The Quest for Cosmic Justice (Paperback)

As I read this book, the thoughts of arrogance, condescension, and hubris came to mind - not towards the author - but towards the subjects of his discussion. Certainly one cannot fault the social engineers and institutional "tinkerers" for their intentions. However, intentions are not the measure of success - results are.

The policies of the "anointed" have become gospel, not subject to debate or empirical verification. In essence, anyone who disagrees with them or offers another approach is necessarily opposed to the intentions of those holding the true "gospel" of social harmony, prosperity, and peace.

But this substitute for evidence and effectiveness has failed the most important element - those who are the intended beneficiaries of the "anointed" policies. The efforts to "equalize" and pursue "cosmic justice" not only have few success stories - but rather there is an abundance of proof to show that their policies are counter-productive and even harmful.

But never mind the petty details! We're merely interested in doing the right thing, having the right motives, having our hearts in the right place, etc. Consequences be damned! We know what works best! The conquest for social justice will not be deterred by such things as uncooperative human beings, lack of success, or the Rule of Law.

This book is an excellent follow-up to Sowell's "Vision of the Anointed" as it drives home the point that those who embrace visions of cosmic ideals are embarking upon an endeavor requiring super-human skill. And their pursuit in spite of this fact does good for no one - not the least of which are those who they claim to want to help. In pursuit of their cosmic ideals, the visionaries have become impervious to the reality that frustrates their plans.

It is past time to cease the game of demonizing those that disagree with the ideas and policies of the "anointed." It's time for the "gods of social justice" to admit their humanity and potential for failure - to re-open discussion so that the business of genuinely helping people can take place.

For those interested in an outside observer's perspective (i.e. outside the circle of the "anointed") on the practicality and efficacy of the modern vision of social justice, this book is a must read. Those who are part of the "anointed" or supporters of the same are going to find Sowell's assessment disturbing. Nevertheless, a symbolic gesture from an "anointed" would be his willingness to abandon his self-righteousness by reading this book with an open heart and mind.

Race And Culture: A World View [Bargain Price] (Paperback)

Mr. Sowell is an erudite scholar. He presents his no excuse thesis with logic, research, and a keen instinct for interpreting human behavior. Historical facts illuminate every point." The distorting censorship of political correctness thankfully was not found here." Every factor is brought in, climate, geography, cultural norms, etc. That all these things play a role in the successes and failures of both the individual and the group,is proven beyond doubt in this seminal book. This should be required reading in all of our schools.

Ethnic America

by : http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/ethnic_am.cfm

Immigrant Voices - Primary Sources More voices coming soon Asian American Voices Featured Guest Historian Emma Lazarus and Her Vision by Bette Roth Young Chinese Americans Chinese immigrants and the construction of the transcontinental railroad Chronology Landmarks in Immigration History Images A Photo Album of Immigration This photo album is based upon text and pictures from a book, On the Trail of the Immigrant by Edward A. Steiner, published in 1906 by the Fleming H. Revell Company, NY. The Huddled Masses A detailed history of late 19th and early 20th century immigration, including definitions of key terms in the study of immigration, guides to immigration in film and fiction, and discussion of immigration and music, language, disease as well as the economics of immigration. Irish Americans Irish American Solidarity The Irish Potato Famine Italian Americans Italian Immigration

Social History

by : http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/social_history/social_history.cfm

The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans: As Told by Themselves
Hamilton Holt, ed. (New York: J. Pott & Co., 1906)

The Life Stories of Undistinguished Americans As Told By Themselves was originally published in 1906. It collected interviews with a number of ordinary Americans such as former slaves, immigrants, sweatshop workers, housewives, and farmers wives. These articles were first published in Holt's 's reformist newspaper The New York Independent during the early 1900s.

The stories included here reflect the lives of most of people who lived in this country at the turn of the last century.

