Atlas Shrugged

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Summary: tired social darwinism
Review: This stuff is not total BS, but I would be hard pressed to give any novel so aestetically displeasing as this anything more than a 7, even with some great passages. The characters are one dimensional, the philosophy is half baked, and the plot is does not exist. A slow plot would be OK, if the characters were capable of some Joycean epiphany, but epiphany is made impossible by the philosophy

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Summary: This audio cassett abridgement of Atlas is excellent.
Review: Was a bit unsure of the narrator's credentials to be the reader of this book, being so closely tied to FDR. However, Mr Hermann did an excellent job. The editor and he captured the essence of the book in highly dramatic, powerful fashion. I did not want to get out of my car. Did not even care if traffic was terrible, since I was listening to such a wonderful audio.

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Summary: Life Affirming, Life-Changing!
Review: Despite some prolixity and thin characterisation this novel has to be the BEST introduction to the sunlit world of Objectivism. I read "Atlas Shrugged" in two very intense sittings and came away with a determination to pursue the line of rationality further. If the Kantian upside-down world we live in confuses you and you know there is something better then READ THIS BOOK

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Summary: Where are you tonight, Albert Camus?
Review: I am always annoyed when people press this book on me. I've read it twice now -- I liked it even less the second time, and not just because Rand's writing is a mincemeat of ideas in a crust of stock characters. I'm annoyed because Rand gets re-printed and re-read in spades, while a philosopher with a thousand times her integrity and a far better writer, to boot, gets shucked. I'm talking about Albert Camus -- and if you think what he believes begins and ends with THE STRANGER (a good book, but by no means his only one), pick up THE REBEL and compare it to this bloated irrelevancy. Rand sincerely belived that contradictions in the human heart were soluble by logic. As much as I would like to believe that, it's just not the case. Did she really believe that all her enemies were the outspoken enemies of thinking? Or that maybe in her own camp there were plenty of people who stood against her, without mouthing the kind of nonsense she puts into the mouths of the characters she clearly designed to show them up? Ayn Rand is proof that philosophy -- and literature -- have to be more than mere wish-fulfillment and sullen foot-stamping.

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Summary: Like Rand but love God more...
Review: God bless Ayn Rand, tho her destiny is already settled with Him. There seem to be those who hate them both, hate her & "love?" Him, hate Him and love her (herself included), and love Him but like her for speaking some important truths about human freedom, dignity, and creativity, and only wish that she could have come to peace with Him. ATLAS SHRUGGED is her Gospel & Apocalypse with Galt as her Christ. It is valuable, compelling, even necessary to understanding much of the modern turmoil, but it falls short due to its virulent atheism, contempt for the ordinary, and deification of the creative & industrious people (who are still in reality, all too human). Great Myth, thought-provoking reading, but not on a level w/ God's Word in Christ & the Bible.

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Summary: The Most Important Book Ever Written
Review: It is not an understatement to say that this is the most important book ever written. The beauty of Rand's method is that she allows her readers to discover truth on their own, through her characters. The book is long, but never boring. It is entertaining as a novel and as a philosophical treatise. If you are going to a deserted island for 10 years, put the bible down and grab Atlas Shrugged.

Rating:
Summary: Great Novel, Bad Politics
Review: Couldn't put it down, but did skip many dozens of pages of her philosophy. Read it for the characters and the plot

