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Author of The Tyranny of Need: Examining the Code of Self-Sacrifice–And the Alternative of Rational, Non-Predatory Self-Interest (Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2021).

Most believe that in dealing with people our only basic choice is: sacrifice ourselves to others by being altruistic or sacrifice others to ourselves by being “selfish.” The Tyranny of Need rejects this false alternative. It rejects the entire premise of sacrifice, by which one man’s gain comes only at the price of another man’s loss. Rather, it proposes a true alternative to altruism, one in which people deal each another not by sacrificing but by offering value for value, to mutual benefit, and by refusing to seek the unearned. This is an alternative, based on Ayn Rand’s ethics of rational self-interest, under which individuals live principled, honest, self-respecting, productive lives, and enjoy a fundamental harmony of interests.

NOTE: This book is an expanded version of the original edition, In Defense of Selfishness (St. Martin’s Press, 2015). It includes two entirely new chapters, on the meaning of self-interest as applied to a nation’s foreign policy, along with a revised Introduction.

foreignpolicycoverAuthor of THE FOREIGN POLICY OF SELF-INTEREST: A Moral Ideal for America (Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2004)

This book argues that self-interest is the moral basis for a practical foreign policy. An eminently topical analysis—which includes an examination of the threat of Islamic totalitarianism—it demonstrates the critical need for a rational, non-predatory, egoistic foundation on which to base our dealings with other nations.

objectivelyspeakingCo-editor of OBJECTIVELY SPEAKING: Ayn Rand Interviewed (Lexington Books, 2009)

More than two dozen interviews of Ayn Rand, spanning half a century, are featured in this collection: print interviews from the 1930s and 1940s; and edited transcripts of radio and television interviews from the 1950s through 1981. Interviewers include Johnny Carson, Louis Rukeyser, Mike Wallace and Edwin Newman.

returnofprimitiveEditor/contributing author of Ayn Rand’s RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (Meridian, 1999)

The late 1960s saw the first widespread expression, in overt form, of the creed of anti-industrialism in America. The original edition of this book (The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 1971) was published as Ayn Rand’s analysis and refutation of that deadly creed. Today, the intellectual influence of that “revolution”—manifested in such ideologies as environmentalism and multiculturalism—endures. In this expanded volume, Peter Schwartz adds an Introduction and three essays that supplement Rand’s landmark work by shedding new light on the lethal legacy of the New Left—a legacy that seeks to return mankind to the era of primitivism.

Editor of THE AYN RAND COLUMN (Ayn Rand Institute Press, 2015)

In 1962 Ayn Rand accepted an invitation to write a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times. It became enormously popular, covering a wide variety of topics: from the welfare state to freedom of speech to foreign policy to the death of Marilyn Monroe. Unlike so much “journalistic commentary — which is stale and irrelevant just days, or hours after it is written — virtually nothing of hers becomes outdated,” explains editor Peter Schwartz in his Introduction.

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