There is an interesting review of the new book about Alisa Rosenbaum AKA Ayn Rand by Timothy Sandefur – Anne C. Heller’s Ayn Rand And The World She Made.
“What Anne Heller recognizes, that few others have, is that Rand was a nineteenth century romantic novelist living in a twentieth century, post-war world; a world fixated on existentialism, abstract expressionism, anti-heroes, atonal music, psychoanalysis, relativism, pragmatism, protest and dogma. Rand provided compelling explanations for all of these phenomena, which stood opposite the world she spoke for and that originated the language in which she spoke. Rand’s idols were Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Victor Hugo. One need merely read The Idiot to see what Rand was doing in The Fountainhead ; one need merely read Hugo to see what she was doing in Atlas Shrugged. Indeed, compared to the often tedious and preachy Hugo, Ayn Rand was a master of self-restraint and subtlety.”