Contents

• The Biography of a Bootblack: Rocco Corresca
• Experiences of a Street Car Conductor
• A Swedish Emigrant's Story: Axel Jarlson
• A Collar Starcher's Story
• The Story of a Sweatshop Girl: Sadie Frowne
• One Farmer’s Wife
• Women on the Farm
• A College Professor's Wife
• "Shall the Professor 'Stay Put'?" by Another College Professor's Wife
• From Lithuania to the Chicago Stockyards - An Autobiography: Antanas Kaztauskis
• The Chicago Strike: A Teamster
• A Cap Maker's Story: Rose Schneiderman
• The Autobiography of a Labor Leader: James Williams
• A Miner's Story
• The New Slavery in the South--An Autobiography: A Georgia Negro Peon
• The Biography of a Chinaman: Lee Chew
• More Slavery at the South: A Negro Nurse
• The Race Problem -An Autobiography: A Southern Colored Woman

Resources:

• Worklore: Brooklyn Workers Speak, a joint research/exhibition project of The Brooklyn Historical Society and the Brooklyn Public Library, explores the work lives of Brooklynites as they made, and continue to make, their living in the borough. Using photographs and personal quotes, this online exhibition compares the experience of working in the past to doing so today.
  http://www.worklore.net/game-launch.html
• Triangle Factory Fire
  This web exhibit presents original documents and secondary sources on the Triangle Fire, held by the Cornell University Library.
  http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

Man (boss) waiving his fist at female employee in a sweatshop (clothing factory)
Illus. in: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, (1888 Nov. 3), p. 188. Library of Congress

Hypertext History: Our Online American History Textbook

by : http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/hyper_titles.cfm

An interactive, multimedia history of the United States from the Revolution to the present.

Interactive Timelines
The key events that made American History.

Guided Readings:

The First Americans

No aspect of our past is more enshrouded in myth and misconceptions than the history of Native Americans. This chapter examines the rich and diverse cultures of the first Americans and the far-reaching consequences of their encounter with Europeans.

Exploration and Discovery

The fifteenth and sixteenth century voyages of discovery brought Europe, Africa, and the Americas into direct contact, producing an exchange of foods, animals, and diseases that scholars call the “Columbian Exchange.”

Colonization

Here, you will learn about the economic, religious, and social developments that led Europeans to colonize new lands; the differences between Spanish, French, and English colonization; and the difficulties they encountered as a result of the varied climates and topographies.

The Origins and Nature of New World Slavery

Slave labor played an indispensable role in the settlement and development of the New World. This chapter examines slavery in the ancient, medieval, and early modern world; the process of enslavement; the Middle Passage; and the evolution of slavery in colonial, revolutionary, and antebellum America.

Patterns of Change 1700-1775

In this chapter you will learn about England’s efforts to create an empire based on mercantilist principles and the conflicts that these efforts to assert control produce. You will also learn about the forces that transformed colonial life, including an expanding population, economic stratification, the Enlightenment, and the Great Awakening.

The American Revolution

This chapter examines the series of events that ruptured relations between Britain and the American colonies, and the long and bitter war that the colonists waged in order to gain independence.

The Founders

This chapter examines the key figures who led the struggle for independence and drafted the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The Critical Period: America in the 1780s

In this chapter, you learn abut the internal difficulties besetting the new republic, such as financing war debts, the threat of a military coup, and popular demand for tax relief, as well as efforts to expand freedom of religion, make land more readily available, increase women’s educational opportunities, and address the problem of slavery.

The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights

This chapter examines the creation of a new government based on the principles of popular sovereignty, rule of law, and legislation enacted by elected representatives.

The First New Nation

During the first 12 years under the Constitution, the United States established the machinery of government, defined the office and powers of the president, enacted a financial program that secured the nation’s credit and stimulated the economy, and created the first political parties to involve the voting population in national politics.

Antislavery

This chapter examines the growth of antislavery thought, the colonization movement, the emergence of immediatist abolition, and political antislavery.

Jeffersonian Republicanism

Here you will learn about Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to reestablish republican government by reducing the federal budget and Federalist influence over the judiciary, the emergence of the doctrine of judicial review, and the Louisiana Purchase, as well as British and French threats to American shipping and the causes and significance of the War of 1812.

The Era of Good Feelings

The War of 1812 stirred a new sense of nationalism, evident in a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions and in foreign policy, especially the Monroe Doctrine. Paradoxically, these years also exacerbated political and sectional conflicts. The financial Panic of 1819 produced new political divisions and the Missouri crisis contributed to a sectional split between North and South.

Jacksonian Democracy

Between 1820 and 1840 property qualifications for voting and officeholding were repealed, voter participation increased, and a new two-party system emerged. President Andrew Jackson opened Indian lands to white settlement, destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, and denied a state the right to nullify the federal tariff.

