These remarkable letters cover more than fifty-five years of Ayn Rand's extraordinary life, work, and thought. They begin in 1926, with a note from the twenty-year-old Ayn Rand newly arrived in Chicago from Soviet Russia, an impoverished unknown determined to realize the promise of a land of opportunity. They move through her struggles and successes as a screenwriter, a playwright, and a novelist, her sensational triumph as the author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and her eminence as founder and shaper of Objectivism, one of the most challenging and important philosophies of our time. They are written to such famed contemporaries as Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Lloyd Wright, H. L. Mencken, Alexander Kerensky, Barry Goldwater, and Mickey Spillane. There are letters to philosophers, priests, publishers, and political columnists; to her beloved husband, Frank O'Connor; to her intimate circle of friends and her growing legion of followers; and to the readers who sent her their questions about and appreciations of her work, and were rewarded with letters of wisdom, sympathy, and brilliance. Her letters range in tone from warm affection to icy fury, and in content from telling commentaries on the events of the day to unforgettably eloquent statements of her philosophical ideas.