 He had been assassinated before it was released, making the point of the essay moot.The book became one of Rand's strongest-selling works of nonfiction, selling over 400,000 copies in the first four months of its release, and over 1.35 million copies by 2014.Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein described the collection of essays as "eclectic" and "appealing to interested nonacademic or nonspecialist readers as well as to the more serious student of Objectivism".