Has Thomas Sowell's awesome (terrible?) mind gone to waste? Has he written too many columns? Should he have spent more time on On Classical Economics?

I think so. It's a fine book, in its way, and includes a lot of great material. But still, his fascination with Marx doesn't impress me any longer, and the great chapter on Sismondi could have been mirrored by great chapters on Say, Malthus, and Nassau Senior.

Oh, well. I shouldn't complain. I always find something of huge value in a Sowell book. In this case, his reinterpretation of Mill's On Liberty. Which now I have to read again.

I'm in a strange position. I admire his first book, Say's Law, far more than anything else I've read by him. The much-ballyhooed Knowledge and Decisions struck me as too popular. Sowell is smart enough, surely, to have done greater work. Instead, like Mill and Keynes, he's spent too much time thinking about the issues of the day and not enough about economics.

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