ABOUT JENNIFER

Jennifer Burns is a historian of the twentieth-century United States working at the intersection of intellectual, political, and cultural history, with a particular interest in ideas about the state, markets, and capitalism and how these play out in policy and politics.

Her most recent book is Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative. This is the first full biography of the influential economist and political figure. It was awarded the 2026 Spengler Book Prize and the 2025 Reagan Book Prize, and was a finalist for the 2024 Hayek Prize.

Her first book, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, was an intellectual biography of the libertarian novelist Ayn Rand.

She has published articles about the history of conservatism, libertarianism, and liberalism in a number of academic and popular journals, including Reviews in American History, Modern Intellectual History, Journal of Cultural Economy, The New York Times, The New Republic, and Dissent.

Jennifer is currently faculty advisor to the new Stanford Humanities Center Workshop in Religion, Politics, and Culture, a founding faculty member of the American Religions in a Global Context interdisciplinary hub/graduate certificate, and a member of the Stanford Civics Initiative.