*Ayn Rand and the World She Made*

That's the new Ayn Rand biography, written by Anne C. Heller.  It is a truly excellent, first-rate biography, at least up through my current p.111.  I know Ayn Rand is an emotional topic for many of you, pro, con, or somewhere in between.  But my praise of this book is analogous to how I might praise a biography of Jean Rhys or W.C. Handy.  It's simply a very good book by any objective [sic] standard and it should be of interest to any student of intellectual history, American popular fiction, libertarianism, or for that matter American history.

Did you know that Rand met her husband by deliberately tripping him?  Or that she received WPA funds during the New Deal? 

The author is by no means a "Randian" but she is willing to praise the famous Atlas Shrugged "money speech" as "original, complex, and although somewhat overbearing, beautifully written."  She nominates We the Living as Rand's most persuasive work in a literary sense.

Here is one blog review of the book, which is in any case recommended.

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