Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: Exposing Today's Looters' Regime
Summary: 5 Stars
Atlas Shrugged is one of the most timely reads given today's economic and political issues.
I first read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in 10th grade. I then read again in college. From there, I have re-read this classic about every decade.
In recent times I have been on an annual read cycle of Atlas Shrugged. Need I say more?
My first reading as a high school sophomore was pretty much matter-of-fact. Of course you earn an "A" you keep an "A." What is so hard about that? Of course that is how things work (naive sophomore). Your work that yields excellent results is not redistributed to classmates who are either lazy or less talented. You keep your grade. They keep theirs. Nothing unfair about that. Next.
If you chose to share something with another, whether earned or inherited, that was a personal choice, out of the kindness of your heart, not mandated, legislated generosity. By and large many people I knew were generous - by individual choice.
On the football field, the track, the baseball diamond, and in competitive debates, we all kept score. There are winners and there are losers. It wasn't mean and unfair. It was competition. Who is the best at the contest at hand? The fastest wins the race. Not everyone gets a Happy Meal.
What is somewhat puzzling to me is how I go back to this fictional piece from time-to-time to re-connect with pragmatism, individualism, and just doing the right thing in the face of criticism and being singled out by those in power who are working hard to get you to go along with their socialistic agendas and feel guilty about wanting to achieve personal success. Perhaps it is because our political and economic reality today is so twisted and wrong that I have to turn to fiction to see a pragmatic solution and hope for the future. Scary.
Now, perhaps more than ever in my lifetime, I feel is time for as many of us to read, whether for the first time or the tenth time Ayn Rand's classic before our country is completely stolen away from us.
Atlas Shrugged ought to be required reading in high school.
In essence let's reclaim what is ours and expose the looters' mentality and regime we are experiencing today.
Atlas Shrugged is a pretty cool novel -- but make no mistake -- it is not a comedy -- it is as serious as the troubling times of 2009.
Book Review: The controversy is well-deserved
Summary: 5 Stars
A very good friend of mine gave me this book as a gift for Christmas. He was so eager for me to read it, saying that Rand was the best writer he had ever read. I had no context to understand his excitement about a book. Even though I am an avid reader, I have rarely encountered a book that embodies thought and form so well that I prefer its world to my own. Once I finished the first 20 pages of "Atlas Shrugged" I knew what he meant. Rand, like few other authors, is so passionately devoted to her vision of how things could be, that as a reader I became intoxicated with that vision. It is not unlike the attraction of religious fervor, which may explain the way many people respnd to Rand, both positively and negatively. Even though here book is extremely intellectual, there is a passion beneath that intellect that does not go ignored. Rand's goal is clear: to portray an individual so ideal, we should want to become him or her, if only we had the courage.Purely as a work of fiction, it is a wonderful narrative filled with love, mystery, intrigue, and epic adventure. At times Rand's voice is very heavy and didactic, especially toward the end of the book. The first two sections are far more engaging than the last, which mostly plays out all the events leading from the intrigue of the first two. The book has a few minor shortcomings, i.e., extended preachy sections and odd (and potentially harmful) ideas about the relationships between men and women. These can be overlooked largely due to the scope of the book. They end up feeling like tiny detours from the main purpose, which is to explain a philosophy through a novel. The didactic speeches are a symptom of how difficult this task is.
As a philosophical treatise, this book is unparalleled in its daring and its approach to define Form through Function. The ideas Rand embodies in this book are just as relevant to the 21st Century as they were to her time, perhaps more so.
As with all moments of intoxication, the feelings fade with time. The question is will the ideas remain as appealing to me the longer I am away from "Atlas Shrugged"? To some degree their appeal has already faded, but the work helped me further shape my knowledge of human nature in a way that could not have happened without Rand's help. And by the way beware of addiction. I plan to drink some more of Rand's tonic again soon, even though the book is 1100 pages long.
Book Review: Check Your Premises
Summary: 5 Stars
This book will give you perspective on why we are seeing today the enervation of our society and the sacrificing of those who contribute the most to make it flourish. Atlas Shrugged is a novel that presents with precision the events of today by someone who predicted our current malaise over 50 years ago. There are ideas that lead to desired conclusions and those that don't. Some people really do understand and appreciate cause and effect. And Ayn Rand was one of them.
One of the essential differences between those who like this book and those who don't is their ability or inability to check their premises. I mean this in the same sense that Rand herself used this expression often.
If you are having trouble with the concretes and abstractions presented in this novel, the key thing to remember is that, unlike most writers, Rand evolved her plots and characters from her basic premises. Her novels are a full system of thought, from epistemology to esthetics presented in a fictional form. Her unique style was to weave an internally consistent philosophical position into the concrete events, speeches and dramatic intrigue of her story.
