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gwern comments on Any existential risk angles to the US presidential election? - Less Wrong
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I'm actually reading Sowell's Intellectuals and Society right now, playing the game 'record all instances where he criticizes conservatives or libertarians' - so far 0.
Last night, I thought I could at least chalk up his criticism of Naziism & Italian fascism as instances 1 & 2, except he immediately launched into the standard argument that 'no, actually those are socialisms don't you see'. Oy vey.
(It's really not a good book so far.)
Sowell is one of the best intellectuals in American conservatism right now, but that's also clearly where he makes his home, which is disappointing from a LW perspective. The two books by him that I like best are Knowledge and Decisions and A Conflict of Visions. The first is, if I remember correctly, an updated explanation of Hayek's insights, although the second ~60% of the book is spent on 'historical trends' and is probably about as biased as you would expect. The second is explicitly about politics, but its first chapter is tremendously insightful. (The latter sections of that book are basically more detailed repetition, and again I would expect the examples to be solidly conservative-leaning.)
I wrote a short review explaining what I disliked enough that I didn't bother finishing: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/417975794