Atlas Shrugged

Rating:
Summary: Instruction Manual for the Intelligent
Review: In her ode to the mind, Ayn Rand articluates the thoughts of anyone who ever felt pride in thinking an original thought. If you ever wondered how society can possibly condescend a person who attains great weath because they made a discovery that benefits everyone, this book will be enlightening. If you have not, you need to read this book to find out why. If you are looking for passive entertainment, make another choice. This book will challege you and it requires careful reading. It is widely misunderstood: Rand does not advocate greed in any sense. The desire to receive just payment in exchange for ability is not greed. The desire for wealth at any cost is greed, and Rand speaks out ardently against undeserved wealth. Keep an open mind and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Quite a Book!
Review: This is indeed quite a book. People love it or hate it. It makes some people crazy. For a young, fresh mind it is engaging and hypnotizing. Many older readers are less inclined to enjoy it. But hey, let's accept it for what it is worth.

Rating:
Summary: !
Review: this book i found to be the most exquisite of all books i've read; most correct and very very well written.... it is one of the most eloquent examples of a philosophy. i think everyone should read it... Celestial!

Rating:
Summary: What I love about this Atlas Shrugged
Review: Atlas Shrugged is about love! Love of one's self, love of money, love of life, love of production, love of honesty and love of rationality. There's so much love in Atlas that one can hardly put it all in such a short space. Unlike, religion, that teaches us that we are evil and that we are born to serve God, and unlike Liberalism, that teaches us that we are slaves that are born to serve others, Atlas Shrugged teaches us love and that We are neither evil nor slaves, and that we have a right to our lives, our liberty and our right to pursue our happiness.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing how 'objective' one's own prejudices can be
Review: I loved this book when I first read it at age 12. I thought it actually said something important. Then I reread it early in college and, while I still thought it actually said something, I no longer felt it was something important. Now, I realize that it says nothing and can hardly bring myself to suffer through the bad dialogue and longwinded speeches that these cartoon characters make. Come on! Just for example, the speech about smoking - holding a cigarette is having the fire of Prometheus at one's finger tips? Now that is rich. Holding the cigarette is having one's nicotine delivery system at the tip of one's fingers and paying the tobacco companies a good portion of one's living wage so that they can slowly kill you. Now that is the real meaning of Ayn Rand's much praised virtue of selfishness.

The 'philosophy' of Objectivism that is supposed to inform the plot of this book is essentially an oversimplification of Aristotle and just about 2000 out of date. We can't understand the world we live in nor our best place in it if we pretend that issues are as two dimensional and arbitrary as are presented in Ayn Rand's thesis. It just ain't so. The world is VERY complex and the human psyche equally so. Words - especially easy categorizations (which Rand loves) - are more likely to distort, rather than reveal, the truth.

Everyone wants certainty. Maybe this explains the appeal of these books. It can't be artistry. Ayn Rand is not a master of language, nor a creator of really human characters, nor a great thinker. But she sure seems sure of what she is sure of. Maybe for most folks that is enough.

Rating:
Summary: Sheer Trash
Review: The writing is primitive, the philosophy no more advanced than that of an ape, and the end result of the ideals espoused in this book would be the ultimate annihilation of everything. If you agree with this book then you have a problem. Part of the stupidity of the book is that if you buy into Ayn Rand's relativistic (ironically, she refers to it as Objectivist) philosophy, it is impossible to believe in anything, including Ayn Rand and her trash that glorifies greed. If you don't serve others, then your efforts are wasted because you, in the end, are nothing. Greed is the definition of futility.

Rating:
Summary: This is the best novel I've ever read...
Review: ...and believe me, I've read many, many books. Not only is the philosophy illustrated herein the best I've ever come across, but the novel itself--purely on artistic grounds--is the most skillfully written of any I've read. The plot is fascinating, suspenseful and well-integrated (I find some new connection each time I read it)--the characters are well-developed and interesting, and Miss Rand excels at their characterization--and the story is driven solely by the characters; the author refrains from resorting to chance happenings to move her story along. I first read this book at age fourteen, I have read it three more times since, and it never ceases to hold my interest to the point where I have a great difficulty putting it down and going to sleep at night. :)

Rating:
Summary: Bill Gates should Shrug
Review: I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time when I was 12 years old, I make a point of rereading it at least once a year. It is my way of bringing logic and hope to what I see happening around me and how I see the "Men of the Mind" being pusecuted for their acievements. I site Bill Gates as a prime example - What is his crime? I wonder if Bill Gates has read Atlas Shrugged? For the sake of all those government parasites and all who take for granted what Bill Gates has created... I hope he hasn't. For the sake of all "Men of the Mind" that seek to follow in Mr. Gates footsteps I hope he does and responds. It may be the only way to concretely show the true magnificence and value Mr. Gates and his company has brought to humankind. Imagine if you will what would be said by all those who condem him for what he has done if he were to simply say "I want my product back... you don't deserve it"ÿ

Rating:
Summary: An anthem of liberty, of greatness, of heroism
Review: Ayn Rand's accomplishment has never been equaled, rarely approached. Rand has written a novel of philosophy which praises the heroic in man.

