The Ayn Rand Column

In 1962 Ayn Rand accepted an invitation to write a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. The column became enormously popular, covering a wide variety of topics: from the welfare state to freedom of speech to foreign policy to the death of Marilyn Monroe. Unlike so much “journalistic commentary — which is stale and irrelevant just days, or hours after it is written — virtually nothing of hers becomes outdated,” explains editor Peter Schwartz in his introduction. “Her perspective is that of a grand historian whose time frame is the centuries and whose function is to explain the world by reference to universal truths.” Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime, including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness is still in print, and hundreds of thousands of copies are sold each year—so far more than thirty million. Several new volumes have been published posthumously. Her vision of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of thousands of readers and launched a philosophic movement with a growing impact on American culture.