About Kirkpatrick Books 

Kirkpatrick Books was founded as TLJ Books in 2006 by business professor Jerry Kirkpatrick to publish the paperback edition of his book In Defense of Advertising. Kirkpatrick is proud to join the new breed of author-publishers who utilize print-on-demand technology. This usually refers to toner-based digital printing that produces single copies “on demand” or one at a time.

Longer term plans in 2006 were to expand TLJ Books into a company specializing in publishing works that develop and apply the fundamental doctrines of objective universals, introspection, naturalism, ethical egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism. These doctrines are endorsed by or derive from the works of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. The two authors together provide the source and inspiration for a radically new approach to scholarship in the human sciences. It was the aim of TLJ Books to publish works advancing this new approach. (And today, the psychology of Edith Packet must be added as an essential influence on this new approach.)

Reality-based, objective universals are the epistemological foundation of all science and scientific induction; they are neither vague or shifting “family resemblances” (nominalism), nor are they essences embedded in the stuff of reality (intrinsicism). Ayn Rand’s theory of objective, universal concepts is perhaps her profoundest contribution to philosophy. The acceptance of the doctrine of introspection is not a flight into mysticism but a recognition of the fact that the inner life of one’s mind is an untapped resource of scientific study and that introspection, as consequence, is sorely in need of rehabilitation by all who today call themselves scientists. The doctrine of naturalism, as used here, denies the supernatural, but it also denies materialism; it endorses and studies as a proper sphere of science consciously motivated design or purpose as it exists in human and some animal behavior.

Ethical egoism is the pursuit of one’s rational self-interest; it does not mean walking over others to achieve one’s goals, just as altruism does not mean kindness or gentleness. And laissez-faire capitalism means the complete separation of business and state, in the same way and for the same reasons that we now have the (predominantly) complete separation of church and state. Laissez-faire capitalism is not represented by the notion of pure and perfect competition, by today's business world and practices, or by the business world and practices of nineteenth-century America. Laissez-faire, the truly free society, is the practical outcome and end of the previous doctrines.

TLJ Books was renamed Kirkpatrick Books in 2017. The "longer term plans" have been shelved. "KBooks" is Jerry Kirkpatrick's hobby in retirement.(See Jerry's vita.)