Rating: 
Summary: Not a book for everybody
Review: I to read this book because my mother-in-law proclaimed it the "best book I ever read." My tastes run the spectrum from Twain & Dickens to adventure ..., but I just could not get into this story.My primary criticism is this: you could easily cut half the words out of this book and still tell the entire story. Ayn Rand is not content to merely belabor a point, she beats a dead horse until it begs mercy in three languages. By the time you reach the climactic "this is John Galt" speech, you've already heard it all no fewer than three times! This obviously doesn't bother some folks, but I was so bored I could barely pay attention to what I was reading. (So maybe I missed something?) My other major criticism is that there were no human beings in the story. The heroes are wooden and the villans are straw. And to strain our credibility further, the "this is John Galt" speech drones on page after page after page. When he finally stops talking we are supposed to believe that there are still people listening to his radio broadcast! I would have turned off the radio and gone to watch paint dry. To be fair, she did have some clever ideas. The idea of all the greatest movers and shakers in the world withdrawing their efforts from the global economy is fascinating. And the merit based society they build in their self-imposed exile is a less intriguing but still interesting idea. But (as Ayn Rand would say) "let's face facts", if Thomas Jefferson couldn't make meritocracy fly, John Galt didn't have a chance. Many of the harsher aspects of objectivism are what America moved away from in the 1960s & '70s. I suspect that what appealed to my mother-in-law was the freshness of the ideas in her time. If you're a baby boomer, you've heard the message before and probably rejected it. If you're a post-boomer the ideas may be fresh again. Come to think of it, Dickens attacked the "facts without emotion" idea in his novel "Hard Times" about a half century before this book was written. Even philosophy is cyclical, I suppose. Except, of course, Aristotle. If you love a fast moving story, this isn't for you. If you like great story, it could be. If you like ideas, you will love this book. Happy Reading!
Rating: 
Summary: LOVED IT! Her greatest masterpiece.
Review: I am really fond of this so called "selfish" philosophy.
Ayn Rands ideas are fresh, and even if you don't like them or don't agree with them, you'll enjoy reading it.
In additioin, this book is so beautifully written that you'll enjoy it for the sake of reading even if you never realize that there was a philosopher behind it.
Rating:
Summary: Objectivism at its finest
Review: First off, I want to tell people who are liberals that Ayn Rand specifically says that she doesn't take sides in politics. People that are liberals are very different from people that are objectivists. Secondly, Rand's theory is very idealistic and would only happen in her version of utopia. Nevertheless, she uses reason and logic for the main focal points of objectivism. Atlas Shrugged is a book about how man can triumph over the basic tenets of society and challenge the different beliefs. I am 18 years old and read this book just this year. This book helped me understand Rand's theory of Objectivism better even though it was fiction. I feel that she chose her characters very well and used many symbols to spread her message. John Galt is an excellent character that brings many of the other free thinkers and takes them to his own utopia. His symbol is a dollar sign, which many people think is very egotistical. Rand wants to show that it isn't bad to think differently and not agree with traditional views. The story is a little slow at the beginning, but picks up once she sets the setting and the plot. There are two ways to read Atlas Shrugged: You can just read the book while knowing nothing about Ayn Rand or objectivism, or you can research objectivism before you read the book and then have a better understanding of it. Many people interpret objectivism wrongly and give it a bad image because they don't understand the main views of it.
Rating:
Summary: Popular for a reason
Review: I put off reading this book for a long time because it had such a cult following, but I finally picked it up and found it to be a wonderful story. Though her Objectivist views permeate the novel, they don't cloud the story at all, and you don't feel like you're being preached to, except for one scene where a speech is given. I found it to be a page turner, which is a lot to say for a 1000+ page novel.
Rating:
Summary: Rethinking Rand¿s master work
Review: Along with the bible, "Atlas Shrugged" is one of the most influential books I've read. You'll note I give it five stars. But just as I cannot close my eyes to biblical problems, contradictions and errors, so too I cannot close my eyes to the problems with Ms. Rand's book. First, what is the purpose of living if actions are entirely self-referential? If atheism and selfishness are exclusively the way to go, does it really matter whether you're a moocher or a producer, as long as you get your hands on wealth? Second, why the antipathy towards children? By outright degredation and omission, Rand posits that having children is an unnecessary, distracting, unproductive, pointless waste of time. Third, why are all skinny people good, and fat people bad? Fourth, who the hell wants to work all one's life and never relax? Galt's Gulch is more of a slave colony than anything else. You procduce your whole life -- for what? To produce some more? What if you enjoy things like fishing, skiing, camping?
