This essay appears in The Encyclopedia of New York State, edited by Peter Eisenstadt and Laura-Eve Moss, foreword by Carole F. Huxley (New York:  Syracuse University Press, 2005).

"RAND, AYN"

By Chris Matthew Sciabarra

When I was asked to write an entry on "Ayn Rand," for The Encyclopedia of New York State, it was explained that such short "biographical entries" would be "limited to persons whose accomplishments in New York State the editors deemed to warrant an entry."  My brief contribution highlights Ayn Rand's points of contact with New York.  The Encyclopedia is, according to its dust jacket, "one of the most complete works on the Empire State to be published in a half-century.  In nearly 2,000 pages and 4,000 signed entries, this single volume captures the impressive complexity of New York State as a historic crossroads of people and ideas ..."

Here's a cut-and-paste image of the entry I wrote on Rand, which appears on page 1285, and which references my book, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical.

(On the failure of the publishers to capitalize the "O" in Objectivism, I point out here that "when I submitted the piece to Syracuse University Press, I did, in fact, capitalize "O" in Objectivist. It is capitalized in all of my published work, and it is a matter of stylistic policy in The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies to capitalize the "O"---so that we don't confuse it with the more generic "classical objectivism" in philosophical discourse, which Rand actually renamed "intrinsicism." Alas, I never saw proofs on this article---so that stylistic change was made without my knowledge, or approval. Small price to pay, I think.)