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Summary: A MUST READ FOR ALL THOSE LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
Review: I've read Atlas Shrugged 8 times, starting in 1960 and each time I read it, I find another piece of the puzzle put in place. The plot is extremely exciting, making it difficult to put it down. How anyone can feel it is a boring plot is beyond my comprehension. I wanted to know what was going to transpire with every turn of the page. No one (not even the reviewers who hated the book) can deny that our society is deteriorating at a geometric speed, as was predicted by the events in Atlas Shrugged. Crime is rampant, education is in a mess, the welfare roles are forever increasing, while the IRS extorts our first 5 months of paycheck from us every year, the social security system (fraud that it is) will eventually ruin us all, racism is worse (not better), homelessness is epidemic, the problem of government waste has not been solved and our government-run railroad (Amtrak) is in big trouble. (All government-run transportation systems are not profitable and run at a huge loss) I could go on forever with a list of the problems facing this country, as predicted in Atlas Shrugged. There is no other explanation for such chaos other than the philosophy expressed by Ayn Rand. I have found that the main technique used by people who criticize Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged is to set up a straw man and then blast away at him. The most consistent criticism I have heard about Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand is that she is a Nazi. However, Ayn Rand emphasizes over and over again, that she advocates above all, the following idea: "no man or group has the right to initiate force (or fraud) against any other man or group". Nazism cannot exist without initiating force against others and socialism/communism cannot exist without initiating force AND fraud against others.Ayn Rand's detractors either misunderstand her philosophy or purposely criticize her for things she does not advocate. She also points out that there can be no consumption without production and therefore to punish the producers with high taxation, impossible-to-follow government regulations and general harassment can only harm everyone in the long run. The story is a grand attempt to neutralize the anti-capitalistic mentality that is being spread throughout our government school system and therefore pervades our nation. To feel disdain for the very hand that feeds you, for the goose that lays the golden egg, spells trouble with a capital T for such a society. The story also shows one of the primary laws of human action; namely that all actions have consequences (even inaction has consequences). The devastating consequences that occurs in Atlas Shrugged is not a figment of the author's imagination. She explicitly shows that contradictions do not exist in reality but they can exist in one's mind and that whenever you detect a contradiction in your thinking it means that an ERROR has been made. The very nature of the concept ERROR means that it requires correction to prevent an undesireable result. You cannot teach a child to be civilized while beating him to a pulp whenever he does something you dislike. You cannot climb that mountain by digging deeper into the earth. You cannot have prosperity without understanding the causes of prosperity. You will attain poverty by placing obstacles in the path of prosperity. Atlas Shrugged is the story of how society (via government), not only places those obstacles to prosperity, but continues to place more obstacles when the original obstacles fail. Rand is also frequently criticized by attacking her personally via the argumentum ad hominem. Although she had her failings psychologically and emotionally, so do we all. I suspect that Rand's attackers suffer from the psycho-epistemological problem of being one of the looters and coercers depicted in her stories. Atlas Shrugged is a story about the truth and the truth is that something cannot be gotten for nothing

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Summary: Suggested Reading. . .
Review: This is not a review of the book, as I have just read all the other reviews and I think both sides are presented quite well. Instead, I would like to suggest an order to read Rand's fiction work, as I read them in the wrong order, and want to prevent this happening to anyone else.

A good order is:
_Anthem_, a short and sweet primer of the power of the individual.
_The Fountainhead_, excellent book--if you like it, then you'll want to read the next book.
_Atlas Shrugged_, her best work (Galt's redundant sermon aside).

If you liked _Atlas Shrugged_, then you'll feel compelled to read _We The Living_ (which will be disappointing, just as _The Fountainhead_ was to me because I had already read _Atlas Shrugged_).

I find Rand's non-fiction work to be entirely unpalatable, although parts of _Atlas Shrugged_ are certainly not too far from straight philisophical theory

Rating:
Summary: Not so good, nor so bad....
Review: Atlas Shrugged is certainly not the best book ever published, nor is it the worst; although one might assume so from the previous reviews.

It is the story of a group of industrialists, scientists, even a lawyer (judge) who decide to stop the world by "going on strike." They withhold their creative energy from the rest of society which must have it, by hook or by crook, in order to continue. Rand writes a compelling plot in which her philosophy (called Objectivism by its advocates and "trash" by its detractors) is explained.

Mind you, I did say the plot was compelling. Rand's writing, on the other hand, is tedious -- overdone and rather boring at times. One of the main protagonists gives a radio speech to the nation (the time of the story is less than clear, perhaps the 1930's, but it seems later). The speech does seem to rival one of Bill Clinton's for length, although it says much, much more.

Rand does bring out some excellent questions for the thinking reader, and one should try to answer them honestly. Even if one disagrees with her philosophy, the underlying thought of those answers can be very revealing of one's self.