Atlas Shrugged

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Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: Atlas Shrugged is a mystery, raunchy romance and work of philosophy all in one. It may get you thinking for the first time about the capitalist system and the ethic of individual freedom which underpins it. It seems people like to love it or hate it, and if there was a list for 'most fascinating book of the 20th century'. The book addresses one of basic issues of existence: the degree to which one should be selfish. But this willingness to accept less, in order to accommodate 'human nature', was for Rand actually anti-human. One of her characters says something to the effect of "...most people don't really want to live, but 'to get away with' living". The characters are strongly developed throughout the novel and introduce you into Rand's world where philosophy will pull you away. Atlantis is her idea of what she would want earth to be like; a place where power is worthless and everything is earned. At parts of the novel, She contradicts herself saying that she want communism over capitalism but the novel is full of selfishness and self determination.
Atlas Shrugged runs for 1080 pages, and like the greatest novels, it is a world you enter rather than a book you read, and if you have the time that it takes, I do recommend it.

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Summary: Atlas Puked
Review: Gag. This has got to be one of the worst books ever written. Never have I read something that made me hate life and everything to do with it.
The whole plot is completely unrealistic and horribly laughable. If all the "movers and shakers" went on strike, I highly doubt the whole world would self-destruct-no, you'd have people pulling together, taking charge and working together to get things back on track. In real life, Dagny Taggert would be a walking cocktail of STDs and John Galt would be the the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
As one of my friends said, "Reading Ayn Rand is like hitting onself over the head with a brick: it feels better when you stop."
Better yet-try and track down "The Crucifixion of Liberty" by Alexander Kerensky. Why that is out of print and this steaming pile is still being published, I'll never know.

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Summary: shrugging
Review: This book is one horribly long soap opera. It has elements of "The Young and the Restless", "The Bold and the Beautiful" and "C-span." This book should only be read if you found you business ethics class entertaining, like soap operas and have a lot of time on your hands. This book drabbles on for over 1000 pages, with every page pretty much saying the same thing, I'm rich, successful and super intelligent oh how my life is so hard. The only upside to this book that I found was that there was a lot of philosophical ideas disagree with which made it thought provoking a good book to discuss.

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Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, is narrow-minded, and in my opinion very unrealistic. If Christians believe love is the greatest commandment then Objectivists believe selfishness and capitalism are the greatest commandments. The book has a strong anti-communist theme and a very strong capitalist theme. The story is basically Ayn Rand's view of the United States if it ever turned into a communist country. I enjoyed reading the book though it is a little far-fetched. The characters are nicely developed and the plot is enjoyable. Besides the one chapter of pure preaching the book moves along quickly. Along with all the anti-communist and capitalist themes Rand throws in her view of love and relationships. She sucessfully applies her objectivism philosophy to every aspect of life. If you are a slow reader this book is not for you. But other than that I would recommend this book to any one interested in learning about other ways to view life.

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Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: I enjoyed the book Atlas Shrugged mainly because I of the emotion that each character portrayed. The other asspect of the book as in the societal and ethical aspect were a bit extreme. The constant power struggle for money and control of others seemed a bit unrealistic. Overall I felt that this book is a book that could be enjoyed due to its fanstacy aspect but not to be based on reality. If one enjoyes the emotional journey of the human mind and what drives people then Atlas Shrugged is a book that they show definetly read.

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Summary: Atlas Shrugged book review
Review: The novel "Atlas Shrugged" is based on two industrialists, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, who struggle with their businesses while being interfered by regulation, attacked and blamed by the intelligent people and politicians. Being courageous and talented, they beat the regulators who seem to only want to get in the way. As they struggle, they succeed again and again, only to have their victories reversed in the end. Through their struggles, Dagny and Rearden learn the importance of a rational morality. The lesson learned is that a morality with a false base is an inverted morality, and is destructive.
In my opinion, the major point in this book is that Rand's heroes reject any demand for self-sacrifice, and she also thinks that thought and choice and purpose are actions of the individual, not the group. Rand's heroes are men and women who set their own purposes, act by their own judgment, and take responsibility for their lives.
After I read this novel, I recommend that we should read it too even though I had hard time reading it because it is not easy to get to the point what Rand wants to give us. It inspires readers to live as men and women of the mind, to seek independence, achievement, and fulfillment as individuals in their personal lives, so I highly recommend it.

