In this episode of New Ideal, Aaron Smith interviews Elan Journo to discuss his critical evaluation of two popular but deeply flawed biographies of Ayn Rand: Jennifer Burns’ Goddess of the Market and Anne C. Heller’s Ayn Rand and the World She Made.
Among the topics covered:
The standards of objectivity that the biographies fail to meet
The authors’ disregard for how Rand thought of herself and her work
Examples of the books’ lack of objectivity
How the authors mishandled the biographies’ sources
Why ignoring Rand’s philosophy makes the books less interesting and intelligible
Recommended in this podcast are Journo’s articles “‘Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right’ Is Worse than Incompetent” and “Postscript: ‘Ayn Rand and the World She Made’ Is an Exploitative, Tabloid Biography,” and Allan Gotthelf and Gregory Salmieri’s book A Companion to Ayn Rand.
The podcast was posted on October 23, 2024. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Watch archived podcasts here.
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