This is Rand's best book. Sure, it's preachy at times, but so was George Eliot or Dickens. Randians believe that the most effective way to help others is THROUGH enlightened self-interest. "Selfishness" as Rand discusses it, does not mean a lack of interest in one's fellow men & women. Rand understood that the attempt to CONTROL relations between people, through well-meaning restrictions on speech and behavior, always backfires. It ends up hobbling the one force that can create the new ideas that create a new reality: individual human energy. The tide has gone against Rand and her type of attitude, but that attitude is the only thing that can get us out of these dreary, sterile times. Everyone should read this book.