Rating: 
Summary: Still a literary train wreck
Review: It's been a month since I finished the dreadful piece of work called Atlas Shrugged and wrote my first review. After reading some of the other nine hundred reviews posted to date, I will try something new and write another review actually aimed at viewers who have not already read the book. There are two reasons to hate Atlas. (1) It is a philosophy book with a fictional story wrapped around it, and if you don't like the philosophy of objectivism, it must be virtually impossible to like Atlas because... (2) it is a horrible novel, devoid of any literary quality other than as a delivery device for AynRandism. To be brief, objectivism contains six points, but Atlas focuses almost entirely on the political/economic, that captitalism without any restrictions is the only acceptable government/economic policy. Anything else, any modification, is not merely wrong or destructive, it is evil. It do not mean this lightly - Rand really means what she says. Other aspects of objectivism include the importance of reason as a means for living our lives and a rejection of the contradictory and the mystical. These arguments are present, but far less so than her attacks on the non-capitalist. I won't criticize those. The real problem is that Atlas does not really deal with objectivism as much as she might think. It deals with AynRandism, a superset of objectivism containing a few additional features. Under AynRandism, if you are not a capitalist, you are a communist. I briefly knew someone in college who was an ardent objectivist, and claimed that every government in the history of humankind can be fully described as a combination of capitalism and communism, just like all matter is a combination of earth, air, fire, and water I suppose. Nothing else is possible, and Atlas makes this clear. If you read this book, be prepared for this presentation. If you are a communist, ie not an ObjectivistCapitalist, then you do not have to be presented as a realistic person. You are shallow, vain, illogical, hysterical, deceitful, stupid, egotistical, caring, compassionate, uncaring, emotionally underdeveloped, stupid, incapable of having a good sex life, perpetually frightened, incompetent, nostalgic, and did I mention stupid? Every villain in Atlas is presented in this way. You may notice I threw in a few good features into that list. Under AynRandism they are not good features. There is one obvious contradiction, a leftover from the intellectual dishonesty that permeates Atlas Shrugged. This is of course a somewhat long winded way of saying that Ayn Rand appears to be an ardent advocate of the Straw Man fallacy in logical thinking, so she doesn't bother to produce villains that exist in the real world, at least not in any great number. Good news, if you are an objectivist then you are intelligent, capable, calm, focused, capable of an exceptional sex life, intelligent, capable, good looking, and so on. Your only possible flaw is that you don't realize just how great you are. I'm not being sarcastic, this last item is really a major point in the book. What all of this is saying is that the characters are fake, fake, fake. Talking pigs are more realistic than most characters in Atlas shrugged. Aesthetically it gets worse. An important feature of AynRandism is the hate directed towards the villains. And why not, since they have such lousy characteristics as seen above. Other reviewers have focused on this topic. Ayn Rand does not advocate force or violence as a first act, I give her credit for that, and she is also an atheist, so she must have tortured herself trying to think of ways to make bad things happen to those characters as their comeuppance for not being ObjectivistCapitalists. I found it hard to read through her bile without wondering if she was suffering some sort of neurological imbalance at times. There is a scene of great disaster partway through the book. The pages leading up to it are actually among her better descriptive sections, probably because the major characters aren't talking. But when it becomes obvious that doom is at hand, Ayn Rand describes some of the victims and implies (almost explicitely in the first paragraph) that they deserve their deaths. They include a professor who does not believe in objectivism, a businessman who received a government loan, a communist economics professor (in Atlas Shrugged, they're all communists), a playwrite who didn't like business but was not skilled in his criticism, a woman who voted but who was not omniscient herself, a lawyer who did not oppose the government but tried to get along, a woman with two kids who's husband worked for the government. Rand gives most of them other lines and beliefs, fake of course. The last three of my examples are as they appear in full. Can any five star reviewer, sitting and seething at my criticism, deny the sadistic pleasure Ayn Rand intended us to feel as these people hurled to doom? There is a story to Atlas Shrugged. The first two thirds of the book are technically a mystery, though it's not clear that there is a mystery until a few hundred pages into it. The resolution of the mystery is silly. In the end, Atlas is a utopian tract, and like most is more about the author's politics then with any plot. I suppose Rand meant it that way, but this gets back to my original point. I've read a number of five star reviews. Most gush about the writing and the philosophy. A couple so far like the philosophy but not the writing. Not one that I've seen hates objectivism but loves Atlas Shrugged. So I propose a filter. I am a strict liberal. I've never met a practicing Marxist. If you believe the first sentence of this paragraph, but consider it obvious that the second is a pinko loser lie, you will probably gush over Atlas Shrugged.
Rating: 
Summary: Longer then need be, but a good book otherwise.
Review: I first read this book when I was in high school, just starting my studies in philosophy (which I later went to college and majored in), and have just recently re-read it. I was prompted to write a review in light of all the reviews in which I read here. There seems to be a very clear Love-it or Hate-it feeling for this book, I suspect the same is true for the Author's works as a whole, and I thought that the book was worthy of an actual, impartial/objective (no pun on the philosophy intended) review.
Let me first start off by saying that I actually liked the book. I thought it was entertaining, and inspiring much in the way that Braveheart and the Patriot were inspiring. However, this is not to say that it didn't have its flaws.
