I would be lying if I said I haven't lost respect for GLENN LOURY (75) after reading his memoir Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative (W.W. Norton & Company, 448 pages), but I appreciate him for writing it.

Two decades before he became the first African-American professor of economics at Harvard University to gain tenure, Loury was a brilliant, at-risk youth on Chicago's south side. This was during the last phase of the great migration of black Americans from the country's agrarian south to the industrial north. 

The professor, who considers himself a “player”, describes a 1950s black Chicago as believably, but not quite as colorfully, as pimp-turned-bestselling author ROBERT BECK (aka ICEBERG SLIM) does in his Depression era life story, which takes place in the same city. There are hints and undertones of Beck's novels Pimp and Trick Baby; as well as, The Street by ANN PETRY sprinkled throughout the early chapters of Late Admissions. 

This is where Loury's memoir is the strongest.

The born again Christian recounts his life story in real-time. Readers are transported back to a segregated South Side. We experience the community's various social paradoxes through the eyes of a chubby black whiz kid, who loves his hardworking father, but thinks he's a "sucker" for tolerating his attractive mother's shameless infidelities.

Everything's familiar. There's a womanizing uncle with a law degree from Northwestern, who tells Loury the meaning of life is to "get as much pu**y as you can," a straight-laced aunt, who keeps a side hustle that provides her with a comfortable black middle class existence and the color preferences that dominate the social order.

In addition to these shared urban experiences, Loury's real n**ger credentials include, smoking weed, stealing a car and having two kids out of wedlock before college. The pivotal moment in Loury's life and the book, occurs in a pool hall where he sees his mother coming out of an hourly motel with a strange man.

At this point, Loury decides there are only players and suckers in life... and he was going to be a player.

What follows is a detailed expose of the hedonistic lives of the people running some of America's most prestigious institutions of higher learning. From threesomes with street walkers to tricking on shapely graduate students, Loury is brutally honest about his career ambition and unchecked narcissism.  

Loury is smooth. He waxes poetically about the art of seducing gullible women, and his explanation of why a cone (geometric shape) is a cone is expressed in language that is so elegant, it borders on the erotic.

And this is a ribald tale, where the feelings and emotions of wives, children and lovers are cast aside like scratch paper after a math test. Loury undergoes a metamorphosis in the reader's mind as he rises professionally. The lovable loser, who graduated from high school a virgin, was coerced into a teenage marriage, flunked out of college, then ended up discussing domestic policy with U.S. presidents RONALD REAGAN (93) and GEORGE BUSH SR. (77), has turned into a creepy college professor trying to make up for lost time. 

It gets ugly. In the 1980s, Loury gains national prominence as a rising, young black conservative star, who publicly thunders against drugs, violence and immorality in the African-American community; while at the same time, his own extramarital sexual "conquests" and illegal drug use are increasing in frequency and severity. The disrespect Glenn showed for his first wife, Charlene, and his second wife, Linda, who endured his abuse and died from cancer at age 59 is nauseating and to some, perhaps, unforgivable. 

Some readers may not make it to Loury's redemption. Others might feel the need for a baptism themselves.

Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, however, is as inciteful a look into the lives of America's modern black elite as The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (67) was in 1912 and Invisible Man by RALPH ELLISON (80) was in 1952. 

I recommend the audiobook, which is narrated by the author.

URBAN WARHOL is an African-American scholar, author and social historian who has analyzed race relations in the United States for two decades. He has written for various publications and is currently the editorial director for NEGRO DIGEST ™ magazine. | Send news tips to info@negrodigest.com