[sleightofmind]

Actually, her very first book, We the Living, is to me the best of the bunch. Because of its setting, it makes it very clear where Ayn's hatred of collectivism/socialism/communism comes from. Also, it tends to show rather than tell. Ayn was a hard woman. I do not idolize her, but knowing where she came from and what she suffered, which her first book makes clear, goes a long ways towards understanding just why she was so hard. And yeah, The Fountainhead is far better than Atlas Shrugged. An editor called upon to justify his existence, need only to point at Atlas Shrugged.

My favorite short book (non-fiction) covering from the last days the Tsars through the remainder of the Soviet period (the period that shaped Ayn) is A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End, by Peter Kenez.