I think that many of the reviews so harshly rejecting and criticizing it are rather un-fair. For example, It amazes me that people say that her work attracts uneducated people who don't want to think for themselves, I even read a review saying that rand was anti-education (which is clearly an uneducated opinion of her work). I've had the opportunity to study in-depth Rand's (as well as other's) philosophy as a student and her philosophy is rather complex in its layering (not in presentation, like most others, which I believe is where much of the confusion is derived) and should be recognized and commended as such.
On the flip side, I also read reviews that were completely biased and totally intolerant to any dissent. In an example, one person equated "pinko Commie liberal" with those who read philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, and once again in the statement that "if you don't like it then it means you are a loser!"
In my attempt to be as fair as possible, I have to say that the book really is longer then it needs be. There were several places in which she created long conversations between minor characters in which all the pertinent information in the conversation was later reiterated by major characters. It was tempting to just skip pages at a time; about ten percent of the book could have been omitted... that's certainly not being pithy.
Her ability to work in complex philosophical concepts into simplistic fiction is unique. While I don't think that this is a philosophical work in the sense of traditional writing, it is a book to inspire thinking and perhaps encouragement to seek out other sources to try out these new ideas that Rand presents here.
It is important that this book not be thought of as a vehicle to TEACH her philosophy. If that was her aim (which I don't think it was) she would have had done a less then stellar job. There were little (other then in long speeches) any explanations or arguments of her ideas. However, if her aim was to give an sense of what she is talking about to people who shared these ideas to lead them to possible give them some inspiration or perhaps to push them to pick up her actual non-fiction philosophical work, then she has succeeded. This book is entertaining; there are characters who you love to love and others who you love to hate, while at the same time it's thought provoking, and inspiring. In my final comment, I'm giving it only four out of five because it has a great deal of unnecessary content making it too long, but it meats my other criteria's for a good book in that it is both entertaining and meets the authors intended goal. With that I leave you and bid you happy reading!
Rating:
Summary: the best!
Review: Ayn Rand gives a new look to economy, fincances, business relations and the world that sorround us. Through the novel one gets to know the different drives of people and at the end you really wish to know more. A great book. 1075 pages worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: It's been a while since I read this one...
Review:
I think I first read ATLAS SHRUGGED thirty or so years ago, and it had an impact on me, and later, when I loaned it to my son (now 50) it had an impact on him, too. Ayn Rand had a political philosophy she called "objectivism" which she thought would be presented to advantage in a fiction book.
As many have noted here, she was not a great fiction writer, but she got her idea across. As fiction, the book was lacking in many ways. She was given to long-winded speeches exposing her philosophy, and of course she was dead set against socialism--which endears her to many, including me, and she was an advocate of enlightened self-interest which, when closely examined, is a positive force in the world. Of course, the socialists think that they are guiltless, or would like to be, when it comes to selfishness--but they are kidding themselves. I have a recently published book, titled "HANDGUNS AND FREEDOM...Their Care and Maintenance," which I recently sent to a friend as a gift because he is a wonderfully skilled writer and a fellow conservative. He sent me a check for the full retail price with the following message, "I'm sure you've heard Rush [Limbaugh] giving away a free year's subscription to his newsletter to one of his callers. I've always waited to hear one of them say, 'I'll send a check for my subscription, since I pay for what I want and for those things of value that I receive.' Enclosed is my check. "Perhaps it's a hangover from a book that I'm almost finished reading, after having it sit unread on my shelf for years --'ATLAS SHRUGGED,' by Ayn Rand." Here's a man who practices what he preaches. The world would be better off with more like him, in my opinion. As for Ayn Rand, as I recall she was Russian born, and had a colorful life. She was often the center of controversy, but there can be little doubt that she, like my friend, believed in what she said. I've read others of her books, including "THE FOUNTAINHEAD," "THE NEW INTELLECTUAL," and other of her writings. It may be true that she was an idealist, or a utopian, but I'd greatly prefer her version of an ideal world to that of the socialists who prefer equality of result to equality of opportunity, and transfer of wealth from those who work hard for what they have to those who hardly work at all. There is an old saying, "The society that robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul." There are a lot of 'Paul's' in America today. I recommend her books highly, but keep in mind that, in my opinion, their chief value is in the philosophy presented, and not in her skill as a fiction writer. Her philosophy may have its flaws, but not nearly so many as those of the socialists. Joe Pierre
author of Handguns and Freedom and other books
Rating: 
Summary: Some good ideas - shallow characters
Review: If you like the superhero genre this book is for you. The characters are broken up into good guys and bad guys with no grey in between. The good guys are insufferable megalomaniacs that you can't help but want to slap. The bad guys make you wonder how people that are so short-witted and exempt of vision got the positions of power they hold. At the core the ideas that this book tries to illustrate are good but as a story teller Ayn Rand is not for me.
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