This week, I'm taking a break from my yearlong "Real Heroes" series before wrapping it up with a final essay on April 15. In my space today is this 1996 essay by historian Jim Powell on three intellectual giants of the 20th century — Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand.

Though my formal "Real Heroes" series concludes next week, I plan to use my Friday perch to write or edit essays on a wide variety of subjects, including an occasional return to another biographical sketch of a person we should celebrate. Watch for an announcement soon about a major publisher who plans to release most of my "Real Heroes" essays as a mass-market book in August! — Lawrence W. Reed

Liberty was in full retreat in the early 1940s. Tyrants oppressed or threatened people on every continent.