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Summary: Interesting but Unrealistic
Review: If it had not been assigned to my english class by my instructor, i would have never picked this book for my reading. Number one reason being that any book that contained 1000+ pages of fine print would have been intimidating to me. Surprisingly though as i was forced to read it as a part of my curriculum i was very absorbed by the book, the setting of the book takes place in 1950 when communism was making its hold in some parts of the world, Ayn Rand the author had first hand knowledge of its evils as she grew up in Russia. Her philosphy and theme of her book is that true economy is capatilism and capatilism can grow on theory of objectivism. This book contains long and redundant philosphical views, suspense, political corruption, evils and disadvantages of communism, romance (open adultery) and of course Mr. John Galt.
Ayn Rand book begins with blooming economy, then it moves on to show the devastating effects of the government policies on the production and domino effect on the other businesses, disappearances of the industrialists, fall of economy, panicking of government and creation of "Atlantis"
Story and plot are gripping and carefully thought over, characters are strong and powerful, transition is poor (especially sub-chapters), some chapters have long redundant philosphical views which make it hard to stay connected. Ending is unrealistic. I felt it deserved three star rating.

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Summary: Interesting, but far too long
Review: My aunt gave this book to me as a teen because she knew I was interested in political thought, and as a radical right winger, she thought the book would help me understand some of her beliefs. In that sense, the book was a success. I did get a clear understanding of Objectivism.

The thing I didn't like was that the book was a political diatribe masquerading as a movel. Rand didn't need to try to mask her discussion of ideology in a novel; it wasn't a particularly interesting novel to begin with, in my opinion. There really wasn't much of a plot, and what plot there was seemed confusing and fuzzy. The characters were extremely one dimensional. I couldn't relate to them, and I didn't care about what happened to them. I was especially disappointed because I so enjoyed We The Living, another novel by Rand. The pace of the book was quite slow, and it was far, far too long -- over 1000 pages.

I think there is value in learning about Rand's philosophy - she was an influential thinker. But this book isn't he best way to go about it. Read a book on objectivism, or a biography of Rand. If you want to see what Rand is capable of as a novelist, read We The Living.

Rating:
Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: This book is something that I would not read willingly, but unfortunatly I had to read the book for my first year composition class. At first it sounded interesting, but once I started reading the book I couldn't stand it because I couldn't find it interesting. Two-thirds of the book had little or no action, but the last third has much more action which caught my attention. The book has its ups and downs, but in the end it wasn't all bad.

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Summary: Review of Atlas S¿¿rugged
Review: gAtlash means of course the giant who supports the celestial sphere in Greek myth. This story, Atlas Shrugged, in short, is the assumption what will happen if brilliant, talented and responsible people who support the business world in America forsake the society that depends on and lives on their contributions and withdraw such society to form another world. gShruggedh indicates the feeling of discouragement by the talented people for the looters who depend on them and greedily try to pillage success and money from them.
The story reaches one morals; looters can never beat the people whom they depend on. Also, strong, brilliant and talented people can success at anywhere and moreover at the last part of the story, they back to the world. Now, there are still many looters in this world exactly like the novel. The society is consisted of talented people and looters who are still parasitic on the ability people and try to plunder everything from them.
But actually it is a fact that there are talented looters in the real world and they can be success to achieve getting everything that they want to. In this novel, however, the elements are only Reason, morality, and integrity. And I just want to say itfs different from the real world. Of course some parts of her concepts for the world, especially for businesses are right, but if the talented and brilliant people always get success and beat looters, if the looters are always weak and fail to achieve their purpose, why the society have many troubles that are caused by the behavior of evil looters? Unfortunately there are definitely successful looters who are wicked and smart in the real world.
But still, Rand gives us one concept of life that morality is guided by our own reason and principles, not by faith and other peoplefs opinion. I guess it depends on each personfs way of thinking, however, what I got from this novel was to carry out the aim according to my own moral not to other peoplefs opinion unless I hurt or violate someone.