Race and Culture by Thomas Sowell

... on-site observation made vivid what words or photographs could only begin to suggest. There is nothing like being inside the great mosque in Cordoba, seeing its grand design and the fine craftsmanship with which it was constructed a thousand years ago, to appreciate the achievements of the civilization from which it came. And to see, a short walk way, a bridge built another thousand years before that by Romans-- still carrying heavy traffic today-- is to see another great civilization's cultural impact when Spain was part of the Roman Empire. To walk through a graveyard in an old village in Australia's Barossa Valley and see all the gravestones written in German, in this English-speaking country, is to get a sense of the tenacity of the German culture, even when transplanted 10,000 miles from home. From the Ancient walled city of Jerusalem to the ultra-modern city-state of Singapore, each place told its own story in its own way. --from the Preface of Race and Culture