Rating: 
Summary: Just finished rereading
Review: This text should be required reading for the human race.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to Review
Review: I must say, this book is very difficult to place a rating on. This is for several reasons. For starters, the first 900 pages of this book are some of the best writing I have ever read in my life. It is flowing, and the descriptions are so wonderful that I feel like I can actually imagine what is happening in my head perfectly. I don't have to let my brain imagine scenery and make up settings because Ayn Rand does a wonderful job of describing every minute detail of everything around the characters, without making it boring. However, there are several quite large problems with this book, enough that I lowered the rating to 4 stars, although I think if it had been an option, I would have made it 3 1/2. The first problem is names. In the first part of the book, the characters are so well described and made human, you do not have to go flipping around, trying to figure out who someone is, but once you get to the 900 pages, characters that you haven't seen in a long while start appearing again, and I personally, I don't know who else also had this problem, began to lose track of who is who. This can be a problem, especially when Ayn Rand does something she does quite frequently-refers to things that happened that were very small, such as the way one ties a shoe in the book. If you're good with names, this shouldn't be a problem. Now, the other thing that I found wrong is something that I usually get very mad at hearing, but I must say it - it's too long. When my friends say that sometimes, I want to hit them, because I believe that long books are generally better than short ones, because there is more time to develop characters and built a better based plot. However, in this book I found that on about page 1000 I began to get tired of reading. I felt like the characters began to disappear, not all of them, but a few, especially Dagny Taggert, the main character, and Ayn Rand began to peak her head into them. Something about the rest of the book was that I didn't feel like Dagny was just Ayn Rand with a different name in a different situation, but towards the end, she loses many of the things that made her a character. I personally only enjoy some philosophy books, and the reason this one intrigued me was that the philosophy behind it wasn't outright said bluntly, it was expressed through the action of the characters. This is what went away in the end. The writing grew to the point where every other paragraph was an outright statement of the philosophy in it. Last, but not least is "the speech". Those of you who have read it know what this is---60 straight pages of nothing but a long speech. No descriptions, no pauses, just a long speech about the philosophy in the book. This speech begins to repeat itself on page 10, until soon all it is is the author writing an essay and putting it in quotes. I am a literary maniac, I like books that are considered boring by other people, because I look for good writing, which this book definitely has in the beginning and briefly at the end. But in the 60 page speech and about 100 pages before that, it loses what made it good. I would recommend reading this book , just for the experience. It is wonderful for a long period of time, but feel free to skim and skip at the end, because it is repititious, and you won't miss much.
Rating:
Summary: A great allegory
Review: ("Atlas Shrugged" being an old favorite, I got caught up in reading over the reviews collected here. There are a number of things one could say about them, but I thought that there was one fairly common opinion in particular that seemed to me to be an important misunderstanding - so I decided I'd write a review myself to explain it. This is also in the way of an hommage.) This book is not a novel, in the usual sense, at all. Rand quite deliberately kept it free of the sort of particular, "realistic" details of place and history that characterize that genre. Despite its length, it's really better looked upon as an extended fable or allegory. This is why the characters are more types than complex individuals, why they give speeches that develop the theme rather than the plot, and why the plot as a whole has such an obviously constructed quality about it. In a "novel", these would all be defects; in a fable or allegory, they're simply aspects of the form. And in terms of that form, "Atlas Shrugged" is a towering literary achievement, among the greatest of the past century. It's true, the book has its weaknesses, even as a fable - it can be repetitive and bombastic, it's anything but subtle, and it occasionally displays some odd fixations (side-effects, I think, of both its time and its author). But none of that can negate its truly astonishing demonstration of the power that allegory is able to convey when done right -- when, as here, highly recognizable types of characters and situations are brought together in a compelling narrative founded upon a philosophical mystery or paradox, the resolution of which unleashes the full force of the allegory's meaning. Ironically, for the atheistic Rand, works of this sort often carry with them the sort of charismatic aura usually associated with great religious figures or texts, and this can represent a danger, no doubt. It's a danger lessened considerably in this case by Rand's strong upholding of both reason and the individual, twin themes that undermine the trance-like faith characteristic of the newly converted. Nevertheless, this is a work so potent with moral charge that it seems the whole culture treats it as gingerly as an unexploded bomb. Studiously ignored by academia and media alike, it's thrived for over forty years almost entirely by word of mouth alone. And it's not just the numbers that read and re-read it year in and year out that mark it as such a remarkable cultural icon - it's the numbers who rate it as the single most influential book in their lives. Now, if you're rash enough to disturb the deliberate silence surrounding Ayn Rand, you'll soon find it's a fragile stillness - like the great heretics of old, her very name can provoke a reflex hostility ranging from scorn to rage, as some of the reviews here illustrate. Not that this is surprising - in the present context she is indeed propounding a great heresy, directly challenging some of the deepest and most cherished of our moral precepts and beliefs. And of course, Galileo notwithstanding, heretics aren't always right. But how do you ever know, how can you decide? Because what if, in a particular case, a heretic IS right, and all of our conventional "wisdom", with its fear and hatred of the heresy, has been leading us ineluctably into a trap that's slowly closing around us? Well, the thought might at least prompt you to give the heretic a fair hearing. Here then is what I'd propose to those curious (and brave!) enough to give this book a try: bypass the Introduction (which should have been an "Afterword"), suspend preconceptions for the duration of the experiment, and set yourself to read just the first chapter before deciding whether to continue - it's appropriately titled "The Theme", and it's only a little over 30 pages. At the very least, it WILL give you something to think about.
