The Ideas of Ayn Rand tells of Ayn Rand (1905-1982), who is best-known for her blockbuster novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. In the 1960s her Objectivist ideas, featuring laissez-faire capitalism, atheism, the virtue of selfishness, and aesthetic romanticism, were promoted in an organized movement, which split apart following Rand's falling-out with protege Nathaniel Branden. Despite this debacle, she continues to attract readers and to exert a major, if largely subterranean, influence on thinking and policy.