Goddess of the Market Ayn Rand and the American Right

by Burns, Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9780195324877
• ISBN10: 0195324870
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Worshipped by her fans, denounced by her enemies, and forever shadowed by controversy and scandal, the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand was a powerful thinker whose views on government and markets shaped the conservative movement from its earliest days. Drawing on unprecedented access to Rand's private papers and the original, unedited versions of Rand's journals, Jennifer Burns offers a groundbreaking reassessment of this key cultural figure, examining her life, her ideas, and her impact on conservative political thought. Goddess of the Market follows Rand from her childhood in Russia through her meteoric rise from struggling Hollywood screenwriter to bestselling novelist, including the writing of her wildly successful The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives. The book also traces the development of Rand's Objectivist philosophy and her relationship with Nathaniel Branden, her closest intellectual partner, with whom she had an explosive falling out in 1968. This extraordinary book captures the life of the woman who was a tireless champion of capitalism and the freedom of the individual, and whose ideas are still devoured by eager students, debated on blogs, cited by political candidates, and promoted by corporate tycoons.

Author Biography

Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia. She has published extensively on the history of conservative thought, and her podcasted lectures on American history have won an appreciative worldwide audience.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Education of Ayn Rand, 1905-1943
From Russia to Roosevelt	p. 9
Individualists of the World, Unite!	p. 39
A New Credo of Freedom	p. 67
From Novelist to Philosopher, 1944 - 1957
The Real Root of Evil	p. 99
A Round Universe	p. 133
Who Is John Galt? 1957 - 1968
Big Sister Is Watching You	p. 165
Radicals for Capitalism	p. 189
Love Is Exception Making	p. 214
Legacies
It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand	p. 247
Epilogue: Ayn Rand in American Memory	p. 279
Acknowledgments	p. 287
Essay on Sources	p. 291
Notes	p. 299
Bibliography	p. 345
Index	p. 361
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