Who is John Gold?

This is one of the most famous questions in modern literature.

Even today, over 50 years after it was written, you'll hear people asking it.

Why?

Because it recalls the riveting suspense story, heroic characters, and powerful ideas portrayed

in the best selling novel Atlas Shrugged by Ion Rand.

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, Rand became one of the most celebrated

authors and philosophers of the 20th century.

Her most famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, still sell hundreds of thousands

of copies every year around the world.

Rand lived through the early years of the Russian Revolution, saw her father's pharmacy

business confiscated by the Bolsheviks and experienced the horrors of communism first

hand.

She longed to immigrate to America in 1926, she did, and never looked back.

To Rand, the United States meant freedom.

She saw the founding fathers as heroes.

They created a country based on individual rights, man's right to his own life, to his

own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness, she said.

Means that every individual has a right to exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing

himself to others, nor sacrificing others to himself, nor to the government.

The practical results of the American system, Rand said, could be seen in the skyline

of New York City.

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