New at Reason: Nick Gillespie on Ayn Rand's Place in American Life

October 7, 2009

Has any major postwar American author taken as much critical abuse as Ayn Rand? Her best-known novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, have sold more than 12 million copies in the United States alone and were ranked first and second in a 1998 Modern Library reader survey of the "greatest books" of the 20th century. Yet over the years, Rand's writing has been routinely dismissed as juvenile and subliterate when it has been considered at all. In a review of two brand new (and largely sympathetic) Rand biographies, Reason.tv and Reason.com Editor in Chief Nick Gillespie explains why it's time to re-examine Rand's place in American intellectual and cultural life.

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