Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: Atlas, freaking, Shrugged.
Summary: 5 Stars
Atlas, freaking, Shrugged.
I wound up reading this book in via some strange circumstances. A popular video game called BioShock had hit the market and a number of people were relating story elements from it to the book Atlas Shrugged. This was important to me because I enjoy being the person in the room who catches obscure references in storytelling.
Remember the series Gilmore Girls: The Complete First Season? (If not, watch it. You'll thank me.) Part of the charm of the quirky television show is that the writers LOVED to throw in obscure literary and pop culture references. Part of the fun, for me, was knowing that I was getting a good percentage of them.
Back to Atlas Shrugged: I began to look into trying to read the book after hearing it was a content inspiration for a pretty snazzy video game. Then my good friend Joey Snackpants [...] let me know that it was one of the most influential books in his life.
THIS IS NOT A SHORT BOOK (in case you haven't figured this out on your own) but it is rich in characters and ambiance. This book is part science fiction, part period drama, part philosophy, and is "steam punk" before steam punk was cool.
[SPOILER ALERT] The book mentions holograms before the word hologram exists. Seriously cool. [/END SPOILER]
I could go on and on for hours about the entire school of thought Ayn Rand created when she wrote this opus, but there are millions of websites to do this already. You don't need to read them, but it makes for fun AFTER reading the book.
This work effected my life by helping me to see that the characters in this book and their need for "the greater good" do exist, and I wasn't odd for thinking that, very often, these intentions are misguided. Succeeding for one's self breeds success for the greater good.
I have The Fountainhead set to read sometime in the near future, but I already know that Atlas Shrugged is easily in my top five favorite books of all time. Something tells me that I should read it again in ten years... just in case.
Book Review: Don't forget your sense of humor
Summary: 5 Stars
Main complaints of those who gave the book 1-2 stars:1. Ayn Rand isn't a philosopher, she has to create a world
2. The book is long, I couldn't even finish it
3. (I doubt I should legitimize this guy's complaint with a comment) the characters don't support trade
4. Her characters are all the same "beautiful, hyper-intellectual, rich, and super-moral according to their own standards"
5. She hates children
denouncing these claims:
1. Ayn Rand is a philosopher. She wrote nonfiction works AS WELL as her fiction to describe her philosophy. Quoting Merriam Webster Online, fiction is "something invented by the imagination or feigned" like her world. Her fictional world is meant to show an example. Read her nonfiction for true philosophy.
2. The book is long...ungodly long (go figure, she's an atheist)and one would think she was paid by the word, especially when reading John Galt's speech. However, if you did not finish this book, you wasted however many weeks because the VERY best part of any book ever lies at the end of Atlas Shrugged. Don't want to spoil it, but Pirate Fight. And it takes the first 1100 pages to develop the strong ties to the heroes that make the end SOOO worth it.
3. Dagny and Hank...they trade when it helps them
4. Howard Roark (granted, he wasn't in this book) also Eddie Willers, Eddie Willers, John Galt (produced much, made VERY little money) also Howard Roark, and so what, that's a GOOD thing
5. Her characters were not ready to have children in the book. Hank and Lillian could've, but they didn't- OH well. They were responsible enough to realize they shouldn't bring others into the world when they weren't ready. Besides, she has one woman in each book. She doesn't preach against family.
One thing I think people miss with Objectivism is that you CAN help people- and you should- in the same way as "give a man a fish and he eats for a day. teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." The fewer people in poverty, on the streets, etc. the better for the rest of us, so it is beneficial to help people, just not for their own sake- for yours.
I'll probably read this again, if you want to argue, I'll be glad. AIM sn BizarroLauren
Book Review: 10 Pages should be the textbook in every first-year Economics class.
Summary: 5 Stars
It's hard for a committed Christian to give a militant atheist's book five stars, but as the saying goes, "all truth is God's truth", and there is so much vital truth in this tedious, maddening, electrifying, un-put downable, unforgettable book that I can't honestly give it anything less.
It deserves every accolade it's ever received for ~10 pages alone: pp. 608 thru the first short paragraph of 618. (Though for context one should start reading at the start of the chapter, "The Sign Of The Dollar", on p. 601.)
These pages relate Dagny's chance encounter with a tramp on her train who answers the question that's plagued her for the previous 600 pages: "Who is John Galt?".
