{"product_id":"is-reality-optional","title":"Is Reality Optional?","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe title asks a question, and the book spends a hundred and ninety pages answering it. No.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThese are Thomas Sowell's short pieces from the early 1990s, written for \u003cem\u003eForbes\u003c\/em\u003e, for newspaper syndication, and for \u003cem\u003eThe American Spectator\u003c\/em\u003e, collected by the Hoover Institution where he was a senior fellow. They range across economics, race, and education, and they share one habit of mind that runs through everything he wrote: a policy is to be judged by what it actually does rather than by what its advocates hoped it would do.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat sounds like a modest standard. Sowell spent a career demonstrating how rarely it is applied, and these essays are the method at its most concentrated — a few pages each, a single argument apiece, and a closing turn that usually leaves the opposing position with nothing to stand on.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe short form suits him. His long books build their case over hundreds of pages of data; here the same reasoning arrives in a sitting, which makes this the better place to start for someone who has heard of Sowell but not yet read him. The book closes with a section of his quotations, most of them quoted ever since.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRead it alongside \u003cem\u003eBasic Economics\u003c\/em\u003e, which lays out the machinery these essays take for granted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Amazon","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50438302105667,"sku":"Is-Reality-Optional-10267040809027","price":14.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0635\/4737\/5683\/files\/71uybL8twDL._SL1000.jpg?v=1790027489","url":"https:\/\/cafe.tollbooth-dpyc.com\/products\/is-reality-optional","provider":"Good Brew","version":"1.0","type":"link"}