Persuaded by Reason

When Ayn Rand was forging her Objectivist movement, Joan Taylor was there; when the Koch Brothers began trying to influence American politics with small-circulation intellectual journals in the 1970s, Taylor was helping shape their vision; when American individualism needed to be reconciled with feminism, Taylor wrote the book; when sociologist Charles Murray was reshaping American welfare policy with his work in the 1980s, he was doing so with the tutelage of Taylor. Jeff Riggenbach thematically intertwines her encounters with the political and intellectual events of the time, revealing how Taylor’s work, writings and behind-the-scenes contributions helped shape the rise of individualism in the late twentieth century. A must read for anyone interested in how the individualist and libertarian movements were formed out of the ferment of the post WWII era. Author Bio: Jeff Riggenbach is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the author of In Praise of Decadence and Why American History is not what they Say: An Introduction to Revisionism. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Times, and other major newspapers.