Review by John C. Snider © 2009
Love her or loathe her, there’s no denying that Ayn Rand was a fascinating person. Born in 1905 in Czarist Russia, Alisa Rosenbaum’s childhood was devastated by the upheaval of the revolution and the subsequent reversal of her family’s fortunes under the Communist regime. Emigrating to the United States in 1926, Alisa reinvented herself as Ayn Rand, going on to write plays, screenplays and two mega-bestselling novels–The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged–and founding the still-controversial philosophy known as Objectivism. The perpetually prickly Rand became ever more strident as she grew older, eventually alienating all but a handful of sycophants. She died alone and embittered in 1982.
We interview Jennifer Burns, assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of the new biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. It’s a timely book considering the recent resurgence of Rand’s works (especially her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) as a reaction to the country’s current economic situation. For more about Prof. Burns visit 
[Ayn Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged turns 50 this month. Objectivists are celebrating, and CSPAN 2 recently devoted several hours of programming to discussions about the late Rand and her literary/philosophical influence. Nearly a quarter centery after her death, Rand is still stirring up controversy, and despite her staunch atheism, she is generally unpopular amongst modern-day freethinkers because of her cult-like aura and unflinchingly pro-capitalist stance. I add to the celebration in reprinting two articles I've written over the years that touch on the Randian legacy: an essay titled "But Is It Science Fiction? Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged", originally published in May 2000 in my online magazine