and lifelong love of learning was kick-started with an introduction to the Harlem Library and culminated at the esteemed Hoover Institution. Between Harlem and Hoover, Sowell’s intellectual honesty and quest for facts took him into the Marine’s Combat Camera Corps during the Korean War, then onto Harvard, Columbia University and the University of Chicago for his Ph.D. in economics.

The program will feature insights from Sowell, interviews with colleagues, associates and with those he has inspired, revealing why the intensely private Thomas Sowell is considered by many to be “the smartest person in the room.”