Late Admissions
Confessions of a Black Conservative
20 January 2026
Territory Rights — Worldwide.
Description
A shockingly frank memoir from a prize-winning economist, reflecting on his remarkable personal odyssey and his changing positions on identity, race and belief
Glenn C. Loury is often radically opposed to the political mainstream and delights in upending what’s expected of a Black public figure. But more than the arguments themselves—on affirmative action, institutional racism, Trumpism—his public life has been characterised by fearlessness and a willingness to recalibrate strongly held and forcefully argued beliefs.
Loury grew up on the south side of Chicago, earned a PhD in MIT’s economics programme and became the first Black tenured professor of economics at Harvard at the age of thirty-three. He has been, at turns, a young father, a drug addict, an adulterer, a psychiatric patient, a born-again Christian, a lapsed born-again Christian and a Black Reaganite. In Late Admissions, Loury examines what it means to chart a sense of self over the course of a tempestuous but well-considered, life.
Reviews
"So, does Loury’s delicate gambit — his attempt to garner sympathy while revealing some of his worst behavior — work? For this reader, the answer is unequivocally yes. Late Admissions is a zestfully written book, packed with humor, pathos and hard-earned wisdom." — John McMillan, The Washington Post
"There is a sweetness and vulnerability to Mr. Loury’s search for catharsis-by-confession. He is a highly intelligent man, utterly flawed and irresistibly likable. If we judge him, it’s because he beckons us to do so, a wayward moth offering himself up to a public flame. Our verdict cannot be damning. For all his moral defects, we find ourselves admiring him for his intellectual valor and the pugnacity of his convictions." — Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal
"Unlike any economist’s memoir I have ever read.... Being in the thick of America’s culture wars, as a Black intellectual on the political right, has yielded a vivid bounty." — Dwight Garner, The New York Times
"Breathtakingly good, and extraordinarily candid. Loury is perhaps the best writer of nonfiction in America, but Late Admissions advances well beyond that. Its self-reflexive, ‘house of mirrors’ structure reminds me of Amor Towles’ prizewinning fiction. Even more deeply, the book has forced me to interrogate my own reactions to it." — Robert D. Putnam, The New York Times best-selling author of Bowling Alone
Ebook
9780393881356
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£25.99
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