Book Release: 'Effective Egoism' Is Available for Purchase

The Greatest Story Never Told

Here’s the short version: Effective Egoism: An Individualist’s Guide to Pride, Purpose, and the Pursuit of Happiness is out. Buy it. Read it. Review it. Give it to your friends, family, and colleagues.

What one reader had to say:

The goal of every book I’ve written has been the same: to create the resource I wish had existed when I discovered Ayn Rand at the age of 15. I want to write books that make Rand’s ideas easier to learn, easier to advocate, easier to apply the world around me, easier to apply to my life.

My first four books were focused on politics. But politics has always been of secondary interest to me. My primary philosophical interest was and is morality. The reason I gravitated to philosophy from a young age was because it is the science that teaches us how to live. But no one was paying me to write on morality, so politics it was.

But for a long time I’ve thought that there was a need for a non-fiction book introducing people to Rand’s ethics. Not everyone reads fiction and Rand’s own non-fiction essays are generally aimed at readers of her novels. What’s more, they are essays and so they aren’t designed to provide a unified, A-Z presentation of her ethics. This isn’t to diminish them in any way: they are powerful, insightful, compelling—but there seemed to be space for a book that would present the whole of Rand’s ethics to readers unfamiliar with her work.

I started seriously thinking about writing such a book in 2019. One of the things I found striking was that while Rand’s novels conveyed the depth, gravity, and grandeur of her morality, those qualities were largely absent from non-fiction treatments. And yet what drew me to her ethics was precisely its grand, spiritually rich portrayal of an earthly moral ideal.

So I ran an experiment. I published an essay on Medium where I tried to write about ethics in a new way—a way that would engage readers intellectually and emotionally, that would not simply argue for a new moral ideal, but that would capture some small part of that inspiration I received whenever I opened the pages of The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. “The Reckoning” became my most read essay of all time.

The final pieces of the puzzle fell in to place in early 2021. I had just finished publishing a series of 52 YouTube videos where I offered commentary on Leonard Peikoff’s masterwork, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. The series was a mammoth undertaking, but I came out of it feeling like I understood Rand’s philosophy with a depth I had never approached before.

It was around that time I saw someone on the internet asking for a good non-fiction introduction to Rand’s philosophy. Seeing the recommendations they were given, I made the decision that it was time for a truly powerful introduction.

Only I quickly realized it could not be positioned as an introduction to Ayn Rand’s ethics. It had to be written for someone who had never heard of Ayn Rand. It had to stand on its own because, if someone was motivated enough to read a book about what Rand thought, they would and should read her books.

I also realized that the book would have to go beyond ethics. Rand’s ethics only make sense given her distinctive view of human nature. So the book would have to cover issues such as the nature of reason, the nature of emotions, and the nature of free will.

And the book needed to go beyond ethics in another sense. It would have to give more tactical advice on how to implement Objectivism’s ethical advice. Morality encourages us to follow reason—the book needed to contain advice on how to be a better thinker. Morality encourages us to be productive—the book needed to contain advice on how to choose and build a career that you love. Morality encourages us to pursue happiness—the book needed to contain advice on how to enjoy the key pleasures that make up happiness, from art to friendship to sex.

Effective Egoism was both easy and hard to write. It was easy insofar as I was cashing in on 25 years of studying Objectivism. It was hard insofar as there was no model or template for the kind of book I was trying to write. And there was no way to know for sure that the book would achieve its goal: could I make Rand’s ethics clear and compelling to someone who had not read Atlas Shrugged?

I got my answer earlier this year. I gave away hundreds of pre-publication copies of Effective Egoism at the Ayn Rand Institute’s annual summer conference. Since then, I’ve received feedback from readers who have told me two things: (1) that despite studying Rand for years or decades, they learned an enormous amount from the book, and (2) that many of them had shared the book with friends and family unfamiliar with Rand, and that these readers loved the book as well.

So I hope you’ll read the book and review on Amazon. But, most of all, I hope you’ll share it with others. Let’s make the world safe for selfishness.

• Buy the book

• Listen to me discuss the book on the Ayn Rand Institute’s New Ideal Live

• Listen to me discuss the book on The Yaron Brook Show

Table of Contents

Lesson 1: Your Life Matters

Check Your Assumptions

The Anti-Self Assumption

Our agenda

Lesson 2: Take Charge

You Control Your Mind

You Control Your Emotions

You Control Your Life

Lesson 3: Pursue Happiness

You Need a Guide for Happiness

Embrace Morality

Lesson 4: Follow Reason

Cultivate Virtue

Think Logically

Lesson 5: Create Values

Become a Valuer

Build a Career that You Love

Master Creativity

Lesson 6: Honor the Self

Pursue Your Self-Interest

Lesson 7: Seek Pleasure

The Virtue of Pleasure

Refuel Your Spirit

Seek Love

A Final Lesson

Buy Effective Egoism. (Available in print and Kindle.)