Alexandra Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" (Yale UP, 2024)

New Books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Ayn Rand is a provocative and polarizing figure. Strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, Rand was a dogmatic preacher of her moral philosophy. Based on what she called "rational self-interest", Rand believed in prosperity-seeking individualism above all.

Alexandra Popoff's deeply researched biography traces Rand's journey from her early life as a privileged secular Jew in pre-revolution St. Petersburg, through the deprivations of life in Crimea during the Russian Civil War, and across the world to a new life in the United States in the 1920s. These early experiences influenced Rand's views, which she expressed in her sharp critique of Soviet Russia in her first major novel, We The Living.

In Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success (Yale UP, 2024) We follow Rand's extraordinary career in early Hollywood as an apprentice scriptwriter with Cecil DeMille and her evolution into an accomplished novelist of tightly plotted, intellectual stories. Her strong promotion of laissez-fair capitalism and creative, high achieving "supermen" willing to risk everything to achieve their goals came through in her two best selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.

Following her literary career Rand focused on her philosophical theory of Objectivism and became a cult-like figure to many of her devoted followers.

Video: Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand from 1959.

Recommended reading:

• Goddess of the Market by Jennifer Burns
• Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

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