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Summary: The burden of the world will be lifted from your shoulders
Review: Dagny Taggart is the female archetype of Howard Roark (The Fountainhead). Strong-willed, utterly unflappable, and totally feminine despite her masculine leadership, Dagny is a character you'll never forget. A book that exploits the emotional and social danger of the "rat-race", Atlas Shrugged will make you feel differently about human "success" as we have defined it. The book is incredibly complex and long, but it is emotional and passionate in its message of objectivism. Begin this one today, and you might be finished before this time next year!
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Summary: The Supremacy of the Individual
Review: Like many people, this book changed my life, not only in terms of political philosophy, but in terms of personal identity and direction. On a base level, Atlas Shrugged presents an eloquent mystery with compelling characters in a complex and enticing plot. If you are looking for more than a thrilling story, you are certain to find it in Rand's superb integration of philosophy and fiction. Each line is written with purpose, be it literary, philosophical, or both. All in all, Atlas Shrugged is an uplifting story that asserts the autonomy of the individual from social pressure and rules. If you believe that philosophical and political freedom is of utmost importance, then you should not hesitate to read this book. As many have said, this is a book to be read over and over, with new things to learn and gain each time. The concept of the individual as a hero, a creator, and a thinker is universal and timeless.
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Summary: You can improve your life by studying Rand's characters.
Review: You can improve your life by studying Rand's characters. Not the stars of the book because they are far beyond mere humanity (and dull to boot.) If, however, you read carefully and study the depictions of the weak, foolish and evil people in the book you will eventually come to realize that you too have some of the same weaknesses, foolishness and evil in yourself. If you then do your best to eliminate from your own mind, heart and behavior those traits that you find abhorrent in Rand's book it will serve you well. To those who would emulate Rand and her stars please understand that her philosophy will produce Eddie Willers' out of her followers. It will not produce John Galt and/or Dagny Taggart.
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Summary: One of the most profound works ever
Review: What a thought-provoking and eye-opening book. This is one of those books that makes you forever look at the world in a whole new way. At the completion of this novel, I felt like someone handed me the answer key to the great SAT test of human life. The way in which this book reveals the nature of man, both good and bad, is so subtle that it caught me by surprise. In reading this novel, you are slowly led into a clear and illuminating revelation about cosmic forces that never seemed apparent before. It is to Rand's credit that she wrote such a compelling pitch of her philosophy in narrative form. Clearly her championing the spirit and rights of the individual would have been met with undue criticism in a quantitative, fact-based study. Although the length of the book, 1100 pages of small print, was a bit daunting, the story is so driven and full of suspense, I found myself going through it quicker than I expected. Quite a life changing read and highly recommended for anyone.
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Summary: No Middle Ground
Review: This book polarizes people. Some will think it is the best book they have ever read, actually calling it life-changing and others will think its utter and complete garbage. But I have yet to meet anyone who thought it was mediocre. This book has been voted the 2nd most influential book ever(after the Bible!)in poll after poll. For that reason alone I think you have to read it just to consider yourself literate. Now admittedly Rand's narrative occasionally degenerates into a lecture but the lecture is interesting in and of itself. And when you get to John Galt's ENDLESS speech you may start to wish that someone had edited Rand a little, say a few hundred pages!
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Summary: A work of both philosophical and literary merit
Review: I throughly enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand's clearly and convincingly argued philosophy of rational self-interest has had a major affect on the way I view the world and myself. Even before I began to understand the underlying philosophical concepts of this novel, I was enthralled by the suspense and mystery of the story, the heroic characters, and Rand's incredible use of language. As a whole, the uplifting and inspiring plot of Atlas serves as an excellent background for the explication of Ms. Rand's ideas. I highly reccomend this book to anyone who is seriously interested in thought provoking philosophy and enjoys fine writing.
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Summary: The Best!
Review: I have read this book over 10 times, and it is simply the best, most important book ever published! Whether you agree with her philosophy or not does not change the fact that she is mostly right! The story is engaging, and the philosophy she presents wants every reader striving for the best they can be! The moral chaos we live in today needs to be seriously examined, and Ayn Rand knows how to tell it as it is, and conceptualize complex issues into understandable alternatives. Highly recommended, if not for the philosophy, then for the storyline and the highest quality of writing.
