Ayn Rand and her philosophical school, Objectivism, have had considerable influence on American popular culture. This is the story of her life. The author aims to show what she was like and how she manipulated her followers. He seeks to answer why she continues to be influential. He argues that the ideas Rand and her followers claimed as her own are not original, but a pastich of those of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer, economists Harriet Martineau and Friedrich Hayek, and 1920s business propaganda.