Before I read Atlas Shrugged, I read Anne C. Heller’s biography of Ayn Rand. The name “Ayn” is pronounced/aīn/, it rhymes with “fine”, and “Rand” is/’rand/, it rhymes with “land”.
Having read the biography before reading Atlas Shrugged was for me, paramount in having an in-depth understanding of the direction that the main character, Dagny Taggert, was moving while it was happening in the book. I walked away after reading Atlas Shrugged with insights I could have only attained from knowing Ayn Rand as well as I did. One example is having a comprehensive understanding of what the twenty-one-year-old Rand experienced as she made her way into the New York harbor, contrasting the war torn economically desolate European continent she left behind to the vibrant New York skyline. That experience was something that instilled in her the confidence to write Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, knowing that the underlying tenets of her work would live forever.
Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. Before the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, St. Petersburg was at the time one of the most diverse and beautiful cities in the world. Ayn Rand watched firsthand what communism could do to a thriving city in just a few short years. In high school she was already writing short stories that demonstrate her understanding of the differences between free market economics and the economic turmoil that IS communism. One such story, during her college years, told the story of a mixture of scientists and communists who were on a large aircraft that was accidentally thrown into orbit. The scientists quickly started planning and providing medical attention, food production and a plan to get back into the atmosphere but the communists managed to get into power. Shortly after, the food supply ran out as the communists began to undo all the work the scientists had done. The communists eventually begged one of the leading scientists to bail them out. Pretty impressive insights for a girl still in her teens.
In America, she surrounds herself with some of the greatest minds in the country, including one of my idols, Milt Friedman, who certainly was influential regarding Rand’s economic prowess. She had an inner circle of such intellectual minds that spend years with her at dinner’s and other social settings discussing chapters of Atlas Shrugged and the direction of the book.
Atlas Shrugged (1168 pages) is considered her opus and was the cultivation of 40 some years of development. Over 10 million copies have been sold. Although Atlas Shrugged is a MUST read, you will not be disappointed reading her biography, Ayn Rand – And The World She Made.
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