Ayn Rand (1905-1982) is known to millions for her blockbuster novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In the 1960s her 'Objectivist' ideas, featuring esthetic romanticism, laissez-faire capitalism, atheism, and 'the virtue of selfishness', were promoted in an organized movement, which split apart after Rand's falling-out with her protege Nathaniel Branden. This debacle threw Rand's growing community of followers into disarray, but she continues to attract readers and to exert a major, if largely subterranean, influence on thinking and policy.

The Ideas of Ayn Rand provides, for the...

Fifty-five years after Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand is more in the news than ever. Ayn Rand Explained is an accurate and riveting account of Rand's life, work, and influence, with the emphasis on her ideas.
The book covers Rand's career, from youth in Soviet Russia to Hollywood screenwriter and then to ideological guru; her novels and other fiction writings; her work in ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics; her influence on--and personal animosity toward--both conservatism and libertarianism.
Rand's Objectivism encompasses the ethics of rational egoism ('The Virtue of...