Book Review: Ayn Rand

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Brian Wright

… and the world she made (2009)
by Anne C. Heller[1]

Well executed book on an iconic figure by Ms. Heller, who certainly wasn’t an insider with the ‘Objectivist movement’ or blown away by Rand’s work—Heller bestows no glowing accolades on Ayn Rand or her achievements, yet respectfully reports on them with a discernible general sympathy. I find the author’s objectivity valuable, yet necessarily giving an incomplete Gestalt of ‘Who is Ayn Rand.’ Heller is too young to have experienced the rush that Rand’s passionate articulation of heroic individualism provided, mainly, in Baby Boomer prime time (late 1950s into the early 1970s)—with The Fountainhead (1943, movie 1949) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), then the nonfictional politics oriented writings from Rand and her coterie. Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Brian Wright

The complete picture, esp. the humanity _ 9/10
Review by Brian Wright

Barbara Branden: On March 8, 1982, a line formed outside a funeral parlor in New York City. I stood there in the cold with hundreds of people waiting to say goodbye to an old woman few of them had ever met. Yet most of those people would have said she changed their lives. I had been her closest friend, and she mine. But all of that ended a long time ago.