Mimi Reisel Gladstein, specialist on Ayn Rand's literature, says of this book: "There is material of interest here, but one has to pick through a lot of muck to get at it." Frankly, I think that is quite generous. The author has dug through an amazing amount of material with no apparent purpose other than to quote mine it for negatives about Ayn Rand and her followers. Why do we need to know that a young Alan Greenspan had a reputation for having bad breath, or that as a student Nathaniel Brandon often cut classes to watch four movies a day? On the rare occasions the author does give his own opinion, it is sometimes supported (poorly), but more often not supported at all. I am still kicking myself for getting sucked into reading the entire book. I was most interested in the chapter on the Nietzschean, Jewish, and 1920s business thinkers' influence on Rand's thinking. If I had known it was going to include points such as Rand's fascination with money coming from her Jewishness, I never would have bothered opening the book at all.