Pre-Civil War American Culture

Before the Civil War, American literature began to employ native scenes and characters; the Transcendentalists popularized a philosophy that emphasized each person’s potentialities and glorified nature as a creative force; and a popular commercial culture emerged, including the penny press, the minstrel show, and the western adventure novel.

Pre-Civil War Reform

This chapter examines the social, intellectual, and religious roots of early 19th century reform movements, and the efforts of reformers in the areas of education, criminal justice, the treatment of the mentally ill; and the abolitionist and women’s rights movements.

Religion and the Early Republic

This chapter traces the growth of liberal and evangelical religion in early 19th century America.

The Roots of American Economic Growth

After the War of 1812, the economy grew at rapid pace, as the nation overcame obstacles that stood in the way of sustained economic growth. Improved transportation and communication, technological innovation, the rise of the factory system, and mass immigration transformed the United States into an industrial leader.

The Struggle for Public Schools

During the early 19th century, educational reformers established the nation’s first systems of public education.

Westward Expansion

During the 1830s and 1840s, the United States acquired vast new territories in the West. This chapter describes the Native Americans and Mexicans who inhabited the region; the forces that drove traders, missionaries, and pioneers westward; and the acquisition of western lands by annexation, negotiation, and war.

The Pre-Civil War South

This chapter critically evaluates stereotypes about the “Old” South, analyzes the impact of slavery on the southern economy, traces the decline of antislavery sentiment in the South, and examines the efforts of Southern nationalists to promote industry and a distinctive southern identity.

The Impending Crisis

During the 1850s, the political system became incapable of resolving the sectional disputes between the North and South. This chapter analyzes the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Law; the demise of the Whig Party and the emergence of the Republican party; the Kansas-Nebraska Act; the Dred Scott decision; and John Brown’s raid.

Tragedy of the Plains Indians

The Civil War

This chapter examines the election of 1860, the secession crisis, the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Union and the Confederacy, the military history of the war, as well as the economic and social changes the war produced.

Reconstruction

Here you will learn about President Lincoln’s and President Johnson’s plans to readmit the Confederate states to the Union; the more stringent Congressional plan; the struggle between President Johnson and Congress, including the impeachment vote; the Reconstruction era’s contributions to civil rights; the reasons for Reconstruction’s demise; and the emergence of sharecropping.

Along the Color Line

This chapter examines African American life in the South after Reconstruction. It analyzes lynching, the convict lease system, segregation and disfranchisement, the judicial response to Jim Crow, and responses to Booker T. Washington’s policy of racial accommodation.

Closing the Western Frontier

This chapter chronicles the construction of the transcontinental railroad; the settlement of the Great Plains; the mining, cattle, and farming frontiers; the oil industry’s birth; and popular culture’s treatment of the Western frontier.

Industrialization and the Working Class

This chapter examines the impact of and responses to industrialization among American workers, including the attempt to form labor unions despite strong opposition from many industrialists and the courts.

The Huddled Masses

In this chapter you learn about the new immigrants from eastern and southern Europe and the anti-immigrant reaction.

The Making of Modern America

The late 19th century saw the advent of new communication technologies, including the phonograph, the telephone, and radio; the rise of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines; the growth of commercialized entertainment, as well as new sports, including basketball, bicycling, and football, and appearance of new transportation technologies, such as the automobile, electric trains and trolleys.

The Rise of Big Business

This chapter traces the rise of the corporation as the dominant form of business organization in the United States. It describes the economic, legal, and technological factors that encouraged rapid industrialization, the history of business consolidation, and the growth of new management techniques.

The Rise of the City

This chapter traces the changing nature of the American city in the late 19th century, the expansion of cities horizontally and vertically, the problems caused by urban growth, the depiction of cities in art and literature, and the emergence of new forms of urban entertainment.

The Struggle for Women's Suffrage

This chapter traces the 72-year-long struggle for women’s suffrage and the suffrage movement’s impact, as well as the campaign for birth control.

The Gilded Age

The 1880s and 1890s were years of unprecedented technological innovation, mass immigration, and intense political partisanship, including disputes over currency, tariffs, political corruption and patronage, and railroads and business trusts.

