The Atlasphere hits 20,000 members!

As of today, the Atlasphere has over 20,000 admirers of Ayn Rand’s novels in the member directory, which is our biggest milestone in years.
When we launched the site in 2003, I remember thinking that if the site was really successful we might have as many as 20,000 members from all over the world. It’s quite surreal to see that this has come to pass.
Those of you who have only joined recently may enjoy reading about the Atlasphere’s origins.
My thanks to all of you who have supported the site, either through being one of our original sponsors, buying a subscription, inviting your friends to join, or sending us suggestions for how to improve the site.

Reason TV interviews Atlasphere founder Joshua Zader about Ayn Rand's legacy

Reason TV just published a video interview with me titled “Dating in the Atlasphere.”
In the interview, I discuss how the Atlasphere was founded, why Ayn Rand’s legacy is so important, and my own ideas about applying Objectivism to one’s personal life.
The footage is actually from last year, but they delayed publication so they could publish it together with their many other interviews (this week and last week) addressing Ayn Rand’s legacy.
If you have comments, feel free to leave those over on my blog.

Zogby survey: 25% of Americans have read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged?

From an ARI press release:

A recent Zogby national online survey indicates that 24.8 percent of the 2,232 respondents have read Ayn Randâ??s novel â??Atlas Shrugged.â?
When asked why they chose to read â??Atlas Shrugged,â? 37.6 percent of respondents in the online survey said it was recommended by a friend or colleague, 18.4 percent had it assigned or recommended in school, 9.9 percent read or heard about it in a print/Internet article or radio/TV program, 8.4 percent saw it in a library, and 1.9 percent noticed it in a bookstore.
The survey also indicated that 19.8 percent of respondents have read Ayn Randâ??s â??The Fountainhead,â? 6.9 percent â??Anthem,â? 4 percent â??We the Living,â? and 3 percent â??The Virtue of Selfishness.â?
In the past two years, national telephone surveys of about 1,100 people have indicated that 8.1 percent of respondents had read â??Atlas Shrugged.â? The latest online survey was randomly drawn from a pool of several hundred thousand people while the telephone surveys were drawn at random from larger lists of people who own telephones.

New York Times Book Review covers Anne C. Heller's new Ayn Rand biography

The New York Times Book Review has given front-cover treatment to a review of Anne Heller’s new Rand biopic.
In response, Atlasphere member Don Hauptman penned the following letter to the editor:

To the Editor:
Adam Kirsch, in his review of Anne Hellerâ??s biography of Ayn Rand (Nov. 1), commits far too many serious mistakes than can be refuted in a brief letter. So letâ??s consider just one:
â??Giving up her [Randâ??s] royalties to preserve her vision is something that no genuine capitalist, and few popular novelists, would have done. It is the act of an intellectual, of someone who believes that ideas matter more than lucre.â?
Kirsch is alleging that one cannot be an advocate of capitalism and retain oneâ??s integrity. In fact, of course, writers and other creative professionals are also businesspeople who like to earn money. Yet such individuals can and do act ethicallyâ??by turning down contracts and assignments and commissions and their attendant revenuesâ??if acceptance would compromise their principles. Kirschâ??s bizarre implication that one must either be a prostitute or an â??intellectualâ? is misguided and fallacious.
Integrity as the highest value of the creator-capitalist is one of the major themes of Randâ??s classic novel â??The Fountainhead.â? Perhaps Kirsch should have read it. Or, failing that, simply exercised some common sense.
DON HAUPTMAN
New York

Ayn Rand on The Daily Show, with Jon Stewart

Jennifer Burns, author of the new Rand biography Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, was interviewed last night on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Jennifer Burns
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Diana Hsieh offers a good analysis of the interview from an Objectivist’s perspective, and I agree with her when she says, “That’s the kind of interview that will intrigue people about Ayn Rand’s ideas. Given what might have happened in that interview, I count it as a huge win.”
Burns did a very, very nice job in this interview. WOW.
We’re in the process of lining up an interview with Ms. Burns, for publication shortly after we review her new book for our columns section. Stay tuned.

Ayn Rand book forum event at Cato on 28 Oct

The Life and Impact of Ayn Rand
BOOK FORUM
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
5:00 PM (Reception To Follow)
Featuring Jennifer Burns, Author, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, 2009); and Anne C. Heller, Author, Ayn Rand and the World She Made (Doubleday, 2009).
The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Ayn Rand in TIME magazine

From an article in TIME, pre-dated to October 12, 2009:

She knew how to make an entrance. Her dark hair cut in a severe pageboy, Ayn Rand would sweep into a room with a long black cape, a dollar-sign pin on her lapel and an ever present cigarette in an ivory holder. Melodramatic, yes, but Rand didn’t have time to be subtle. She had millions of people to convert to objectivism, her philosophy of radical individualism, limited government and avoidance of altruism and religion. Her adoring followers–some called them a cult–revered her as the high priestess of laissez-faire capitalism until her death in 1982 at age 77.
The bad economy has been good news for Rand’s legacy. Her fierce denunciations of government regulation have sent sales of her two best-known novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, soaring. Yet her me-first brand of capitalism has been excoriated for fomenting the recent financial crisis. And her most famous former acolyte–onetime Fed chairman Alan Greenspan–has been blamed for inflating the housing bubble by refusing to intervene in the market.

Uh-huh….
See the full article, “Ayn Rand: Extremist or Visionary?” for more. Its factual accuracy seems sketchy in places, but that’s par for the course.

Washington Times BOOK REVIEW: Why Ayn Rand Is Hot Again

Review of Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand And The American Right by Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty in The Washington Times:

Why is Rand, dead since 1982, so hot again today?  Ironically, big government, one of Rand’s betes noires, is stimulating her sales.  Her more than 1,000-page 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” sold 25 percent more copies in the first half of this year than it sold in all of last year, shipping a total of 300,000 copies so far this year – tremendous success for a 52-year-old novel.
Readers and pundits alike look at America and see a world scarily reminiscent of Rand’s government-choked dystopia in “Atlas.”  It’s a world with a struggling economy where political pull matters more than success in the free market, where the government blithely takes over huge transportation industries.

You can read the rest here.

The Whole Foods alternative to ObamaCare

Celebrity Ayn Rand fan and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has a great article in today’s Wall Street Journal with his recommendations for free market based health care reform (though I take exception to his dietary advice). It’s one of the best articles I’ve seen, in terms of making positive recommendations about how to actually improve the quality of health care in the United States.