Author Interview: Jennifer Burns on Ayn Rand's Latter-Day Popularity

To many people, the unusually high level of interest in the works of Ayn Rand and her surge in popularity are puzzling.

In January 2009, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore published an article called “’Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years,” in which he wrote:

“Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that 'Atlas Shrugged' parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.”

Two months later, The Economist reported that according to “data from TitleZ, a firm that tracks best-seller rankings on Amazon, an online retailer, the book's 30-day average Amazon rank was 127 on Feb. 21, well above its average over the past two years of 542. On Jan. 13 the book's ranking was 33, briefly besting President Barack Obama's popular tome, ‘The Audacity of Hope.’”

Earlier this year, Marsha Enright and Gen LaGreca noted in The Daily Caller that Moore’s 2009 article “seemed to ignite an explosion of interest in Ayn Rand. Sales of this prescient novel tripled; two Rand biographies have been selling like hotcakes; and references to her in the media have skyrocketed.”

What explains this phenomenon: A philosopher/novelist who died in 1982 is more popular now than when she was actively writing and promoting her books?

On April 15, 2010, after a panel discussion at the University of Virginia on whether libertarians should seek an alliance with liberals (with the resulting combination called “liberaltarian”), I put this question to one of the authors of the two Rand biographies that were published last year, UVA historian and panel moderator Jennifer Burns, who wrote Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.

Burns said that Ayn Rand “has become a rallying point for the opposition to Obama. Definitely, she has become a really strong presence in the Tea Party. I think a lot of people are seeing her writing as prophetic, both predicting what’s happening now and warning about what can happen if the state gets too big.”

In Burns’ opinion, Rand’s “time has come, in many ways.” She cautioned, however, that “it’s probably a temporary boom. She may fade away and then she’ll probably come back the next time we see this kind of state expansion.”

Burns said that so far her book has received “a very enthusiastic reaction.” Rand, she said, “is a really important figure in American intellectual life [who] hasn’t been recognized as such [and who] hasn’t been treated as such. Most readers of Rand simply appreciate that I take her on her own terms and explain just why she matters.”

(This article originally appeared on April 18, 2010, in slightly different form, on Examiner.com.)

'The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium'

This review originally appeared in The Metro Herald, a weekly newspaper in Alexandria, Virginia, on March 25, 1999.

The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger (New York and London: Little, Brown and Company, 1999). $23.00, 256 pages.

What are you doing New Year's Eve? This question takes on new meaning this year, as excitement brews over the advent of the new millennium. Technically, of course, the second millennium -- and the 21st century -- will not begin until one minute after midnight on January 1, 2001. To admit this is not pedantic, it is simply acknowledgment that there is no Year Zero in the Christian calendar.

Still, the anticipation we feel about the calendar changing all four numbers in the year is unique. Neither our parents nor grandparents ever had such an experience, nor their parents and grandparents before them, nor their parents and grandparents before them.

No, to find anyone who experienced anything like this before, one must reflect on life one thousand years ago. One thing is certain: no one was worried about the dislocations caused by the "Y1K problem" in the year 999. In fact, few people in that largely illiterate an innumerate society even knew that a new millennium was about to dawn and, if they did, they had no microchips with date bugs in them -- they didn't even have Arabic numerals yet, and the abacus had not yet reached Central Asia, much less the Europe from which we inherited the bulk of our culture.

In this fascinating and readable look back at what life was like at the turn of the last millennium, British writers Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger help us to inhabit the minds and bodies of our predecessors in medieval England. Lacey is author of several books on Tudor history and biography as well as a profile of the current House of Windsor and Danziger is an award-winning journalist for British quality newspapers like The Independent and The Sunday Times.

Lacey and Danziger take as their starting-off point the "Julius Work Calendar," an illustrated document that shows a different scene of daily life for each month -- agriculture, commerce, feasting, religious observance, hunting, and so forth. Reproductions of the illustrations begin each of their chapters. This document is significant because it is "the earliest surviving example of an Englishman laying out life in a daily routine, juggling time, the schedule of the earth, and the life of the spirit."

