Political scientist Charles Murray's written work frequently draws descriptions containing two hot-button words: "influential" and "controversial." He is the author of several books, first gaining national attention with 1984's Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, the book credited with being the "intellectual foundation for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996."

The mammoth publicity, regarded as a firestorm in some quarters, arrived in 1994 when he and co-author Richard J. Herrnstein published The Bell Curve, subtitled Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. The controversy focused on the authors' analysis of IQ's influence on the shaping of class structures in America. Now, he has written By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, an examination of how technology is gaining control of areas government cannot manage.

Murray is currently the W.H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. On that website, the description of his latest book begins, "American freedom is being gutted." The author has been an AEI scholar since 1990. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; a research scientist at the American Institutes for Research and a Peace Corps Volunteer and US-AID contractor in Thailand (1965-69) He has a BA in history from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.