Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right
Selected Book Details
- Hardcover
- Author: Jennifer Burns
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
- Release Date: October 2009
- ISBN-10: 0195324870
- ISBN-13: 9780195324877
- List Price: $27.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryWorshipped 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. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
A New Treatment of Ayn Rand's Life
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Jennifer Burns has written a great narrative of both Rand's life as well as her immersion in and effect on the economics and politics of her time. I enjoyed her psychological treatment of Rand's life as well as her depiction of how Rand's relationships changed "post-Atlas." Burns citation of sources seems comprehensive to me but does not detract from the readability. If you find Rand a compelling player on the stage of 20th-Century thought I think you'll enjoy this
Background to a movement
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I read Atlas Shrugged and fell in love with Any Rand and her ideas. The Goddess of the Market gives a good insight into Ayn Rand. It is well written and researched.
The Fountainhead Of The Modern Libertarian Movement
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There are few figures in the American libertarian movement that gave rise to as much controversy or passion as Ayn Rand. Love her or hate her, it's hard to find a libertarian who doesn't have an opinion about the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. For many of us, she was the one who lit the spark that sent us down the road toward becoming a libertarian. Even after her death, some still consider themselves hard-core Objectivists in the model of those who gravitated around the Nathanial Branden Institute in the 1960s. For most libertarians, though, while Rand is arguably the most influential moral philosopher, she is also someone who's flaws, both personal and philosophical have been acknowledged, debated, and argued about for decades.
There's always been a missing piece of the puzzle, though, and that was that nobody had really undertaken a full-scale intellectual biography of someone who, even today, can sell 200,000 copies a year of her 1,000+ page magnum opus. There were personal biographies by Barbara Branden and Nathaniel Branden, but those both seemed to concentrate on the more lurid details of Rand's personal life and the circumstances behind the 1968 Objectivist Purge. The heirs of Rand's estate, meanwhile, have guarded her papers closely in an obvious effort to protect her legacy and reputation. Someone wanting to learn more about Rand's life, the development of her ideas, and her impact on American politics, had almost nowhere to go that wasn't totally biased in one direction or the other.
That's why Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right is so welcome.
Instead of dwelling on the lurid aspects of Rand's affair with Nathaniel Branden, and without taking sides regarding the many controversies that followed Rand in years after Atlas Shrugged was published, Burns provides a thorough, well-written and well-researched survey of how Ayn Rand went from Alisa Rosenbaum of St. Petersburg, Russia, born just as Czarist Russia was beginning it's decent into chaos, to Ayn Rand, the woman about whom more than one person has said "she changed my life."
For people versed in the history of libertarian ideas, the most interest parts of the book will probably be Burns's documentation of Rand's interaction with the heavyweights of both the Pre World War II Right and the conservative/libertarian movement that began to take shape after the war ended. She corresponded with Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken and, most interestingly, developed a very close personal and intellectual relationship with Isabel Patterson, best known as the author of The God of the Machine. For years, especially during the time that Rand was writing The Fountainhead, Rand and Paterson exchanged ideas and debated philosophy, and it's clear that they both contributed to the others ideas.
The Rand-Paterson relationship, though, also foreshadowed something that would happen all too frequently later in Rand's career, the purge. Paterson was among the first libertarian-oriented writers to experience Rand's wrath for the perception that she was not sufficiently orthodox. Over time, that would continue to the point where, at it's height, Objectivism displayed a level of orthodoxy and denunciation of perceived heresy that rivaled the religions that it rejected. It was, in the end, the reason why the movement's downfalls was largely inevitable.
Burns also goes into great detail discussing the process and the ordeal that Rand went through while writing both of her great novels. After reading that part, one marvels at the fact that she even survived.
In the final chapter, Burns shows that, even though Rand herself had flaws that led to the demise of Objectivism as a formal movement, her ideas have a staying power that has permeated throughout the conservative and libertarian movements in the United States. There is hardly a libertarian in the United States who has not read at least one of Rand's books and, it's clear that her ideas have taken hold in a way that she probably never expected and definitely would not have approved of. That, however, is the power of ideas, the creator can't control what people do with them once they're out there.
Burns does a wonderful job of filling in the missing pieces about Rand's life and her place in the wider context of the political and social history of Post World War II America. Whether you love or hate Ayn Rand - and I don't think you can have no opinion about her once exposed to her idea - this is a truly fascinating book.
A refreshing and objective bio
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Love her or loathe her, there's no denying that Ayn Rand was a fascinating person. Born in 1905 in Czarist Russia, Alisa Rosenbaum's childhood was devastated by the upheaval of the revolution and the subsequent reversal of her family's fortunes under the Communist regime. Emigrating to the United States in 1926, Alisa reinvented herself as Ayn Rand, going on to write plays, screenplays and two mega-bestselling novels-The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged-and founding the still-controversial philosophy known as Objectivism. The perpetually prickly Rand became ever more strident as she grew older, eventually alienating all but a handful of sycophants. She died alone and embittered in 1982.