The authors offer some surprising, unexpected tidbits of information. For instance:

-- "If you were to meet an Englishman in the year 1000, the first thing that would strike you would be how tall he was -- very much the size of anyone alive today. It is generally believed that we are taller than our ancestors, and that is certainly true when we compare our stature to the size of more recent generations. Malnourished and overcrowded, the inhabitants of Georgian or Victorian England could not match our health or physique at the end of the twentieth century.

"But the bones that have been excavated from the graves of people buried in England in the years around 1000 tell a tale of strong and healthy folk . . . . Nine out of ten of them lived in a green and unpolluted countryside on a simple, wholesome diet that grew sturdy limbs -- and very healthy teeth."

-- "It was a warmer world. Archaeological evidence indicates that the years 950 to 1300 were marked by noticeably warmer temperatures than we experience today, even in the age of ‘global warming.' Meteorologists describe this medieval warm epoch as the ‘Little Optimum' . . .

". . . During the ‘Little Optimum,' Edinburgh enjoyed the climate of London, while London enjoyed the climate of the Loire valley in France, a difference of 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit -- the equivalent in modern American terms of San Francisco's climate moving north to Seattle."

-- "There was no spinach. This did not appear in European gardens until spinach seeds were brought back from the Crusades in the twelfth century. Broccoli, cauliflower, runner beans, and brussels sprouts were all developed in later centuries by subsequent generations of horticulturalists. Nor were there any potatoes or tomatoes. . . . and though the recipe books describe warm possets and herbal infusions, there were none of the still-to-be-imported stimulants -- tea, coffee, or chocolate."

-- "The historian who would examine such a private subject as sexual behavior in the years around 1000 has virtually nothing to work with beyond a group of sentences in the Life of St. Dunstan, describing the decadent King Eadwig, who scandalised the great of the land by failing to appear at his coronation feast in 955 A.D. When Dunstan dared to enter the royal bedchamber, he found the jewelled crown of England disrespectfully thrown on the floor, and the king energetically enjoying the charms of a young lady who, for all we know, could well have been the Anglo-Saxon equivalent of a White House intern -- with her mother cavorting in the same bed beside her."

And so it goes. The Year 1000 is a joy to read. It is not written in a dense, academic style, but rather with the average (but curious) reader in mind. Lacey and Danziger anticipate the sort of topics that will interest a reader on the cusp of the 21st century, and address each one in turn. For those who find the book intriguing, a set of acknowledgments and extensive bibliography are available to aid further research. Perhaps these qualities explain why The Year 1000 is already ranked number 100 among purchases on Amazon.com.

Partially crossposted from Rick Sincere News and Thoughts of December 31, 2004.

Preface

Just over five years ago, I started blogging at Rick Sincere News and Thoughts.  My original intention was to use the blog as an archive of articles I had previously written.  Over time, however, that blog grew into an eclectic mix of politics, culture, video, photography, current affairs, humor, film and theatre reviews, reportage, and much more.

Gay Fairfax books segment

I have been reviewing books since the early 1980s, in publications as diverse as The Washington Times, Strategic Review, The Metro Herald, the Arlington Catholic Herald, Millennium, South Africa International,  and the Journal of Civil Defense.  Before becoming editor-in-chief of terra nova at the International Freedom Foundation, I was its books editor. In the early 1990s, I reviewed books for a local TV magazine show, Gay Fairfax. Some of my book reviews have already been republished on my first blog, which served as a platform for original reviews, as well.

Many of my book reviews have never appeared in digital format.  I am hoping to use this new blog -- with the straightforward title of "Book Reviews by Rick Sincere" -- to make those reviews more readily accessible and also to publish reviews of new books that come across my desk.  Readers will forgive me, I hope, if the first several reviews appearing here are cross-posts from Rick Sincere News and Thoughts or articles that originally were published before 1990.

While I aim for this blog to deal exclusively in reviews of books, I may from time to time include interviews with authors, either in prose or video formats, or posts about the publishing industry.  I hope, however, to remain focused on the printed word on bound pages.

Comments and interaction by readers are always welcome.