A monthly magazine on current affairs published by the Reason Foundation, Reason is the largest circulation periodical with a libertarian editorial philosophy. Reason focuses primarily on domestic economic, political, social, and cultural issues. Recent areas of emphasis have included environmental policy, drug laws, cyberspace, culture, and biotechnology.

Reason was founded as a mimeographed publication by Boston University journalism student Lanny Friedlander in 1968. The name derived from Ayn Rand’s emphasis on reason as “man’s only tool of survival.” The first typeset and offset-printed issue appeared in 1969, by which point the magazine had several hundred paid subscribers, thanks to classified ads in libertarian newsletters and word of mouth. Near the end of 1970 several of the magazine’s contributing editors, led by Robert W. Poole, Jr., Tibor Machan, and Manny Klausner, purchased Reason from Friedlander and moved it to Santa Barbara, California, under the auspices of a partnership, Reason Enterprises. Thanks to direct-mail marketing, by the end of 1971 circulation reached several thousand.

The partnership built the circulation to 12,000 by 1978, at which point they decided to create the Reason Foundation as a way of creating a financial base for a full-time staff and significant growth. Under the foundation’s auspices, and with Poole as editor and publisher, the magazine began using four-color covers and glossy pages, paying its authors, and conducting larger marketing efforts. It also launched an investigative journalism program, with several stories receiving national newspaper and television coverage, and two of them receiving national journalism awards, the Mencken Award and the John Hancock Award for Excellence. Marty Zupan became editor in 1984, with Poole continuing as publisher. Zupan left in 1989 to become a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies.

In 1989 associate editor Virginia Postrel was promoted to editor. Circulation then stood at 30,000. During the 1990s Postrel helped to make the magazine more visible, with three Reason articles making the finals of the National Magazine Awards. Postrel wrote an influential book, The Future and Its Enemies (1998), introducing the terms “dynamism” and “stasis” into political discourse. By the time she stepped down as editor in chief in January 2000, circulation had reached 60,000. Associate editor Nick Gillespie then took over, becoming Reason’s fifth editor.

Reason contributors over the years have included Milton Friedman, Thomas Szasz, Edith Efron, James K. Glassman, Peter Huber, Walter Williams, Charles Murray, George Gilder, and Thomas Sowell.

• Poole, Robert W., Jr., and Virginia I. Postrel, eds. Free Minds and Free Markets: Twenty-Five Years of Reason. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1993.