Rating: 
Summary: One of the Mind's Greatest Achievments
Review: My greatest regret is that I will never be able to wake up again and read Atlas Shrugged for the first time.... Most books are read and forgotten. We leave their meaning in some dark nebulous corner of our minds. Atlas Shrugged, however, is magnificent for its ability to shape our lives. If you give it a chance, one way or another it will have a profound effect on you. This book has been so influential that it has spawned political parties, think tanks, and campus organizations that are committed to adhering to the ideals that are set forth within Atlas Shrugged's pages. Do not be daunted by its size. If you approach this book diligently you will have little trouble finishing it. And what is more likely, if you give yourself a chance to really get a few hundred pages into the book you'll probably end up finishing it just because you won't allow yourself to do otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: A must read for the modern intellectual
Review: This is the only book I've ever read which has truly changed my life. Whether you are new to Ayn Rand or a vehement Objectivist, this book is incontrovertibly the best, and most influential, piece of fiction written in the 20th Century.
Rating:
Summary: Read with some perspective
Review: Atlas Shrugged isn't the best written book around, and Ayn Rand's position isn't perfectly thought through, but it holds the essence of some very good sentiments, and as I imagine she didn't write it simply to amuse, if you can pull from it some applicable ideas, you'd be well off. I would never suggest that someone follow Ayn Rand's Objectivist position in its purity, I mean, unless you really believe that anyone who fails deserved it, and that there's enough to go around for everyone, even after you've gobbled up everything you can. But while she takes her position to the level of world domination and grants her characters the credit of having complete control of their destinies, (she completely disregards the impact of environment on a person's situation, and their attitudes towards life and everything in it) she also understands what very few people know: that the only path to self-respect and honest pride is to hold yourself to the standard of the rational being. I mean, once you reach a certain level of awareness, you can't pretend that you matter for magical or superstitious reasons (I'm including religion in that, sorry), you can't even really pretend that there's a greater fate for you than the grave, but you also can't let go of that sense that you matter, that you're worth looking up to, worth being remembered. So the only way to keep that sense of worth and meaning is to earn it, and the only way to earn it is to succeed, or at least to try your honest best to succeed. This is where Rand's contempt for the masses comes in, because she, like anyone who sees their situation rationally, is offended by people who are incapable of navigating through their life, of exerting control over it. She's offended simply because that control is there to be exerted, so, she reasons, of course they deserve what they get, if they fail to exert it. The problem I have with this, which is where I think many people have taken exeption to Rand's philosophy, is that there is some merit to compassion, and her philosophy leaves no room for it, simply because she believes that we all have perfectly free wills. I think this is a somewhat out-dated idea, at least in the intellectual community, but at the time that she was writing, the idea of determinism was less accepted. However, today, I think people are beginning to understand that someone who is homeless might just have a history worth factoring in before you go and decide that only an idiot could get themselves homeless. That history might very well include NOT learning certain "simple" life lessons (very simple when you're raised by an adult who knows enough to fill you in), such as "you're not worthless", or "hard work can achieve most anything". Rand doesn't forgive anyone for just being a human being, not so different from an ape, just one step removed really. But we can be more than an ape, if we choose to be, and THAT is where she is correct. Just don't fall into the trap of letting that idea justify stepping on others simply because they haven't seen, or learned, what you have, or because their experiences and life haven't prepared them to cope with the difficulties of facing Ayn Rand's ultimatum. So read the book, but don't go all or nothing on it, because it doesn't have it all, but it does have something worth gleaning.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest novel ever written
Review: "Atlas Shrugged" is the greatest novel that has ever been written. My reasons for this statement are as follows:- 1. No other SINGLE novel covers an entire philosophic system as this novel does. Rand, while dramatizing her philosophy of Objectivism has dwelt with all important issues pertaining to human existence-metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, economics, art, sex, romantic love and so on. I know no other novel which integrates all these issues into a single plot-structure combining suspense and hard-core action (which is always integrated to an aspect of the overall philosophy). 2. Some people say that Rand is not good in literary terms, while she is a perfect philosopher-whereas, it is as a writer that Rand has achieve perfection-while one may question some aspects of her philosophy.
