Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Ayn Rand was a staunch anti-communist, largely because of her bad experiences in Soviet Russia. In America, she became involved in anti-communist politics. She testified as a "friendly witness" at the McCarthy Hearings, which started out as an effort to root out communist spies in the government and turned into a congressional witch hunt. (Source)
Ayn Rand spent a lot of her career working in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays and even adapted her hit novel The Fountainhead into a hit movie starring Gary Cooper. (Source: "About Ayn Rand" by Leonard Peikoff in Atlas Shrugged: 50th Anniversary Edition Signet Books: New York, 2007.)
Rand began writing Atlas Shrugged in 1943, but it wasn't published until 1957. She planned for it to be shorter than The Fountainhead, but it ended up being twice as long. (Source)
The original title for Atlas Shrugged was The Strike, but Rand was afraid that would give too much of the plot away. (Source: "Introduction" by Leonard Peikoff in Atlas Shrugged: 50th Anniversary Edition Signet Books: New York, 2007.)
Despite some negative reviews, Atlas Shrugged appeared on the New York Times Bestsellers List three days after it was released in October 1957. It debuted at number six and peaked at number four for a six-week period starting in December. The book remained on the list for 21 weeks. (Source)
Sales of the book have surged in recent years. 200,000 copies were sold in 2008, which may be due to the relevance of the book to the current financial crisis. (Source)