Interest in Rand has seen a resurgence in the last couple of years, sparked by the recent economic collapse and paranoid concerns about the Obama administration's expansive domestic agenda, which many see as fulfilling the "prophecy" of Rand's masterwork Atlas Shrugged. And although it's a project eight years in the making, the publication date could not be more timely for Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (pub. by Oxford University Press, Oct 2009, 369 pp hdcvr, $27.95). This new biography-which emphasizes Rand's relationship with and influence on the conservative movement-is one of the first works written about Rand which is neither hagiography or screed. Indeed, it's a refreshingly objective (if you'll pardon the pun) and measured look at one of the most overlooked cultural figures of the 20th century.
With access to numerous sources, including the extensive archives at the Ayn Rand Institute, Burns (assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia) provides a portrait of Rand as a tragic figure: bold yet deeply insecure; thrilled by the prospect of the American dream yet disappointed by the American elite's mid-20th-century sympathy for the Communist experiment. Rand was an unstoppable creative force, but out of step with the increasingly left-leaning counterculture. Rand's philosophy, which fused rugged individualism, laissez faire economics and atheism, guaranteed that she never fully fit in with either the mostly-religious conservative movement or the mostly-secular liberals.
Rands interaction with the American Right included relationships (usually followed by schisms) with such figures as H.L. Mencken, William F. Buckley, Jr., Rose Wilder Lane (libertarian pioneer and daughter of real-life pioneer Laura Ingalls Wilder), journalist Isabel Paterson, economist Ludwig v0n Mises, and Alan Greenspan.
Burns also touches on Rand's incendiary personal life, from her alienation from her Russian family, to her long-lasting marriage to the submissive Frank O'Connor, to her bizarre 14-year-long affair with protege Nathaniel Branden, the end of which also nearly spelled the end of the Objectivist movement. (For more detailed, juicier accounts of the affair, read the memoirs My Years with Ayn Rand and The Passion of Ayn Rand, by Nathaniel Branden and his first wife Barbara Branden, respectively. The Passion of Ayn Rand was also the basis of a telefilm starring Helen Mirren and Eric Stolz.)
Goddess of the Market is an excellent biography of the controversial Rand. Generously illustrated, cross-referenced and meticulously footnoted, this extraordinarily evenhanded account will doubtless pique the curiosity of readers not normally interested in Objectivism or libertarianism.
Thrilling Tale of Rand and Her Influence
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In her epilogue, Jennifer Burns calls Ayn Rand a "source of perennial fascination." Reading this book very much affirms this judgment. In Goddess of the Market, historian Jennifer Burns traces Rand's life from a schoolgirl in soviet Russia to her death as one of the most famous and infamous public intellectuals America ever knew.
Particular emphasis is placed on an area few had explored before Burns: exploring not only Rand's life, but her interaction with the intellectual and political scene at large. Contra what Rand often wanted others to believe, she did not operate in a vacum; she was as inflluenced by others as she gave influence to others. Goddess of the Market does a wonderful job depicting Rand's relationships to such intellectuals as Isabel Patterson, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other intellectuals.
I can't imagine that readers of this review would not be familiar with Ayn Rand's history, but the basic story is like this: Ayn Rand (born Alisa Rosenbaum) moved to the United States from Soviet Russia as a teenager. By rigorous self-determination, she made a life and a name for herself writing marginally successful but controversial and noteworthy novels like We the Living. Rand began to cultivate a reputation as both a novelist and popular philosopher with wildly popular novels like The Fountainhead and, what many consider her crowning achievement, Atlas Shrugged. From this point, Rand (with the help of some devoted followers) began a lecture series, newsletters, and what some have called a (literal) cult following. An ever-increasing mercurial temper and some questionable personal circumstances launched her into simultaneous fame, infamy, and exile until her death in 1987.
Burns's biography is neither glowing nor unduly negative (which is a tough line to hold, as polarizing a figure as Rand was). Some reviewers take Burns to task for misunderstanding or misstating Rand's philosophy of Objectivism (with its eerie capital "O"). As a former Objectivist (er...student of Objectivism) myself, I think that, if (a) if Burns misunderstands Objectivism, she does so in areas where Objectivism BEGS to be misunderstood [Rand is easy to interpret as an atomist who devalues emotion and the helping of others], (b) Burns is a neutral biographer with no intention of defending or criticizing Rand's philosophy. In fact, this is one of the book's biggest virtues: that we are not reading an authors opinion of Rand but rather a biography of Rand.
Others take the book to task for a dry and academic style of writing. I did not find this to be the case. Actually, I found Goddess of the Market to be a very gripping and novelistic retelling of a very fascinating life. I suppose it is a matter of taste, but I urge readers to give this book a try.
I have to re-stress that this book is a wonderful piece of missing scholarship in its attempts to retell Rand's life in the wider context of American political and social history. Burns explains how Rand interacted (or not) with other intellectuals and the effect Rand had on American social/political history at large. Whether you love or hate Ayn Rand - I am not sure one can be indifferent about her - this is a truly fascinating book. Rand is indeed a "source of perennial fascination."
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