How did Ayn Rand become such an extraordinary thinker?
    Fascinating new revelations about her hidden early life

Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical  

Reviewed by Jim Powell

    How did Ayn Rand become such an extraordinary thinker? Until now, the primary source was the biography by her former associate Barbara Branden. But Branden wasn't able to penetrate perplexing mysteries of Rand's early life, because Rand talked little about it and key documents were hidden from public view.

       Now Sciabarra offers fascinating new revelations which enrich our understanding and appreciation of Rand. He spent three and a half years on exhaustive research, compiling some 5,000 pages of notes. He examined Rand's personal journals which were recently made available for scholarly analysis. He tracked down previously overlooked sources. He discovered fabulous photographs of Rand never published before--they're included in Sciabarra's book.

       While she dismissed her early life as of no consequence, Sciabarra discloses dramatic intellectual adventures. He talks about Russian culture, how young Alissa Rosenbaum learned from it, wrestled with it and struggled to shape her blazing individuality. She seems more heroic now that we can better see, for the first time, where she came from intellectually and how she prepared to make her mark on the history of philosophy.

        As Sciabarra makes clear, her dialectical methods and radical critique of society had distinctive Russian roots. Her dual role as novelist and philosopher had some famous Russian precedents, too.

        Sciabarra helps establish Rand's place in intellectual history. He profiles Nicholas Lossky, a Petrograd University professor who had a significant impact on her intellectual development. Sciabarra compares Rand's ideas with those of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. He discusses her links to individualist thinkers like Albert Jay Nock and Isabel Paterson, Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. 

        Sciabarra underscores what is distinctive about Rand's contributions. He portrays Objectivism as a living philosophy. He talks about Rand's successors Leonard Peikoff and David Kelley who offer rival interpretations. While doing research, Sciabarra got cooperation from both--proof, if you need it, that he developed important findings which transcended differences among Objectivists.

         Pre-publication talk about this new book seems to have swept across the country like wildfire. A sampling of comments:

Tibor Machan, Auburn University:

"Several books have been written about Rand but none with the philosophical depth and scope of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Rand's ideas could well acquire a serious scholarly reputation by virtue of the detailed study of their origins and content presented in this book. It brings to light information about Rand's philosophical education that is not available elsewhere and shows that this education was substantial. Rand's ideas will no longer be able to be dismissed as merely shallow ideology."

---

John Hospers, University of Southern California:

"This is the most thorough and scholarly work ever done on Ayn Rand. It is also very engagingly written and commands attention throughout. Of all the noteworthy features of the book, the most unique is the lengthy description of Rand's early years, her education in Russia, and particularly of the teachers who influenced her and had a lasting influence on the structure of her thought."

---

George Walsh, Professor Emeritus, Salisbury State University, Maryland:

"An excellent piece of work. The primary contribution of this book is that it presents a startling new interpretation of Ayn Rand's thought. Sciabarra's search for concrete evidence is exemplary. His massive account of Rand's thought in dialectical terms is ingenious and creative in the extreme. I think it will make Sciabarra's book one of the major commentaries on Objectivism, and, in fact, the only major account of Rand's intellectual development. And I think it will provoke an immense amount of discussion."

---

Nathaniel Branden, author of Judgment Day:

"I think this is the most important book ever written about her work. First, it is an extraordinary work of original scholarship... Beyond that, it is an extraordinarily lucid and illuminating analysis of the key themes in her work and the relationship of her ideas to other Western philosophers... Sciabarra has brought Ayn Rand into the history of philosophy, as no one else has done."

---

Barbara Branden, author of The Passion of Ayn Rand:

"Sciabarra's thesis is a brilliant, intellectually daring and completely first-hand approach to the philosophy of Ayn Rand, impressively researched and written with elegant simplicity and clarity. He demonstrates, as no writer has done before, that essential to the structure and content of Rand's philosophy--as it was essential to the Russian philosophers with whom she studied as a girl in Russia--was the attempt to overcome philosophical dualism in all its forms and manifestations. He demonstrates, as no writer has done before, why Rand said that she had developed a philosophical system and an indivisible system. It has been a long time since I have read a book on philosophy non-stop from beginning to end, and with such a feeling of excitement, as if it were a fascinating mystery and I had to know how it all added up. This book will be read and argued about for many years, but it will be read by anyone interested in Ayn Rand and/or the history of philosophy."

If you care about Ayn Rand's exhilarating ideas, this book offers you great pleasure..