The renowned libertarian author Brian Doherty has died after an apparent fall in the Bay Area, according to his colleagues.
Doherty, 57, was found dead in Battery Yates, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. He is believed to have fallen while attending an event on March 12.
The writer’s death was confirmed by the libertarian magazine Reason, where he worked as a senior editor.
“Brian was the historian of the libertarian movement,” Reason Foundation President David Nott wrote. “He lovingly and comprehensively portrayed the colorful characters in the libertarian world.”
Matt Welch, an editor-at-large at Reason, revealed in his article that Doherty had suffered from a “series of physical ailments and setbacks that left him walking with a cane.”
“It is likely that condition contributed to his deadly tumble Thursday, as he took a stroll away from - of course! - an art gathering atop an abandoned World War 2 gun battery,” he continued.
Born in New York and raised in Florida, Doherty was most known for his 2007 book Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement.
His other works saw him tackling controversial issues, including gun control laws and the legacy of former Congressman Ron Paul.
In 2004, he wrote This Is Burning Man: The Rise of a New American Underground, which documented the origins of the now-infamous festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.
Doherty majored in journalism at the University of Florida in the 1980s and became associated with a group of artists known as the Cacophony Society in Los Angeles during the mid-1990s, according to Reason.
In a Reason article published in 2013, Doherty wrote that the Cacophony Society “inspired or created phenomenon ranging from the novel/movie Fight Club to urban exploration, billboard alteration, the Yes Men, flash mobs, and ‘Santa Rampages.’”
Nick Gillespie, another editor at large at Reason, wrote in a tribute to Doherty that his late colleague was the first person that he called after taking the helm at the libertarian magazine in 2000.
Doherty had joined the magazine in 1994 but had left towards the end of the decade, according to Gillespie.
“Come back, I said, Reason needs you,” Gillespie wrote. “What I liked most about Brian was his abiding interest in things happening on the margins of American culture, politics, and thought, and his deep appreciation for the prodigious bounty that markets deliver reliably and without moralizing.”
In a statement given to The Independent, a spokesperson for the National Park Service confirmed that the NPS did respond to an incident at Battery Yates on March 12.
“National Park Service law enforcement, alongside partners at Southern Marin Fire, responded to an incident at Battery Yates on Thursday, March 12 involving a male visitor who reportedly fell from the cliffside into the water,” Scott Carr, an NPS spokesperson, said. “The individual was recovered and pronounced dead. We do not have any further information to share at this time.”
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