Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-270) and index.

"Thomas Sowell is one of the great social theorists of our age. In a career spanning more than a half century, few scholars have matched his range and accessibility. He has written more than thirty books, covering topics from economic history and social inequality to political philosophy, race, migration, and culture. His bold and unsentimental assaults on liberal orthodoxy have endeared him to many but enraged most of his fellow intellectuals, the civil-rights establishment, and much of the mainstream media. As a result, critics preoccupied with political correctness have demeaned, ignored, and downplayed his important contributions....Maverick showcases Sowell's most significant writings and traces the life of events that shaped his ideas and resulted in a black orphan born in the Jim Crow South going on to graduate from Harvard, earn a PhD under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, teach economics at Cornell and UCLA, and spend the past four decades as one of America's foremost public intellectuals."--book jacket.