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Jennifer Burns Receives Reagan Book Award
Reagan Foundation Honors Stanford Professor Jennifer Burns, Veteran Scholar and Historian, with the Age of Reagan Conference Book Prize for Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
Simi Valley, CA & Washington, DC – The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is pleased to announce that Stanford University historian Dr. Jennifer Burns has been awarded the 2025 Age of Reagan Conference Book Prize for her critically acclaimed biography, Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative.
Launched in 2023, the Age of Reagan Conference Book Prize honors outstanding scholarship that deepens understanding of Ronald Reagan’s presidency and the broader “Age of Reagan” in modern U.S. history. Dr. Burns’s work was selected from an exceptional shortlist of finalists, which included Aaron Bateman’s Weapons in Space and James Graham Wilson’s America’s Cold Warrior.
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in late 2023, is the first full-length scholarly biography of Friedman to draw extensively on his unpublished Hoover Institution archives. Dr. Burns offers a richly detailed portrayal of the Nobel Prize–winning economist—tracing his humble New Jersey origins, his rise as an intellectual fighter for free markets, and his profound influence on Reagan-era monetary policy and beyond.
Dr. Burns, a professor of history at Stanford and Hoover Institution Research Fellow, has been widely praised for her previous work, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, which the Claremont Review of Books declared as “well written,” and “exhaustively researched.”
Anthony Eames, Director of Scholarly Initiatives at the Ronald Reagan Institute, commented:
“In The Last Conservative, Jennifer Burns has written a masterful biography—probing, perceptive, and deeply researched. With rare clarity, she restores Milton Friedman to the center of American political and intellectual history, revealing both the power of his ideas and the paradoxes of his influence. This is the kind of scholarship we need more of: historically grounded, intellectually serious, and alive to the moral and political stakes of its subject. It is precisely for these reasons that the book is the recipient of this year’s Age of Reagan Book Prize.”
In presenting the Prize, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute recognizes Dr. Burns for illuminating how Friedman’s ideas—on inflation, limited government, and economic freedom—resonate with Reagan-era conservatism while shaping today’s dialogue on markets and liberty.
About the Prize Winner
Dr. Jennifer Burns is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She specializes in intellectual history, with a focus on the thinkers who shaped modern conservatism. Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative marks her second major biography, following her acclaimed Goddess of the Market.
About the Book
Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative spans Friedman’s life from 1912 through his legacy into the 21st century. Bringing together archival discoveries, sharp analysis, and narrative flair, the book charts how Friedman emerged as a central figure in Reagan-era economic thought and public policy. His monetary theory influenced the Federal Reserve’s response to stagflation, while his wider economic vision reshaped Western policymaking.
About the Age of Reagan Conference & Book Prize
The Age of Reagan Conference is the premier scholarly convening of the Ronald Reagan Institute’s Scholarly Initiatives Program. The annual conference book prize honors a new, outstanding work that advances understanding of President Reagan and the transformative “Age of Reagan.” The inaugural prize was awarded in 2023 to Professor William C. Inboden for The Peacemaker.
Jennifer Burns is one of the nation’s foremost historians of American political thought and economic policy. An Associate Professor of History at Stanford University and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, she is the author of Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative—named one of The Economist’s Best Books of 2023—and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. With a gift for making complex ideas engaging and accessible, Professor Burns brings to life the thinkers who have shaped American capitalism, conservatism, and public debate. Her talks feel like your favorite college class—thought-provoking, relevant, and unforgettable. Jennifer Burns is represented exclusively by WWSG. To book her for your next event, contact us today.
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