Contributors
Senior Editor Brian Doherty first met Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) in 1988 when a University of Florida libertarian group brought the congressman to speak on campus. But it wasn't until Paul's 2008 presidential nomination bid that Doherty, 43, was sure the Paul phenomenon was worth a book. It took a mere "three years for the publishing industry to catch up." On page 48, in an excerpt from that book, Ron Paul's Revolution: The Man and the Movement He Inspired (Broadside), Doherty looks at "Ron Paul's Clone Army" of politicians inspired by Paul's success. Doherty is the author of three other books, most notably Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs).
In "The Paternalists' Bible" (page 58) historian Thaddeus Russell critiques Michael Harrington's The Other America: Poverty in the United States, the seminal book on poverty that helped usher in LBJ's Great Society. Harrington's book, notes Russell, 46, who has a Ph.D in history from Columbia University, is fawned over by advocates of a rigorous welfare program. What they don't notice is that "it's fundamentally conservative." The author of two books, most recently A Renegade History of the United States (Free Press), Russell is an adjunct assistant professor of American Studies at Occidental College.
On page 80, Managing Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward, 31, highlights "The Transparency Grenade," an artful and symbolic mechanism for recording and leaking information shared at secret meetings. Mangu-Ward, who previously worked at The Weekly Standard and The New York Times, digs this brave new world of being able to "record everyday encounters with the law (or the bureaucracy, or The Man in any form)." She hopes, however, that nobody ever records reason conference calls, as "the world isn't ready to have those secrets brought to light."