Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason and author of five books. He is an award-winning journalist who has covered libertarian and conservative movement history, gun policy and legal history, tech innovation, environmental and trade policy, and cutting-edge American art movements.
Doherty had discussed his journalism on hundreds of radio shows and many prominent TV programs including Fox's Glenn Beck Show and O'Reilly Factor, and CNN's Out Front with Erin Barnett. He has given presentations about his work at events ranging from San Diego Comic-Con to FreedomFest. His reporting and commentary has appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Mother Jones, Wired, and Spin. He won the Thomas A. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties in 2011.
His books include the Los Angeles Times bestseller This is Burning Man (Little, Brown, 2004); Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007), a Financial Times best book of the year; Gun Control on Trial (Cato Institute, 2008); Ron Paul's Revolution (which Kirkus Reviews called "Illuminating…a welcome aid to understanding the evolution of Paul's offbeat ideas.")(HarperCollins/Broadside, 2012); and Dirty Pictures (which the San Francisco Chronicle called "a welcome addition to an under-analyzed legacy of the free-spirited 1960s") (Abrams, 2022).
Doherty first joined Reason in 1994 as an assistant editor. He also has worked as the managing editor of Regulation magazine, and as the Warren Brookes Journalism Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1999-2000. Doherty is a graduate of the University of Florida, where he majored in journalism. He lives in California's Coachella Valley.
