Contributors

With this issue, Senior Editor Brian Doherty returns to reason after taking a leave of absence to write a book about D.C. v. Heller, the historic case in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Washington's gun ban. An adaptation from that text, Gun Control on Trial (Cato), is printed in this issue (page 52). Doherty will be touring the country to promote the book, but he won't carry a gun with him. "Concealed carry laws are still too complicated," he laments. "I could not really even bring a gun out of my house in any convenient way in L.A." Doherty—whose previous book, Radicals for Capitalism (PublicAffairs), explored the origins of the libertarian movement—also compiled an oral history of reason, "40 Years of Free Minds and Free Markets" (page 28), for this issue, with accounts from current and former staffers.

In November, Mercatus Center senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy became reason's newest columnist. Like any good economist's work, she says, her column "is meant to talk myself out of my own irrational beliefs. For instance, I know better than anyone else that Republicans are worse spenders than Democrats, and yet I can't help but fear the Democrats more than the Republicans. Which is really stupid." This month's edition ("Are You Better Off Than You Were 40 Years Ago?," page 24) compares the state of economic liberty when reason was founded to its condition today.

In "The Old-School Individualist," (page 84), Ben Malisow interviews the independent computer game designer Jeff Vogel. Malisow, an instructor in counter-cyberterror at the University of Texas at San Antonio's Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security, says he found common ground with Vogel because "he and I played the same games as prepubescent nerds in our parents' basement." Vogel's creations display "a free thinking mentality" that libertarians should appreciate, says Malisow, whose most recent book is a reference text for high school students called Terrorism (Chelsea House).