Some have criticized Rand for any number of stylistic, moral and esthetic gaffs. Whatever their seeming merit, they have missed the forest entirely. The projection of what is possible in life and the values and principals needed to get there are a far more beneficent gift than any the supposed shortcomings could provide.
Those who have problems with the depictions of this philosophy will have considerably less trouble identifying the points of their departure than with nearly any novel they have ever read. Rand is a paragon in her ability to present her case clearly. What is left to her readers who have any trouble with this is the challenge to check their premises. As an example of this the most fundamental of these choices would be the distinction between the primacy of consciousness and the primacy of existence. Which side of your skull is the universe on?
If you are willing to examine any of your own premises, you will have no problem discovering your point of divergence from hers. How many writers can you think of who can give you that kind of clarity? If you're only willing to meet her half way.
And not everyone can.
Book Review: recent news on the film version of Atlas Shrugged..just finished the book!
Summary: 5 Stars
Every review helps and I just wanted to let people know if you have not read this book yet to please read it, especially if you love thrillers and science fiction, it's action packed and you won't be able to put it down for long. A few weeks ago my partner and I rode the Amtrak from NYC to Chicago (24 hrs we were delayed) it was an eerie decadent and beautiful ride, we saw lot's of steel mill factories that once thrived in there little towns but are now shut down it looked like there was life around these towns in upstate NY but we barely saw pople outside from our train seat. I was thinking about my Atlas Shurugged Book it was to heavy to bring (my friend purchased me the large paperback edition from Amazon) and thought about Dagny the Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental (Amtrak of the future) she's so smart, strong, brainy and fragile at the same time, Dagny really inspired me. The reason I started getting into Ayn Rand was because I read her Biography by Barbara Braden and after reading that Awesome book I was hooked on Ayn. I always wanted to read The Fountainhead I loved it, I had to read more of Ayn's Book. I found Francisco D'Anconia money speech online and that's when I decided I had to read Atlas Shrugged. "Frisco" along with "Slug" (Dagny) are my favorite characters in the Book. A. S. had so much to say and I only read it once so I'm sure I missed important meanings plus the book is so deep, the sex scenes are nice and being from NYC you know I had cocktails while I read the Book so it made it even more fun! My oh my will I miss not having to read this book any longer, I'll even miss those villians Taggart, Mouch, Ferris & Lillian Reardon they were awful. John Galt was great of course but the 50 page speech was endless, (like this review) but very meaningful I thought he was a little boring, but he does get the prize of being with Dagny and they lived happily ever after at Mulligan's Gulch. If you go to IMDB there's a message board on Atlas Shrugged and they talk about which movie stars should play the parts in A.S. it's very interesting someone should do the Film, I would love to work on the music for it. Recently heard the news that Angelina Jolie will be playing Dagny Taggart and David Kelley will be the producer for A.S.. David Kelley is the Founder and Senior Fellow of The Atlas Society. here's the link...
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Book Review: More Americans Need to Read This Book
Summary: 5 Stars
It's a bit too lenthy, and you might find some of Rand's thoughts hard to swallow if you are a socialist or a hardcore churchgoer, but Atlas Shrugged is one of the finest and most daring stories ever put together.
The book is long but not at all dificult to follow like other novels written by philosophers. You cannot possibly miss the themse in Atlas Shrugged b/c Rand beats pounds them into your brain over 1100+ pages. Her philosophy is demonstrated though the characters, who at times go on rambling monologues and leave you screaming for her to get back to the plot, which is magnificent.
Atlas Shrugged is divided into three parts and begins as a mystery. It takes place in an ambiguous time in America's future (Atlas Shrugged was written in the 50's), in which America is the only mixed economy left, the rest of the world having succumbed to communism and stagnation. Rand basically divides her characters into good and evil. There's not much in between.
The "good" characters exhibit all the qualities that Rand espouses in her Objectivist philosophy- honesty, diligence, competence, ingenuity. The "evil" characters are basically government bureaucrats and corrupt officials who mooch off the good characters in the name of fairness, the public good, and equality. The moochers are continuously placing more and more restraints on the good characters, making it more and more difficult for them to operate as industrialists and make money. I won't reveal much more of the plot- you don't find out what is really going on until the last third of the book, but I will say that it is intriguing and completely original. Rand is a great storyteller and she describes human realationships in a way I have never encountered before.
Not enough people have read this book. That is for certain. A handful of politicians come to mind who would clearly benefit from reading it because they have a warped sense of how society functions in our country. If you are a capitalist, then read this book because Rand provides an intersting moral backbone to capitalism. If you are a socialist, then read this and see if you can draw parallels to what happens in the novel and what is going on right now in America. This is an excellent piece of literature, and I hope everyone reads it and turns into a libertarian.