There is a New Biography of Ayn Rand–in Fact, Two!

Jennifer Burns has written a new biography of Ayn Rand, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.  And it has gotten a good deal of attention and Kendra Marr writes in Politco.com that Ayn Rand is having a mainstream moment."

On National Review Online, Peter Wehner hopes it will pass because "Objectively, Ayn Rand Was a Nut." He reminds us that "Whittaker Chambers...in 1957, reviewed Atlas Shrugged in National Review and read her out of the conservative movement." You can find that review online.   Rand's system seems as rational and inhuman as that of the socialists, yet her books have great appeal to libertarians and others.  They sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies.  Michael Berliner critiques Chambers' review in Capitalism Magazine.  Read both and judge for your self.

there is also a second new biography out: Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Doubleday, 2009.)