Her comment on Toohey is really telling. What a misinterpretation. That quote has so much meaning in it about the nature of evil and where one’s focus should be, but she saw it as the ideal to strive for with all men?!
I actually listened to the entire book on audible. Written simply, it's an easy listen. Sadly, it was a hit piece. It's not for anyone who's read Rand's work, even a little. The bio reads like it was commissioned by NPR, the NY Times or the same group of people that want you to believe Elon gave a nazi salute. The bias is so nakedly obvious it was painful. My thought was that it was written for people who continue to hear about Rand's ideas and are searching for a source to determine if the left wing criticism has any merit. Or more likely, simply to turn people off to Rand's ideas. I listened to the Elon bio by Walter Isaacson which had a similar injection of heavy handed left wing bias when discussing the Twitter files - and we now know how all that turned out to be much worse than we suspected. Burns injected her opinions in the same clumsy way. She wasn't writing for critical thinkers or for those that wanted a nuanced look at a great historical figure that holds a pivotal position between the late romantic period and its breakdown in the 20th century. She was writing to manipulate potential early readers of Rand's work.
Everything I've read from her writings is so fucking bad and could only be called dishonest or intentionally malevolent towards Rand and every person she's interacted with in relation to ARI's Archive. She manages to jam in what could only be called her opinion of a adjective, in the form of a slight against Ayn Rand, as much as possible. It's insane to me this woman was granted access/collab'd in some way with ARI. The very language she uses to describe everything is clear she did not like ANYTHING about ARI, Rand, Objectivism, even prior (based on her own words) to diving into all of these. She makes it her job as a "historian", to bury Objectivism in a historical boondoggle, and credits Rand with nothing.
Her comment that Rand was coming from the Neitzschian tradition is telling. Mature Rand self-identified as Aristotelian. The Fountainhead has explicitly anti-Neitzchean themes.
Her comment on Toohey is really telling. What a misinterpretation. That quote has so much meaning in it about the nature of evil and where one’s focus should be, but she saw it as the ideal to strive for with all men?!
I actually listened to the entire book on audible. Written simply, it's an easy listen. Sadly, it was a hit piece. It's not for anyone who's read Rand's work, even a little. The bio reads like it was commissioned by NPR, the NY Times or the same group of people that want you to believe Elon gave a nazi salute. The bias is so nakedly obvious it was painful. My thought was that it was written for people who continue to hear about Rand's ideas and are searching for a source to determine if the left wing criticism has any merit. Or more likely, simply to turn people off to Rand's ideas. I listened to the Elon bio by Walter Isaacson which had a similar injection of heavy handed left wing bias when discussing the Twitter files - and we now know how all that turned out to be much worse than we suspected. Burns injected her opinions in the same clumsy way. She wasn't writing for critical thinkers or for those that wanted a nuanced look at a great historical figure that holds a pivotal position between the late romantic period and its breakdown in the 20th century. She was writing to manipulate potential early readers of Rand's work.
Everything I've read from her writings is so fucking bad and could only be called dishonest or intentionally malevolent towards Rand and every person she's interacted with in relation to ARI's Archive. She manages to jam in what could only be called her opinion of a adjective, in the form of a slight against Ayn Rand, as much as possible. It's insane to me this woman was granted access/collab'd in some way with ARI. The very language she uses to describe everything is clear she did not like ANYTHING about ARI, Rand, Objectivism, even prior (based on her own words) to diving into all of these. She makes it her job as a "historian", to bury Objectivism in a historical boondoggle, and credits Rand with nothing.
Her comment that Rand was coming from the Neitzschian tradition is telling. Mature Rand self-identified as Aristotelian. The Fountainhead has explicitly anti-Neitzchean themes.