This is The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie.

My guest today is economist and podcaster Glenn Lowry,

whose amazing new memoir is called late admissions,

Confessions of a Black Conservative.

I guarantee you it's the only academic memoir you'll read this year

that provides the recipe for crack cocaine

and a deep discussion of Alberto Hirschman's seminal text and political

economy, exit voice and loyalty. Born in 1948 and raised working class on Chicago's

predominantly black south side, Lowry tells the story of self-invention, ambition, hard work,

addiction, and redemption. That channels Benjamin Franklin's

autobiography, Richard Wright's native son, Saul Bellows the Adventures of Augie March, and Milton

Friedman's capitalism and freedom. The first tenured black economist at Harvard, Lowry emerged

in the 1980s as a ubiquitous commenter on race and class and was

even offered a post in the Reagan administration. Then a series of scandals involving affairs,

arrests, and addiction threatened to end his personal and professional lives. Late admissions is an

unflinching look at Lowry's failures and successes, both public and private, written by someone who was intimately involved in many of the biggest policy and culture war battles of the past 50 years.

Here is the reason interview with Glenn Lowry.

Glenn. is the Reason interview with Glenn Lowry. Glenn Lowry, thanks for talking to Reason.

Hey, Nick Gillespie, good to be talking to you.

All right, so the new book, which is amazing, is late admissions, confessions of a black conservative.

I guess my first question is, why did you write this now?

Well, I've been threatening to write it for 10 years.

...