Nearly two decades ago Sowell sent me a signed copy after I emailed him challenging him on something he wrote in one of his columns!

Sowell's weak point it is that (and this is is not unique to Sowell, it's common to both nominal supporters of free markets and their opponents) there's too often an implicit conflation of the economic system that actually exists with a free market. The way he taught me to look at policy in terms of incentives more than makes up for any of that though.