My books
A list of my books
Coming in 2026! Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence.
You Don’t Own Me: Individualism and the Culture of Liberty (2025)
The idea of individual liberty has had enormous influence in politics, economics, and religion, but its influence on the arts has also been immense. From pop music to films—from the poetry of John Milton to Star Trek and the novels of Zora Neale Hurston—individualism has had a cultural impact both pervasive and profound. In You Don’t Own Me: Individualism and the Culture of Liberty, Timothy Sandefur examines how people in America and Europe have addressed the unique experience of personal freedom in movies, songs, literature, and even architecture. “Individual self-sovereignty,” writes Sandefur, “has not only unleashed unprecedented economic and political progress. It has also given rise to a new kind of culture, one that celebrates autonomy and the freedom to make one’s own choices.”
Freedom’s Furies: How Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand Found Liberty in an Age of Darkness (2022)
In 1943, three books appeared that changed American politics forever: Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine, Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery of Freedom, and Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Together, they laid the groundwork for what became the modern libertarian movement.
Even more striking were the women behind these books: Paterson, a brilliant but misanthropic journalist whose weekly column made her one of the nation’s most important literary critics; Lane, a restless writer who secretly coauthored the Little House on the Prairie novels with her mother; and Rand, a philosophically inclined Russian immigrant ferociously devoted to heroic individualism. Working against the backdrop of changes in literature and politics, they joined forces to rally the nation to the principles of freedom that had come under attack at home and abroad.
Sometimes friends, at other times bitterly estranged, they became known as “the three furies of libertarianism.” Now, for the first time, author Timothy Sandefur examines their lives, ideas, and influences in the context of their times. Not a biography, but a story about personalities and ideas―about the literary, political, and cultural influences that shaped the destiny of freedom in America―Freedom’s Furies tells the dramatic story of three writers who strove to keep liberty alive in an age of darkness.
Some Notes on the Silence (2022)
Timothy Sandefur’s Some Notes on the Silence begins in an atmosphere of foreboding and self-censorship, and then seeks an escape through the people and experiences of American history and culture—including everything from Daniel Webster to The Twilight Zone. In a variety of poetic forms, Sandefur examines the ideas and ideals, tragedy and humor, that have helped lead past generations through the challenges of their lives. “Timothy Sandefur’s poetic voice is as authentically American as any reader could hope to encounter,” concludes Jennifer Reeser.
The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski: The Life and Ideas of a Popular-Science Icon (2019)
“Before Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan, there was Jacob Bronowski, a world-class scientist, caring humanist, elegant poet, magisterial writer, and inimitable host of the first documentary science series, The Ascent of Man. That millennials and Generation Z are unfamiliar with his name makes this biography―the first of this Renaissance man―all the more vital, as science becomes ripped apart by political divisiveness and the need for a unifying message calls out for a voice. Listen to Dr. Bronowski and read this book.” ―Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American, Presidential Fellow at Chapman University, and author of Heavens on Earth, The Moral Arc, and The Believing Brain.
Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man (2018)
Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass rose to become one of the nation’s foremost intellectuals―a statesman, author, lecturer, and scholar who helped lead the fight against slavery and racial oppression. Unlike other leading abolitionists, however, Douglass embraced the U.S. Constitution, insisting that it was an essentially anti-slavery document and that its guarantees for individual rights belonged to all Americans, of whatever race.
Douglass spoke in his most popular lecture, “Self-Made Men,” of people who rise through their own effort and devotion rather than circumstances of privilege. “If they have traveled far, they have made the road on which they have travelled. If they have ascended high, they have built their own ladder.” In this fast-paced biography, lawyer and author Timothy Sandefur examines the life and ideas of the nation’s foremost “self-made man”―from his horrific experiences in slavery and his heroic escape to his eloquent demands for equal treatment by the federal government and his later career as statesman and intellectual. Throughout it all Douglass was guided by his belief in the sanctity of the individual.
The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It (2016)
Throughout history, kings and emperors have promised “freedoms” to their people. Yet these freedoms were really only permissions handed down from on high. The American Revolution inaugurated a new vision: people have basic rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and government must ask permission from them. Sadly, today’s increasingly bureaucratic society is beginning to turn back the clock and to transform America into a nation where our freedoms—the right to speak freely, to earn a living, to own a gun, to use private property, even the right to take medicine to save one’s own life—are again treated as privileges the government may grant or withhold at will. Timothy Sandefur examines the history of the distinction between rights and privileges that played such an important role in the American experiment, and how we can fight to retain our freedoms against the growing power of government. Illustrated with dozens of real-life examples—including many cases he litigated himself—Sandefur shows how treating freedoms as government-created privileges undermines our Constitution and betrays the basic principles of human dignity.
The Conscience of the Constitution (2015)
Is liberty or democracy the primary constitutional value? At a time when Americans are increasingly facing violations of their civil liberties, Timothy Sandefur’s insightful new book explains why the Declaration of Independence, with its doctrines on the primacy of liberty, the natural rights of man, and the limits on legitimate government, should serve as the guidepost for understanding the Constitution. The author takes the reader through the ideas of substantive due process and judicial activism and defends them from mainstream criticisms while drawing on examples from literature, television, and Supreme Court cases. The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty argues that modern legal doctrines, which value democracy over liberty, are endangering individual rights and corrupting our civic institutions.
Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st-Century America (2nd ed. 2015)
Timothy and Christina Sandefur’s Cornerstone of Liberty surveys the landscape of property rights in the United States, from redevelopment projects that seize people’s homes and businesses for the benefit of politically-connected developers, to environmental regulations that forbid people from building homes on land they supposedly own, to asset-forfeiture laws that let the police seize property involved in a crime even if the owner is not accused of any wrongdoing.
This second edition has been almost completely rewritten, incorporating details learned only after Kelo was decided, as well as an analysis of the post-Kelo reform efforts, and more recent Supreme Court decisions such as the Sackett and Koontz cases. The Sandefurs combine real-life stories with the philosophical and legal background of private property rights to show why the right to ownership is one of the most essential of human rights. The Sandefurs also provide practical recommendations for better protecting property owners.
The Right to Earn A Living: Economic Freedom and the Law (2010)
America’s founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn’t need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Yet today that right is burdened by a wide array of government rules and regulations that play favorites, rewrite contracts, encourage frivolous lawsuits, seize private property, and manipulate economic choices to achieve outcomes that bureaucrats favor. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government’s powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race. It then focuses on the Progressive-era judges who began to erode those protections, and concludes with today’s controversies over abusive occupational licensing laws, freedom of speech in advertising, regulatory takings, and much more.