In her master-work, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand draws out every logical implication of her philosophy. A railroad executive, Dagny Taggart, is confronted with a mystery which takes on metaphysical proportions as she investigates it. Why is her railroad business failing? Why are men of ability disappearing from the Earth? Why does society stand by silently, or, worse yet, applaud, when the best and brightest among them are reviled and destroyed? To answer these questions, Dagny must first discover the source and the meaning of the greatness of man, the source of knowledge, the meaning of reality, and the core of morality.

The answers lie in the philosophy the book preaches. It is Rand's view that man's reason is his only tool for dealing with reality; reason requires freedom to operate; therefore man must be free. Man must be free of government regulation in the area of economics; free of mysticism in the area of thought; free of the ugly meaninglessness of modern art in the area of beauty.

No other novel treats with these large issues in a logical and consistent way, yet with the pace of a detective thriller. Every epic written in the past had knights, princes, and demigods as their heroes, which is to say, fighting men, destroyers. Atlas Shrugged is an epic for the modern age, whose heroes are the creators, businessmen, industrialists.

There are those who liken Ayn Rand's philosophy to communism or nazism. Such reasoning usually contains an error. Ayn Rand was an atheist; communists are atheists; therefore Ayn Rand was a communist. By the same logic, Hitler had a moustache; Charlie Chaplin had a moustache; is it correct to conclude therefore that Hitler was Charlie Chaplin?

It has also been said that Ayn Rand was atheist, and therefore was a nihilist. A nihilist is someone who believes in nothing, has no passions, and has no convictions. Ayn Rand could perhaps be criticized for being too vehement in her convictions. She spends many pages saying again some point which she has already made clear earlier. Readers must be patient with her repetitiveness, however, since, from reading her critics, it is clear that she has not been repetitive enough.

It has also been said that Ayn Rand did not know economics. This is mere humbug. The economists of the Austrian School and the Chicago School, including the great Ludwig van Mises, as well as Nobel-prize winning economists such as Halzitt, confirm Ayn Rand's conclusions in every particular. Economists of the schools of Marx and Keynes are no longer well regarded, except, perhaps, in the isolated and other-worldly groves of academia. Recent history shows the downfall of communism and nazism in Europe; state-run industries are being sold into private hands all over the globe. Living proof of the fitness of Capitalism as the only moral system for human life, and the deadliness of Socialism, shines from every corner of the globe.

Ayn Rand's anger and righteous indignation is directed against communism, nazism, and every form of what she called 'collectivism' i.e. the believe of the supremacy of the group over the individual. She believed in the absolute sovereignty of the individual, in the freedom of man, and she preached the moral goodness of the free market. She condemned using violence or force against any other human being for any reason except in self-defense, and that, narrowly limited to stopping only the aggressor. Ayn Rand can be accused of certain flaws in her writing, but to accuse her of being the diametric opposite of what she is, shows that no accusation of substance can be made.

For a critic to see her anger and indignation, and, from that, to conclude she is a nazi, is a rather poor conclusion at best, and does not seem to fit the facts. Anger is the proper emotional response to one's attackers; indignation is the proper and wholesome emotional response to those who praise vice and condemn virtue. Till Ayn Rand wrote, the righteousness and anger had all been on the side of the enemies of the free market, the foes of individualism.

It is about time freedom and individualism had an unabashed champion. Atlas Shrugged is the anthem, apology, gospel, and the rallying cry for those who believe heroic ideals.

Rating:
Summary: ...a secular cult
Review: I wonder whether 'Objectivists' are aware of the idolatrousnature of the Ayn Rand Cult...

This novel is very interesting as an illustration of Miss Rand's ambiguous relationship with the Jewish religion and her misguided attempt to retain some of its elements on a clearly idolatrous basis. I highly recommend it to readers interested in the 'cult phenomenon'...