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Summary: Incredibly inspiring...the greatest novel ever written
Review: This book is both the most entertaining and philosophically compelling book I have ever read. I would rate reading it for the first time as the event that has most positively influenced my life. Rereading Atlas Shrugged is like getting a refill of emotional fuel, it inspires me to work harder in pursuing my own happiness and achieving my lofty personal goals. If you have not read Atlas Shrugged, you should not go another minute without reading it. It will likely change your life, provided you go into it wanting to be correct in your view of the world, and not to simply validate your current notions (like a belief in God, the de facto moral good of altruism, the noble ideals of socialism, etc). Any person who has ever aspired to greatness will love Ayn Rand's epic novel. Those who hate the world (whether explicitly, or through a feigned affection for all humanity), will simply hate greatness more after reading it.
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Summary: Read it, enjoy it, and move on
Review: It's a good story, but it gets a little long-winded sometimes. It's got some good ideas, and some bad ideas. It's got good writing, and bad writing. So has any other book. It's worth reading - it's probably even worth buying - but it's not worth basing your life on. Just read it, enjoy it, and move on.
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Summary: Read Harry Browne to gain the ability of finding answers
Review: This is a novel telling about the fight between productivepeople who give their best effort to provide valuable services andbenefit from it, and envious value-destroyers who use the government to impose one regulation after another in order to destroy other people's productive efforts. Essentially, Atlas Shrugged could be characterized as a textbook to Frank Wallace's Neo-Tech theory. It illustrates the principles of Neo-Tech on fictious people and life situations. There is one catch, though - Atlas Shrugged was written some thirty years before Neo-Tech appeared. So it must have been Frank Wallace who was inspired by Ayn Rand's works and not the other way around. Nevertheless, when you have read Neo-Tech books, Ayn Rand won't really surprise you with anything. You will know all the points she's gonna make in advance. As to the literary style, there are many passages in the book that are very boring (I didn't believe I would ever say this about a book, but this book really is too long), then there are passages that are enjoyable and there are passages that are harmful to your peace of mind. To say that Atlas Shrugged is depressing is an understatement like saying that a kick in the genitals is uncomfortable. There were probably tens of times when the book made me hate all the people in the world. Finally, on the page 500-something, I stopped reading the book, because I simply couldn't take it any longer. Why am I telling you this? To suggest you give a thought to the reasons of reading or not reading the book. In which way might this book be beneficial? As to me - I knew already what governments were all about. I didn't need Ayn Rand to tell me that it's wrong to make productive people feel guilty in order to steal or destroy the products of their work. As to the things happening in the world, she didn't reveal anything I didn't already know. Now, did I gain any new information on why the things that happen in the world happen? Did I gain any new ideas about what I could do to improve my life? DID "ATLAS SHRUGGED" GIVE ME ANY NEW KNOWLEDGE, ANY GOOD IDEAS ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL? No, it did not. Well, a book that doesn't make you wiser, can still be worth reading if it's enjoyable. Does Atlas Shrugged make one feel good? Hell, no. Ayn Rand is really "good" in making you feel the variations of grief, anger, hatred and frustration you didn't know existed. Atlas Shrugged is the cornucopia of negative emotions. If you were to take her conception of the world and the nature of the people seriously, the only logical conclusion would be to kill yourself, blowing up the biggest possible part of the world first, because if that's how life is, it's not worth of living, and if that's how world is, it doesn't deserve to exist. It's bad when an enemy hits you in the face. But it's worse when a friend hits you in the face, because you won't know to defend yourself. I used to think Ayn Rand was on my side. I thought that reading the book would improve my skills of fighting the governments and the value-destroyers. Instead, she made me hate the life and the people. I wouldn't have read a book as destructive as this, if I wasn't convinced that it will prove beneficial for me. I know that other people are different from me and might react differently to the book. Still, I can't recommend the reading of Atlas Shrugged to anybody, be it friend or enemy. I don't want anybody to risk the kind of mental jeopardy I had to go through. Atlas Shrugged is an over-long, rather poorly written novel that won't neither surprise Libertarians nor convince non-Libertarians. All it's able to do is to harm you emotionally. For your sanity's sake, read Harry Browne's "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" instead. (Or at least read it first.) Harry Browne will teach you to find answers to the questions you'll have after reading Atlas Shrugged. James Dale Davidson's "The Death of Politics" would be a good choice, too, however, it's hard to find. And if you happen to read Frank Wallace's Neo-Tech books, don't take'em too seriously.
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