The liberty movement has lost its chronicler.
At FEE, we were saddened to learn that Brian Doherty passed away on Friday, as a result of a fall in California. A journalist and chronicler of the libertarian movement, Brian was the author of six books, and a fixture on the Reason masthead for nearly 30 years.
Brian spent his whole career in the liberty movement, beginning at Cato, and first writing for Reason in the 1990s. He understood the liberty movement’s evolution, and all its various channels. He was also interested in the quirky, the rebellious, and the fringe.
In his first book This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground (2004), he described the culture of the event he had been attending since the mid-1990s. His account of the appeal and contradictions of the desert festival included the line: “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, and I believe in things you can’t see.”
He also wrote about fan culture and the world of underground comics in the 1960s and ’70s in Dirty Pictures: How an Underground Network of Nerds, Feminists, Misfits, Geniuses, Bikers, Potheads, Printers, Intellectuals, and Art School Rebels Revolutionized Art and Invented Comix (2022). He played bass guitar, and founded and ran his own record label, Cherry Smash Records, in the 1990s. Brian’s work oscillated between deeply-researched reports and his own embedded involvement in counterculture movements.
At Reason, he covered topics as varied as the Second Amendment, Ludwig von Mises, and choosing to go to a dentist in Mexico. In 2008, he compiled a massive oral history of the magazine.
Among libertarians, Brian may be best known for his two ambitious histories of the liberty movement: Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007), and Modern Libertarianism: A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States (Libertarianism.org, 2025).
I knew Brian through Reason (where I have also been an occasional contributor). When I told him that we were relaunching The Freeman and asked him to write, he was kind enough to contribute a thoughtful essay on the path to libertarianism in America, which we published under the title “Libertarians and America: Changing Individual Minds.”
As he wrote:
For those of us who believe in liberty, those adherents of the libertarian movement, those who dedicate their time, careers, intellect, and emotion toward promoting these ideas, the original wisdom of Leonard Read at FEE is still important to remember: the libertarian’s task is first improving his or her own understanding and ability to communicate, before becoming an effective proselytizer for liberty.
Brian was such a proselytizer. He shared his insights to libertarian ideals, and the narrative of the movement itself.
He will be missed.