But as the tramp tells the story of what happened to the great 20th Century Motors company, he also lays out an utterly brilliant, gut-wrenchingly graphic affirmation of the most important (and studiously ignored, go figure) book of the 20th century, Igor Shafarevich's "The Socialist Phenomenon", foreword by A.Solzhenitsyn. This 1975 book-length essay by an exiled Soviet mathematician exhaustively traces socialism in theory & practice from the beginning of world history and concludes:
"A multitude of similar examples leads us to suppose that the dying and, ultimately, the complete extinction of mankind is not a chance external consequence of the embodiment of the socialist ideal but that this impulse is a fundamental and organic part of socialist ideology. To a greater or lesser degree it is consciously perceived as such by its partisans and even serves them as inspiration. THE DEATH OF MANKIND IS NOT ONLY A CONCEIVABLE RESULT OF THE TRIUMPH OF SOCIALISM--IT CONSTITUTES THE GOAL OF SOCIALISM." [emph. mine]
(This long-unavailable book can now be read online: http://robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html. I only wish I had the means to commission a statue of Robert L. Stephens, whoever he is.)
If just these 10-18 of the 1070 pages of "Atlas Shrugged" had been required reading for citizenship, for voting, for graduation from any school in America, America would be a very different place as we approach the 2008 Presidential election.
Book Review: Target of hatred and mindlessness
Summary: 5 Stars
Do you the reader consider yourself too easily confused and manipulated to judge an idea for yourself? Do you need someone to give your morality to you? Do you need the approval or input of someone else, anyone who sounds like they've made up their mind, in order to make up you own? If so then stay as far away from Atlas Shrugged as you can.I wish I didn't have to give the book a rating: that would be the harshest thing I could do to someone like I just described, making them resort to a permanent evasion of the ideas set forth in Atlas, a punishment they would give themself and richly deserve.
I would like for once, just once, to read a negative review of Atlas that gives a clear, focused, well-reasoned, POLITE explanation of the reviewer's objections. I KNOW there are reasonable "objections" to aspects of the book (valid though they are they can't change it's earning of five stars): I've heard them made (ex.-- the characters have virtually no personal idiosyncrasies, but are rather highly focused portrayals of certain philosophical standpoints, and as a result are unconvincing portrayals of "real" people. This is true, and yet doesn't detract from the reality of the ideas and conditions they stand for, and to see Rand make the connections between these is fascinating proof of the power of inductive reasoning). If such a request is characteristic of a member of a dogmatic "cult", then I am guilty as charged.
All you need to destroy Objectivism once and for all is a reasonable argument against it. To find a good example of a single outspoken thinker that brought a ruinous case against an entire philosophy, I suggest you investigate Ayn Rand.
These reviews rely on the honor system, meaning those who have not read a book aren't entitled to air their opinion of it (whether they develop a premature opinion of it or not rests entirely on their own conscience). By reading many of these reviews it is clear that this system has been abused by many: a true Objectivist would not do this. This is just a hint at the intellectual dishonesty we (Objectivists, as well as the nation as a whole) are up against.
Book Review: A strangely prophetic book
Summary: 5 Stars
First, to be clear, I would like to state that I am no disciple of Ayn Rand, and I took on this book's 1200+ pages little foreknowledge of the story's contents or purpose.
My criticisms of the book are many, and largely around Rand's writing style. The passages that outline sexual encounters were particularly awkward, which I interpreted as an echo of Rand's reconciliation of female submission during the act. In addition, the 50 page rant near the end of the book that constitutes Rand's philosophy of Objectivism would have been better published elsewhere, possibly replaced with a condensed version that didn't interrupt the already irregular pace of the story.
The protagonists in this book are not found in real life - they are driven beyond what a human could realistically withstand. Sadly, the antagonists in the book are more likely to be found in the real world, people whose social conscience leads them to pave the road to Hell with their good intentions.
I read this book 50 years after it was first published, and its applicability cannot be denied. Regardless of your political persuasion, if you wish to make an argument for your position with a knowledge of the theory of markets that are truly free, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Your goal can be to know your enemy, or to learn the philosophy of a renowned 20th century Libertarian.
I believe that Rand's view was less popular than it would have otherwise been during her life due to her atheism. In this day and age, where even religious people can accept the morality of secular people without judgment, her story outlining the virtue of free markets and its direct correlation to the freedom of people is bound to be more widely accepted.
Mostly, however, we're seeing a period in America where the popular opinion is that more regulation is required, and the president of the United States is firing the management of private companies - to me, this is evidence that Ayn Rand's magnum opus is both prophetic and instructional... we must find boundaries for our leaders, or they will set boundaries for us.