• • What’s in a name: What we missed 
Washington Post Do icons live up to the hype? That’s what Outlook asked last week in a special package of essays on key historical figures whose names have become commonly used adjectives. [....] Ayn Rand, who historian Jennifer Burns noted was more sensitive to criticism than the protagonists of her novels, had a few strident defenders. “Ayn Rand was a novelist and philosopher, yet Burns never in her book or in her latest article analyzes the tenets of Rand’s philosophy, but merely spreads kaffee-klatsch-level gossip about her,” one reader wrote. Another suggested that we “try to incorporate some factual ideas in her writing about Ayn Rand, instead of gossip from those who hate her.”   Published: 2011-09-09