Late Admissions

Confessions of a Black Conservative

By: Glenn Loury

Narrated by: Glenn Loury

A shockingly frank memoir from a prize-winning economist, reflecting on his remarkable personal odyssey and his changing positions on identity, race, and belief.

Economist Glenn C. Loury is one of the most prominent public intellectuals of our time: he's often radically opposed to the political mainstream, and delights in upending what's expected of a Black public figure. But more so than the arguments themselves—on affirmative action, institutional racism, Trumpism—his public life has been characterized 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 program, 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, a Black Reaganite who has swung from the right to the left and back again. In Late Admissions, Loury examines what it means to chart a sense of self over the course of a tempestuous, but well-considered, life.

©2024 Glenn Loury (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

feel like I know him

I have been watching blogging heads with him and Mcquarter for years. when I saw his book was out AND he was narrerating....I was so excited. I finished it in two days, compelling is an understatement. his repetitive use of the tool, there's the cover story and there's the real story is freaking genius. Then there are some weird antitheticals that I can't believe were left unedited. The fact that at least once every 1000 words is one that I've never heard of and that sometimes more than once, he mispronounces embarrassingly common words, abyss is one, is so strange to me. Still a hard recommended for anyone who grew up poor and worked your way up through academia.

Oh, Glenn…

This isn’t exactly what the doctor had ordered.

Hopefully it is made into a movie.

Glenn with warts and all

Glenn's autobiography read by himself is quite the long tail, but for those who know Glenn or are interested in the perspective of black conservative this was very interesting. I applaud Glenn for being very transparent about the good and bad parts of his life and I hope this serves as a cautionary tale for how to be committed to your family and principles as the costs of hypocrisy are high.

This is a life that would be hard to invent

Certainly an interesting book. I couldn’t put it down. I couldn’t believe Glen put all this in print, and yet admitted much of his life still wasn’t in it. So I have maximum respect for this guy. If you made it up, no one would believe it.
One reflection about himself that he didn’t quite see is that his frequent “switching sides” between conservatives and libs gave him that same hit of approval he sought, which we all seek, whenever the other side was glad to welcome him back. Ditto religion.
Another thing I think glen might have benefited from is james clear’s atomic habits, where he talks about change as happening at 3 levels: first, desire. Without that, nada obviously. 2nd — operational level, which is AA, a diet, a run club, etc. At this level you are still tempted by cigarettes, say, or you don’t wanna go on a run, but you do because you’re in a program. You’re doing what it takes operationally. 3rd is identity. I.e., “I’m not a smoker so I don’t even have to exercise the decision muscle to deny myself a smoke.” If Glen had been aware of this framework he might have been able to share if he made it all the way but we are all left suspecting he’s still at level 2, operational level — which may be good enough!

A great character study on the importance of presenting desirable behavior to children

Glenn has an incredible mind, but clearly is plagued by a need to imitate the awful moral lessons he was taught as a child (as we all are) and his historical need for praise leaves him vulnerable to veering off in whichever direction his audience points him. As such it’s hard to know at any time what the “real story” is on his beliefs. However, his generational talent of a mind means that whoever has Glenn’s attention is going to get a world class debater and attack dog ferociously working on their behalf.