United States Becomes a World Power

This chapter examines the reasons why the United States adopted a more aggressive foreign policy at the end of the 19th century; the causes, military history, and consequences of the Spanish American War; and early 20th century U.S. involvement in China, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The Political Crisis of the 1890s

The 1890s were turbulent years that saw labor violence, racial tensions, unrest among farmers, and discontent among the unemployed. Particular attention is paid to the problems facing the nation’s farmers, farmers’ efforts to organize, and the critical election of 1896.

The Progressive Era

This chapter examines the sources of the progressive movement; progressivism at the municipal, state, and national levels, and the influence of progressive ideas on foreign policy.

The Twentieth Century

An overview of the far-reaching economic and social changes that transformed American society in the 20th century, including innovations in science and technology, economic productivity, mass communication and mass entertainment, health and living standards, the role of government, gender roles, and conceptions of freedom.

America at War: World War I

This chapter examines the war’s causes, the reasons why the United States intervened in the conflict, how American industry was mobilized for war, wartime propaganda and political repression, and the social changes and unrest produced by the war.

The Jazz Age: The American 1920s

The 1920s was a decade of major cultural conflicts as well as a period when many features of a modern consumer culture took root. In this chapter, you will learn about the clashes over alcohol, evolution, foreign immigration, and race, and also about the growth of cities, the rise of a consumer culture, and the revolution in morals and manners.

1930s

This section examines why the seemingly boundless prosperity of the 1920s ended so suddenly and why the Depression lasted as long as it did. It assesses the Depression's human toll and the policies adopted to combat the crisis. It devotes particular attention to the Depression's impact on African Americans, the elderly, Mexican Americans, labor, and women. In addition to assessing the ideas that informed the New Deal policies, this chapter examines the New Deal's critics, and evaluate the New Deal's impact.

America at War: World War II

In this chapter, you will learn about the war’s causes, the Holocaust, the military history of the war, the impact of the war on women and racial and ethnic minorities, the internment of Japanese Americans, and the dawn of the atomic age.

Postwar America: 1945 - 1960

The chapter examines the origins of the Cold War; the implementation of the Containment policy; the Korean War; and fear of Communist subversion at home. It also traces the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement; the emergence of youth culture; and postwar cultural critics, including the Beats.

America in Ferment: The Tumultuous 1960s

This chapter examines the Civil Rights struggle against segregation and racial equality; the feminist fight for equal educational and employment opportunity; the Mexican American battle against discrimination in voting, education, and employment; the Native American campaign for tribal sovereignty and land rights; the gay and lesbian drive to end discrimination based on sexual preference; and the environmentalist campaign to reduce pollution and promote conservation.

Vietnam War

This chapter discusses how American became involved in southeast Asia; the escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam war; reactions to the war on the homefront; President Nixon’s strategies for ending the war; and cultural reactions to the war.

The Past Three Decades: Years of Crisis - Years of Triumph

This chapter examines the impact of the collapse of Communism on international stability; the resurgence of the American economy during the 1990s; the presidencies of George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush; and American responses to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Conquests And Cultures: An International History (Paperback)

This is a remarkably thorough, well-researched work on major regions and civilizations around the world -- African, Aztec, Inca, Slav, (bative) American Indian. Sowell documents the case of how geography (harbors, arable land, navigable rivers, freedom from monsoons and tropical disease) and ideas (fundamental beliefs and principles widely shared or disseminated) combine to make the world what it is today.

"Culture" triumphs if it is sustainable and based on a credible concept that can be embraced by others. Other "cultures" fail or disappear when they are conquered by more dominant cultures or collapse from within due to a fundamental weakness or failure to transmit the culture across people and generations.

Much like David Landes' "Wealth and poverty of nations", Sowell shows that societies or cultures that can produce things of value, that educate their young, that innovate, and that encourage personal freedom, initiative, private ownership and advancement based on merit, these cultures are more likely to survive.

Sowell dispels myths about racism, diversity and the equality of all cultures. His research is encyclopedic and well-documented.

An excellent book for a university course on culture, diversity and global development.

Ethnic America: A History (Paperback)

There are so many biased books/papers/articles/documentaries on this subject which take some pre-defined viewpoint and attempt to make some moral statement. This book is the only source of information I've ever seen which basically looks at why various ethnic groups behave the way they do, without assumptions, without guilt, without dogma, and without political correctness. This is the kind of book someone might write 500 years from now after the emotions have subsided on the subject.

This book will show you a new way of thinking about race and culture in America, with many surprising facts and concepts.