Happy Ayn Rand Week - Continued

As I mentioned on Monday, there are two new biographies about Ayn Rand that have been published within the past month.

Sam Anderson, of the New York Times, reviews Ayn Rand and the World She Made (by Anne Heller), and the review is worth reading simply for the following description of the subject:

"Few fellow creatures have had a more intensely odd personal flavor; her temperament could have neutered an ox at 40 paces."

Anderson takes plenty of opportunities to criticize Rand during the review, but ultimately concludes on a positive note:

"Overall, though, Heller does a remarkable job with a subject who was almost cripplingly complex—a real woman starring in her own propaganda film about a propagandist whose propaganda eventually takes over the world."

Then, there is Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (By Jennifer Burns, of the University of Virginia), which rolls in at only 384 pages, and seems to have been generally reviewed less favorably. Brian Doherty, of the Washington Times, questions the connection between Rand and the American right-wing in his review of the book:

"Rand undoubtedly was a ferocious defender of free markets and a great lover of America because she saw it as the closest political embodiment of her values. But she was never, despite Ms. Burns' title connecting her goddesshood and the American right, any special darling of modern conservatives.... ...The reader of Ms. Burns' book will get a proper sense of where Rand really stands in American ideological history. Rand (though she herself despised the word and movement for peculiar reasons of her own) was not a member in good standing of the American right; she was far more a goddess of American libertarianism, that radical philosophy of consistent anti-statism and individualism unconnected to conservative traditionalism."

Still, Doherty is mostly positive, saying that Rand still has important lessons to teach about the implications of big government.

And here's Burns herself in an interview with Reason TV, where she discusses her book, Rand's influence on conservatives and libertarians, and why Rand is important today.



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