Who Is Ayn Rand? by Elan Journo With the publication of her two major novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), Ayn Rand achieved spectacular and enduring success. Today, interest in Ayn Rand continues to burgeon: her books sell upwards of half a million copies per year, and university courses on her works are increasing in number. Underlying her fiction is a comprehensive system of ideas--a philosophy (as she put it) for living on earth: Objectivism. She wrote: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” What, specifically, does Objectivism advocate? What guidance does it offer man for everyday living? What does it say about ethics? Politics? These are some of the questions to be considered in this lecture. (No prior knowledge of philosophy or of Ayn Rand’s works is assumed.)