Thomas Sowell's book recommendations

Thinking about book gifts to give or receive?

Thomas Sowell at Realclearpolitics.com offers a short list with brief comments about each book.

David McCullough's 1776 heads the list. It's an excellent book.

But the one I'm going to give to a family member so I can borrow it right back is Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong. Sowell says:

With the world preoccupied today with the terrorism coming out of the Islamic Middle East and spreading around the world, we need to understand what has led up to this fanatical destruction and self-destruction.

Some believe that it is something that we have done, or that Israel has done, which has provoked such lethal hatreds. But the roots of all this go back long before the modern state of Israel was founded and before American involvement in the Middle East.

"What Went Wrong?" is the title of a brilliant and readable capsule history of the evolution of Islamic civilization in the Middle East by the preeminent scholar on that subject, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton. This little book is an education in itself on a subject where education is very much needed.

Read about the rest of Sowell's selections here.