Rowland's Reviews > The Passion of Ayn Rand

I don't usually read biographies, but having read some of Ayn Rand's books I was very interested in what made her tick. There is much controversy that gets generated whenever her name is mentioned so I wanted to know more. The Passion of Ayn Rand was a surprising insightful and thoughtful book on the life and times of Ayn Rand.

Initially I was expecting a hatchet job since many people despise her, but Barbara Branden provides a well balanced look at one of the most controversial and influential figures of the 20th Century. Barbara and her then husband Nathaniel Branden became close friends with Ayn and husband Frank. Barbara has a special interest in this story not only because of her friendship with Ayn but also because of the open affair between Nathaniel and Ayn Rand. Even after all the pain caused, Barbara still has much admiration for Rand.

While the affair is an important turning point, the majority of the book covers Ayn's early life. It begins with Ayn Rand as a girl who grew up in poverty and political turmoil in the Soviet Union, moves on to her rise to successful author in the US and to her declining years after turning 50 and the tumultuous affair that caused plenty of suffering for all those concerned. Aside from showing Ayn's brilliant mind, it also showed her quickness in dismissing people, her lack of humour and her intense anger and outbursts. She is also portrayed as a generous person who gave money to struggling writers and even had struggling writers live at her house. She gave up alot of her time to discuss and promote her ideas. She fought hard to get her work published the way she intended her work to be portrayed.

Interesting notes are the people she met along the way: Frank Lloyd Wright, Oppenheimer (whom she interviewed a few times for a script and later modelled one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged on), Cecil B. DeMille who gave her a ride in his car and one of her first jobs in the US. She even featured as an extra in one of his movies. While working on the Fountainhead movie, she worked with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neil. And of course there was her economist friends Alan Greenspan and Henry Von Mises (teacher of nobel prize winner Frederick A Hayek). I was surprised to learn she was invited to a White house dinner hosted by Gerald Ford, at the request of fellow guest Malcolm Fraser (Australian Prime Minister). Ayn was invited to the Apollo 11 launch, and wrote a brief article on the experience of man's first landing on the moon. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServe...

This book is great for those her admire her and those who don't. It shows her as brilliant but flawed (although she would not have thought so). One thing for sure is that she was talented and her philosophy is still being discussed and debate now more than ever before. Her books are still selling well with Atlas Shrugged (her 1957 novel) rocketing to number 4 on the Amazon best sellers list this year (2011).

Of course this is just one person's view point (from someone who was hurt by the whole affair) and Ayn isn’t around to defend herself against some of the allegations.