Ayn Rand (Twayne's United States Authors Series) [Hardcover]

James T. Baker (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Twayne Pub; First Edition edition (June 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805774971
• ISBN-13: 978-0805774979
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Baker developed his passion for history and religion while in high school, during his days as a Bulldog. He is a graduate of Baylor and Florida State Universities and has for many years taught at Western Kentucky University. Throughout his career he has been a prolific writer, authoring 22 books and over 60 articles. His articles have appeared in such places as Christian Century, Commonweal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The American Benedictine Review. His creative talents and his unique points of view and insights have also made him a highly sought after speaker. He has delivered addresses and papers in the United States, Italy, Korea, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries. He often appears in a one person show-presentation of industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In addition to his teaching duties, James directs the Canadian Parliamentary Internship Program.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overview of Ayn Rand's life, writing, and philosophy., June 21, 2010

By 

Dan P. Bullard (Vancouver, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ayn Rand (Twayne's United States Authors Series) (Hardcover)

Wonderful overview of Ayn Rand, her life, loves, writings, philosophy, friends and foes. James T. Baker was conspicuously neutral in this book. He made great efforts to neither praise nor demonize Ms. Rand, a very polarizing figure in American history.

Despite being a huge fan of Ayn Rand I knew little about her life other than what I could gather by reading her three best selling books (Anthem, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). Mr. Baker's book opened my eyes to the many facets of Ms. Rand, including her apparent megalomania in running the Objectivist Movement. Still, I forgive her despite what her detractors have to say as quoted by Mr. Baker. Her friends may have been overly enthusiastic, but she never led them over a cliff, she just insisted on purity of thought, as Mr. Baker made clear in this book.

Mr. Baker summed up nicely Ayn's take on the chasm between Capitalism and Socialism with this statement: "Still others will find her a necessary antidote to collectivism, agreeing with her that men lusting after money are less dangerous than those lusting after power."

To my mind, very important words given the events of this new century.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A two sided profile of a complex woman, March 1, 2010

By 

ntnrocket (Las Vegas, NV, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ayn Rand (Twayne's United States Authors Series) (Hardcover)

This book is a really good, short read for anyone who has either read any of Ayn Rand's books or has just heard about her and wants to know more. These days, most people under 30 years of age have probably heard very brief references to her on episodes of The Simpsons or South Park, unless they read the Wall Street Journal.

I first heard about Ayn Rand from a 1999 article in the WSJ about a hedge fund operator who had set up shop in the Carribean and made everyone who worked for him read Atlas Shrugged. This hedge fund manager had gotten into trouble with the law in regards to his brothers's death (if memory serves) which is why the story was in the WSJ to begin with. After that I tried reading Atlas Shrugged and it took me 3 separate tries because its such a long and engrossing book. Reading it and then realizing that Rand wrote it only a few years after really learning English made me really admire how hard she worked to make it in the United States and also to learn, and be truly fluent, in English. As I read the Baker Biography, I also realized that many other people throughout the years must have used her as a sort of idol of ideas.

But as I read further, I realized that she was a bit of a hypocrite and seemed to live some of the very things that she fought against. For instance, she felt that no one should live for anyone else and that no one should want anyone else living for them--individualism!!!! But she also brow-beat members of her inner circle who refused to take up smoking cigarettes. I just found that to be mutually exclusive to the things that she taught. Also it seemed like she admired powerful men in her novels: John Galt, Hank Reardon, Francisco D'Aconia and others; but she married a man who almost seemed to live off her income and do very little on his own except raise birds.

The Baker book made no bones that it was unbiased either way about Ayn Rand and her ideas and just set out to express both sides of her life and also the people who worshipped or hated her--sometimes that person was one and the same.

0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rand Won't be Found in this Book, August 21, 2010

By 

Michael Caution (Columbus, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ayn Rand (Twayne's United States Authors Series) (Hardcover)

Preface: The Woman

Chronology

Ch. 1 The Life and Times of Ayn Rand 1

Ch. 2 Ayn Rand as Creative Writer 29

Ch. 3 Ayn Rand as Public Philosopher 65

Ch. 4 The Themes and Theories of Ayn Rand 94

Ch. 5 Ayn Rand's Defenders and Accusers 124

Postscript: The Writer 149

Published in 1987 this short biography is one of the earlier to come out after Rand's death in 1982. As such it relies heavily upon then published material concerning Rand's life and her works. Among these Baker goes out of his way to reiterate the many negative journalistic views on Rand prevalent during her time. Baker is more of a mouthpiece for Rand-bashing than an objective historian making critically insightful commentary.

The implicit negative evaluations of Rand which the reader picks up along the way illustrate Baker's inability to analyze Rand's theories within the necessary context. Taking his cue from The Passion of Ayn Rand Baker goes so far as to psychologize about Rand's reason for holding to certain positions, such as her atheism being a, "subconscious admiration for the Marxists who won the Russian soul." (p. 114) This of course ignores the fact that Rand being educated under the Soviets went on to develop ideas completely opposed to communism or any other form of collectivism. Being so "impressionable", how does Rand defy this "subconscious admiration" in other areas of knowledge? No answer is given. Instead of recognizing the contradiction within his own writing Baker instead like all others critical of Rand push the contradiction onto her and claim that she was a tragically flawed person. He also mistakenly attributes to Rand agreement with Aristotle's view of concepts being metaphysically real but being part of the entities they represent. (p. 84) This however is not the Objectivist position on concepts. Concepts do not exist out in reality. They are instead the recognition of the identity of the entities in reality by a consciousness. The details may be too specific for a small biography but he still claims this agreement matter-of-factly. This is one of the few instances of disagreement between Aristotle and Rand, something that could have been highlighted had Baker gotten it right.

Because this was published in '87 it might be said that this book is a little dated especially now that there is an ever growing biographical library on Rand. But I would say that this is not an issue because this book never got it right in the first place when it came to evaluating Rand. The parts that summarize Rand's novels or give a brief sketch of her life history are possibly the parts that are the most valuable to the curious reader uninitiated to Rand. And it may have been these parts that made this book relevant when it first was published. So to that extent it is dated. But, these aren't without simplification and so must be taken with a grain of salt. If you must look for strict facts on Rand's life or theories I would recommend you look elsewhere.

Of side interest I noticed that the front and back cover photographs are acknowledged "courtesy of Leonard Peikoff, Executor." One can only speculate, if the acknowledgment is valid, the extent of involvement by Peikoff in the production of this book.