Objectively Speaking: Ayn Rand Interviewed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 073913194X ISBN 13: 9780739131947

Publisher: Lexington Books, 2009

Readers and students of Ayn Rand will value seeing in this collection of interviews how Ayn Rand applied her philosophy and moral principles to the issues of the day. Objectively Speaking includes half a century of print and broadcast interviews drawn from the Ayn Rand Archives. The thirty-two interviews in this collection, edited by Marlene Podritske and Peter Schwartz, include print interviews from the 1930s and edited transcripts of radio and television interviews from the 1940s through 1981. Selections are included from a remarkable series of radio broadcasts over a four-year period (1962-1966) on Columbia University's station WKCR in New York City and syndicated throughout the United States and Canada.

Ayn Rand's unusual and strikingly original insights on a vast range of topics are captured by prominent interviewers in the history of American television broadcasting, such as Johnny Carson, Edwin Newman, Mike Wallace, and Louis Rukeyser. The collection concludes with an interview of Dr. Leonard Peikoff on his radio program in 1999, recalling his 30-year personal and professional association with Ayn Rand and discussing her unique intellectual and literary achievements.

Ayn Rand is the best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, and We the Living. Fifty years or more after publication, sales of these novels continue to increase.

About the Author:

Marlene Podritske is a freelance editor, writer, and designer.
Peter Schwartz is author of The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest: A Moral Ideal for America and editor of Ayn Rand's Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution.

From Publishers Weekly:

Freelance writer Podritske and author Schwartz (The Foreign Policy of Self-Interest) have selected 32 lectures and interviews from the 60-year career of writer and conservative philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982), founder of objectivism, beginning with her first interview in 1923, on the Depression ("Americans... don't even know what a depression is"), when the Russian émigré had just sold her first story to Universal Studios. Rand's 1943 novel Fountainhead catapulted her to success (amplified by the release of a film version) that was solidified in 1957 by her 1100-page magnum opus Atlas Shrugged. Both novels and later non-fiction were conceived as vehicles for "objectivism," a laissez-faire world-view based around the ethics of "rational self-interest" (a more familiar iteration might be "Greed is Good"); among her followers were Leonard Peikoff and a young Alan Greenspan. Though she knew hers was "an extreme and unpopular viewpoint," she was a tireless advocate for "full, unregulated, uncontrolled capitalism," and a harsh opponent of conservatives who "tie their political views to religion." With transcripts from speeches, television appearances, radio shows and more, this will no doubt please Rand's fans and provide a great resource for students.
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