Give Charles Murray, longtime scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, credit for courage. Again and again, despite outrageously unfair attacks, he has returned to the public arena and persisted in telling unwelcome truths. In his meticulous prose, with charts and tables so elegant as to betray an aesthetic bent, he makes his points with precision and clarity.

Murray’s 1994 book The Bell Curve, co-authored with Harvard psychologist Richard Herrnstein, evoked furious and undeserved denunciation. It will be interesting to see whether there is a similar reaction to his latest and much shorter book, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America.