Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right

by Jennifer Burns

Overview

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.

One of the Denver Post's Great Reads of 2009

One of Bloomberg News's Top Nonfiction Books of 2009

"Excellent."
—Time magazine

"A terrific book—a serious consideration of Rand's ideas, and her role in the conservative movement of the past three quarters of a century."
—The American Thinker

"A wonderful book: beautifully written, completely balanced, extensively researched. The match between author and subject is so perfect that one might believe that the author was chosen by the gods to write this book. She has sympathy and affection for her subject but treats her as a human being, with no attempt to cover up the foibles."
—Mises Economics Blog

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195324877
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/19/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	575,385
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Burns is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. A nationally recognized authority on Rand and conservative thought, she has discussed her work on The Daily Show and Book TV and has been interviewed on numerous radio programs.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I. The Education of Ayn Rand, 1905-1943
Ch. 1. From Russia to Roosevelt
Ch. 2. Individualists of the World, Unite!
Ch. 3. A New Credo of Freedom
Part II. From Novelist to Philosopher, 1944-1957
Ch. 4. The Real Root of Evil
Ch. 5. A Round Universe
Part III. Who Is John Galt? 1957-1968
Ch. 6. Big Sister is Watching You
Ch. 7. Radicals for Capitalism
Ch. 8. Love is Exception Making
Part IV. Legacies
Ch. 9. It Usually Begins with Ayn Rand
Epilogue Ayn Rand in American Memory
Notes
Essay on Sources
Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Richard Baehr

"Burns . . . has produced a terrific book -- a serious consideration of Rand's ideas, and her role in the conservative movement of the past three quarters of a century, that is empty of academic jargon and accessible to those unfamiliar with Rand's life or ideas."--(Richard Baehr, American Thinker)

Paula Baker

"Ayn Rand has always been a difficult figure to fit into the history of conservatism, but surely she mattered--and matters still. This important and beautifully written book shows how. It seamlessly links Rand's operatic personal life with her political ideals and influence of those ideas, conversations, tirades, friendships, fights, and intimacies with finely-drawn and memorable characters. This is biography, intellectual history, and political genealogy that gets the story right, told with drama, skill, and insight."--(Paula Baker, Ohio State University)

Michael Kazin

"One of the most influential, most infuriating figures in the history of American conservatism has finally met her match. Goddess of the Market is both insightful scholarship and a compelling piece of writing. Jennifer Burns has created a model for intellectual biographers to follow."--(Michael Kazin, author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan)

Martin Anderson

"Jennifer Burns has written a brilliant book about Ayn Rand--why many men and women praise her, but others despise her. She places Rand in the intellectual and political history of her times, moving adroitly between Rand's fiction, non-fiction, and the people with whom she interacted."--(Martin Anderson, Hoover Institution)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra

"This provocative intellectual biography is must-reading for all those interested in the life and work of one of the most controversial thinkers of the 20th century. Drawing carefully from primary and secondary sources, Jennifer Burns has made a significant contribution to Ayn Rand scholarship."--(Chris Matthew Sciabarra, author of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical)

Editorial Reviews

"Impressive .Burns's excellent book helps us to discover the real Ayn Rand."—American Historical Review

"Excellent."—Time magazine

"Timely, well-researched"—Bloomberg News

"Burns does a remarkable service by shedding light on Ayn Rand's long-neglected early career...This sets the scene for an Ayn Rand much closer to the political mainstream than her reputation has suggested." —History News Network

"An important study... Burns's dispassionate intellectual history makes a persuasive case that Ayn Rand was no joke; she was a forceful and original thinker, and a gifted manipulator of fictional conventions for ideological ends."-Elaine Showalter, Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." The unblinking individualism of Ayn Rand (1905-82) came alive in Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and other fiction but also in her personal life. In this biography, eight years in the making, Harvard-trained scholar Jennifer Burns tracks Rand's dramatic life from her middle-class childhood in pre-Revolution Russia to her later fame as an American novelist and the founder of objectivism. To plot the evolution of Rand's ideas, Burns draws extensively on the philosopher's journals and private papers.

Ayn Rand's most famous books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, continue to sell in the hundreds of thousands every year,decades after they were issued. She was a significant influence on Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Craigslist's Craig Newman. Rand remains many things to many people since her death in 1982, as she did throughout her prickly, anxiety-laced, amphetamine- and nicotine-fueled life. This biography and critique is exasperatingly detailed and slow-going at times. But what University of Virginia historian Burns does well is to explicate the evolution of Rand's individualist worldview, placing her within the context of American conservative and libertarian thought: from H.L. Mencken to William Buckley and later the Vietnam War—her opposition to it drove most conservatives crazy. Burns does not give short shrift to the men in Rand's life: her longtime husband, Frank O'Connor, and intellectual partner and lover, Nathaniel Branden. Overall, this contributes to an understanding of a complex life in relation to American conservatism. 12 b&w photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Burns . . . thoroughly analyzes her ideas.
—Jonathan Chait

The New Republic

Burns has assembled a book that will interest anyone who was influenced by Ayn Rand . . . .When a major academic publisher, like Oxford University Press, sets out to explore to the impact of Ayn Rand on American politics, that alone is a significant event . . . . Jennifer Burns has produced a fascinating work. It is the first serious study of Rand's ideas that had full access to Rand's own papers. As such it is valuable. I would recommend all those interested in Ayn Rand, and Objectivism, to place their order for the book today.

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