There isn't any other story, at least that I've read or heard of, like that of "A.S". It has an ingeniously contrived, perfect plot-structure-where every character and every event is indispensable to the plot and the meaning of the novel-all being tied together by the purpose the novelist wants to accomplish-all complementing and reinforcing each other.
It is one of those few novels where EVERY word counts and contributes to the meaning of the novel and the plot (the other I know, with this particular virtue, is "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne-but which has a far less complex plot-structure than "A.S.").
To achieve this exactitude, focus, concentration and purposefulness is evidence of the genius of the highest order. 3. The level of this novel is, to use the same terms, of the highest order.
It is a novel of epic proportions. It is a story is about the state of mankind itself. It offers a shocking view of what will happen to the world, in the future, if a particular code of moral values become the sole guide of human life. Further, it offers a radically new vision of the Ideal human society and what will make it possible.
It is a novel of giants and monsters-not cheap mediocrities (or of-the-folks-next-door) - of life and death conflicts - not trivial concerns of mediocre people, like- how some hypocrite can't hook a girl for her wealth etc.
4. It is a novel which celebrates the best in man. It exhorts man to achieve the highest he is capable of. It upholds the sanctity of human life and the supreme importance of achieving happiness in life.
It condemns the use of force and fear in dealing with human beings.
It proclaims that man is a heroic and an efficacious being; that evil is impotent and ultimately powerless before the Good; that the world is a place where ultimately the moral, the right, the good shall prevail.
And above all, it dramatizes the importance of reason and intelligence in man's life.
It also projects the image of the Ideal man, of the Perfect man in John Galt (the same attempt has been made by Dostoevsky in the character of Prince Myshkin in "The Idiot" and by Victor Hugo in that of Jean Valjean in "Les Miserables").
It does not merely proclaim and show the above (and much more) but answers the question: WHY ? HOW? ( for eg. questions such as-how can man achieve happiness? What should be the proper foundation of relationships between men in society? what is moral or good, immoral or evil ?). You may or may not agree with Ayn Rand's philosophy. But the attempt of this review has been to step outside the specific philosophy and present the virtues of this novel on a broader, abstract level so that it can be compared to other great works of literature. (I can think only of "The Brothers Karamazov" and "Les Miserables" as of equal status-in that both Dostoevsky and Hugo have presented their unique philosophic vision with a view to revolutionize human society, combining it with superlative original plot-structure, symbolism, suspense and other elements of a masterpiece-though they don't match "A.S." in every respect). On that basis I shall say with full confidence: "'Atlas Shrugged'? NIHIL ULTRA"
Rating: 
Summary: The lungs on these people!
Review: You will be tempted, after a while, to skim-read the nine-page monologues. My advice is to yield to temptation. When George Orwell inserted long chapters of a fictional political treatise into "1984" ... well, he wrote better, for one thing; for another, Orwell's slabs of text have an internal structure, and don't merely repeat themselves. When Rand launches one of her characters into a rant you can sleep easy in the knowledge that each paragraph will merely repeat the previous one, with new bursts of rhetoric, new insults (some not so new: the words "looter" and "moocher" are used so often that by the end of the novel they have become technical terms), and new outbursts of spite that the author could not bear to leave out. The ironic high point, for me, comes midway through Book 3, Chapter 2, when it's Richard Halley's turn to talk his throat dry. His speech is an expression of hatred for artists whose works merely issue from them as expressions of feeling ("like vomit from a drunkard"), who don't realise the iron discipline required to turn their impulses into a coherent, beautiful work. So where's Rand's "iron discipline"? Her novel, which began promisingly enough, had hundreds of pages ago been ruined by her unwillingness to cut a single. Whenever she must choose between expressing her credo (by writing yet more words) or living up to it (by crafting a good novel), she opts for the former. I meant it when I said it began promisingly enough. There's a tantalising mystery (which is later dragged out long past the point where even the dullest reader has guessed it all and wishes to move on), a dark, detailed, fantastic vision of a decaying society, characters that look as though they might be worth following, and Rand does a good enough job of treating the things she loves - furnaces, girders, railways, engines - as elements of romance. But the worthwhile elements dissolve into nothing