What was Ayn Rand really like and how did she manipulate her adoring disciples? Why do her ideas continue to wield such influence? How does her "cult" fit in with the social climate of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States, and what contributed to its growth? By placing her ideas within the context of her formative influences and important relationships, Walker shares with readers how and why she developed ideas that still both strongly attract and violently repel readers today.

Walker argues that the ideas Rand and her followers claimed as her own are not original, but a pastiche of those of philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Herbert Spencer, economists Harriet Martineau and Friedrich Hayek, and 1920s business propaganda. Though Randists claim her novels are groundbreaking and original, both plot and style borrow heavily from best-selling popular fiction of the time.

The author closely examines the cult which was shaped by Rand's volatile personality and unrewarding personal relationships -- her unhappy marriage and search for a domineering partner, her liaisons with much younger men, and lengthy affair with then-disciple Nathaniel Branden -- and draws comparisons to the cult-like followings that developed around other popular figures such as L. Ron Hubbard and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Ultimately, the objectivistmovement came to practice the very opposite of the principles it espoused -- individualism, objectivity, heroism, and laissez-faire -- evolving into a dictatorial cult in which members suffered arranged marriages, took new names in homage to Rand and were tried and excommunicated for expressing opinions different from Rand's.