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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com296ESSAY ON SOURCESscholar of Rand must be careful with these sources. Clearly colored by personal bias,they also exert a more subtle interpretative power, for instance glorifying the Brandens’importance to Rand at the expense of other significant figures such as Leonard Peikoffand Frank O’Connor. Though it often goes overboard in its attacks on the Brandens,James Valliant’s The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics (2005) subjects both books to intensescrutiny and offers an alternative account of Rand’s break with Nathaniel Branden. JeffWalker’s The Ayn Rand Cult (1999), based on interviews with former Objectivists, followsthe Brandens’ emphasis on Rand’s personal life.Accounts that attempted to return discussion to Rand’s ideas include ARI scholarAlan Gotthelf’s On Ayn Rand (2000), published as part of the Wadsworth philosophyseries, and Ronald E. Merrill’s The Ideas of Ayn Rand (1991). Louis Torres’s What Art Is(2000) explores Rand’s aesthetic theory. Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism: The Philosophyof Ayn Rand (1991) offers the orthodox Objectivist exegesis of her thought.Yet another distinct cycle of writing about Rand began in the mid-1990s, when scholarsbegan to draw on documentary and archival material to craft increasingly sophisticatedanalyses of Rand’s philosophy and writings. The first author to integrate Rand’s lifeand thought was Chris Sciabarra, who situated Rand within the tradition of dialecticalphilosophy in The Russian Radical (1995). Though written without access to Rand’s personalpapers, Sciabarra’s book employed original research and brought to light hithertounknown information about Rand’s educational background. Along with Mimi ReiselGladstein, Sciabarra attempted to draw Rand scholarship out of the Objectivist ghettoby assembling a broad range of contributors for the volume Feminist Interpretations ofAyn Rand (1999). Sciabarra and several collaborators also launched the Journal of AynRand Studies, a publication that touts its independence from any group, institution,or philosophical perspective. The prolific libertarian philosopher Tibor Machan, oncean acquaintance of Rand’s, added to the academic literature with his study Ayn Rand(1999).In recent years there has been an explosion of scholarship on Rand, much of it fed bythe newly opened Ayn Rand Archives and funded by the Ayn Rand Institute. Modeledon other libertarian advocacy groups, such as the Institute for Humane Studies, the nowdefunct Volker Fund, and the Liberty Fund, ARI has launched an Objectivist AcademicCenter that runs seminars and conferences on Rand’s thought and supports a journal,The Objective Standard. The newly active Anthem Foundation, an affiliated organization,offers grants and other financial support to university professors interested inRand. These efforts have yielded Facets of Ayn Rand (2001), a sympathetic memoir byCharles and Mary Ann Sures; Ayn Rand (2004), a short and factually accurate biographyof Rand written by the head archivist, Jeff Britting; and Valliant’s The Passion of AynRand’s Critics (2005). The Institute has also sponsored a series on each of Rand’s majornovels, edited by Robert Mayhew, which includes Essays on Ayn Rand’s We the Living(2004), Essays on Ayn Rand’s Anthem (2005), Essays on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead(2007), and Essays on Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (2009). Although they are clearly writtenby partisans of Rand and thus lack a critical edge, the essays in Mayhew’s booksare based on historical evidence and carefully argued. They represent a significant stepforward in Objectivist scholarship.