Rating:
Summary: A is A
Review: The logic of Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged is flawless. The Statement A is A is profound yet so basic. The disappointing thing about the book is that all those individuals who should read it never will. For a confirmed liberal mind to absorb this material they would have to suspend any logic whatsoever to be able to deny its truths. They would have to say A is not A. It is no wonder that in all my years of schooling I never had this book presented to me. It tears at the status quo with a vengence and yet leaves the reader with an undeniable understanding of truth based on logic. The only reason that I only gave it four stars is that Ayn Rand took over 1000 pages to weave this tale. Which in itself is not bad, but she easily could have sliced it by a third without compromising any of the story or message. Regardless I highly recommend this book if you desire to know what makes things work in a society and what things will always destroy it.
Rating:
Summary: A journey into the mind of the Practical
Review: Having read many books throughout my life, I have never yet encountered a book such as this, which has the unique point of view that I have failed to grasp from other books. The fact is, most people who write books tend to be mystical and with a tendency to see the world from their own point of view. This book is precious because one can see the motivations and point of view of a man of action. Needless to say, that includes (or could include) all of us; otherwise the book's message could not reach many. In its more than a thousand pages there is but practically all of Ayn Rand's philosophy intertwined with a story that is entertaining. Those are the bright points. The majority of the book however, expresses the point of view of the individualism, the man as an island. While there are very compelling reasons why one would live one's life, no man is an island. This is the fundamental truth that has been left off. This shows as well today in our inability to solve the problem of the environment as well as having the world a better (and safer) place to live. Also, the stiff characters claim to be the personification of what the human can achieve. But another thing left off, is that the human being can also reach heights of goodness according to the Christian ideals, without the need of guilt or shame. And this is, yes, hard to express, and hard to understand for a 'practical, realistic' person. But then, again, you can't argue in this regard with Ayn Rand, who will definitely not accept this point. I say, though (putting my little grain of sand) that to love is human too, and it is a feeling that can't be ignored. If you experienced it, then we can talk ;).
Rating:
Summary: A is A
Review: This book should be regarded as the single greatest philosophical and literary achievement produced in the last 200 years, and the greatest american novel.
Rating:
Summary: Here's a passage rather than a review. (NO spoilers!)
Review: This is a magnificent book. Other reviews will tell you that too, so instead I'll show you a passage that I think is representative of the style and message of the novel. The speaker here is Hank Rearden, the owner of the best steel mills in the country. He's out to dinner with Dagny Taggart, who runs a railroad. "I've never despised luxury," he said, "yet I've always despised those who enjoyed it. I looked at what they called their pleasures and it seemed so miserably senseless to me -- after what I felt at the mills. I used to watch steel being poured, tons of liquid steel running as I wanted it to, where I wanted it. And then I'd go to a banquet and I'd see people who sat trembling in awe before their own gold dishes and lace tablecloths, as if their dining room were the master and they were just objects serving it, objects created by their diamond shirt studs and necklaces, not the other way around. Then I'd run to the site of the first slag heap I could find -- and they'd say that I didn't know how to enjoy life, because I cared for nothing but business. "Dagny, look at those people. They're supposed to be the playboys of life, the amusement-seekers and the luxury-lovers. They sit there, waiting for this place to give them meaning, not the other way around. But they're shown to us as the enjoyers of material pleasures -- and then we're taught that enjoyment of material pleasures is evil. Enjoyment? Are they enjoying it? Isn't there some sort of perversion in what we're taught, some error that's viscious and very important?"
Rating: 
Summary: All of her FOLLOWERS are "thinking" for themselves, eh?
Review: Danielle Steel loving the sweatshops, drinking dogma and dollar signs, with liberty (to think exactly like her) and justice for all (for colonizers anyway). A fascist who hates fascists. Hates competition? Writes characters that she hopes will help justify her lack of ethics. --"I've met him," he told her, Hollywood 50s potboiler tune playing in the background. "I don't blame you." All her world's a shopping mall, and we're just consumers.
Rating: 
Summary: Ewwwwwwwwwwwww.
Review: Those lemmings who get their information from Ayn Rand and consider ATLAS SHRUGGED to be literature will never comprehend this book - and the evil it represents.
Rating:
Summary: Like it or hate it?
Review: It changed my life. Not a book for libertarians, a book for all those that are proud to be humans. If you hated it, I dont want to know you.
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