How much of a racial group's economic fate is determined by the surrounding society it lives in and how much by internal patterns that follow that same group around the world? Using an international framework to analyze group differences, Sowell has pioneered a new approach for pursuing this important study based on historical experience and empirical data. The results are fascinating and sometimes surprising. For instance, he finds that the social and economic patterns among Italians in Australia and Argentina are similar in many respects to those of Italians in Italy or the United States. And, though blacks have not faced the same massive and rigid oppression in Brazil as in the United States, economic differences between blacks and whites are significantly greater in Brazil.
