I found the anecdote Burgess mentioned, and he’s right in his evaluation.

It’s on this page, about 3/4 of the way down.

Facets of Ayn Rand is also available online for free.

Thanks Bill; I shall read it (slowly, Burgess).

I just found you folks from a trackback on the Secular Right blog. I like what I see and have already subscribed to the RSS. Objectively an objectivist myself, I have read all of Rand’s books at least twice since I discovered her (about 10 years earlier than you, Chuck), and prize my copy of Peikoff’s “Objectivism:…”

If welcome, I shall return… ◄Dave►

1. Jeff Britting, Ayn Rand. This short biography is half illustrations (including a fascinating photo of her for her 1929 “green card”), yet the text manages to convey a lot of information to the slow, careful reader (a rarity in our world of epidemic internetitis).

2. Mary Ann and Charles Sures, Facets of Ayn Rand. This brief book too also deserves a slow reading. It is understated. It includes wisdom I have not seen elsewhere–e.g., Ayn Rand’s distinction between a life of happiness and a life of satisfaction. One of my favorite anecdotes about Ayn Rand appears in FAR: At a stamp convention, a stamp dealer treated Ayn Rand rudely. Her response was a model for rational individuals.

But the books of essays about Ayn Rand’s novels, for instance, are very readable and interesting. So was Thompson’s bio of John Adams.

What I would really like to see is a comprehensive history of the United States by an Objectivist. One that would *not* identify some of the greatest benefactors of man as robber barons, dwell on the love affairs of Thomas Jefferson, or blame capitalism for the disasters of government interference in the economy.

I loved the early Objectivist writing because it always combined reason and passion, or fact and value. It was never dry, technical philosophy for specialists. I could not get enough of that stuff. The first book to disappoint me was David Kelley’s The Art of Reasoning, which was restrained, dry and boring. Binswanger’s book on teleology also bored me. Since then there have been more Objectivist books on technical or scholarly subjects that have been less than scintillating. Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff always managed to put drama and life in their non-fiction.