"Writers are made, not born," Ayn Rand wrote in another context. "To be exact, writers are self-made." In this fascinating collection of Ayn Rand's earliest work — including a previously unpublished piece, "The Night King" — her own career proves her point. We see here not only the budding of the philosophy that would seal her reputation as a champion of the individual, but also the emergence of a great narrative stylist whose fiction would place her among the most towering figures in the history of American literature.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff worked with Ayn Rand for thirty years; he is her legal heir and the executor of her estate.