until nothing is left but the endlessly repeating rhetoric. Oh, and the love scenes. They're ... I was about to say Victorian, because of the way Rand's lovers spend pages on end doing nothing but "being in love" and striking attitudes at one another. (Rand disguises her starchiness by throwing in the occasional graphic half-rape, but fools no-one.) But this would be unfair to Victorians. Shortly before reading "Atlas Shrugged" I'd re-read George Gissing's "New Grub Street", and I was surprised by how plausible the talks between lovers were, how the professions of love vary from one another and how unafraid the author is to come to the point. Gissing's book was written 70 years before Rand's. The truth is that perceptive writers have NEVER written love scenes as stodgy as Rand's. They can scarcely be read, even for curiosity's sake. Perhaps my comments will strike you as beside the point: many people, after all, consider Rand's book less valuable as a work of fiction than as a work of philosophy. They're wrong. Another respect in which Gissing scores over Rand is in his ability to express opposing points of view - Rand merely knows how to gather all the viewpoints she disagrees with and the traits she considers vices together, so that no character may have one without also having all the rest. Nobody is in favour of income tax without also denying elementary principles of logic, doubting the existence of an external world, and having a whining voice, shifty eyes and an ugly face to boot. And the wonder is that Rand is, by her lights, more or less honest. She thinks that all the details of her political and moral philosophy really DO follow, as a matter of logic, from such banal and uncontroversial trivialities as "everything is identical to itself". My star rating is subjective. I wouldn't have guessed this from the opening chapters, but the book really is unbelievably bad ... and yet this in itself is a reason to read it, just as it's a reason to read Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno". By all means read this book, and "Sylvie and Bruno" as well. They're ... ahem ... unique.
Rating: 
Summary: Not convinced, but entertaining none the less.
Review: Many people find this book disturbing, shocking, and evil. Others declare it the Bible of capitalism. I found it to be very entertaining. Ayn Rand has made a very creative attempt at justifying what so many people today call "greedy capitalists".
There is no doubt she has an incredible mind and there is much truth in what she outlines in this book. However, she has failed to convince me that her philosophy of "Mine, mine, mine" is a moral one. Rand's view of human beings is objective indeed: they are either moochers or gods. To her, there is nothing in between (a perfectionist fallacy). I recommend this book to anyone, whether they take Rand's words to heart or not.
Rating:
Summary: A very big book
Review: This book is so large that I have NEVER seen a book that is this big in size. I don't mean its scope as a novel; I mean that it's physically a HUGE book. It's actually a pretty stupid story, but the book is just so BIG that I have to give it five stars for its sheer bulk! It's such an _immense_ book that it's all but unrivalled in the magnitude of its dimensions. There can't be very many other books as large as this one. A big book, then -- awfully big. And huge, too.
Rating:
Summary: Point of Beginning
Review: Six Hundred and Forty-Four reviews, and counting. And most of those reviews, whether laudatory or lampooning, whether serious or satirical, have received more negative votes than positive votes. Rand's work, regardless of its merit or lack thereof, is certainly controversial. I enter the fray with trepidation, while wondering if I even should... I have read that Atlas Shrugged is a book for 18-year old males, and I must admit that I, a male, first read it at the age of 18. It is hard to describe the emotional experience of that first reading - the wonderful realization that someone else saw that the initiation of force is always wrong, that punishment for ability is always wrong, and that government action is not the solution to all evils. Even at the time, I remember being surprised by the strong emotions evoked by so strictly rational a philosophy. It has now been about five years since that first reading. My BA is now recently completed, rather than recently begun. Five years of reading in history and English, my major and minor, have given me quite a different perspective of Rand's work and weaned me of some of its arguments, yet Atlas Shrugged retains its haunting appeal. However, I must now disagree with those reviews that claim Atlas Shrugged is either the greatest novel or the greatest work of philosophy (or both) of all time. It is neither; though it is certainly deserves five stars in either capacity. As an overall novel, Atlas Shrugged's generally flat characters (especially, but not only, Rand's villains) and occasional contrived plot elements cause it to pale before the truly great novels, even though it is certainly an above-average novel. As a work of libertarian (small "l"; I am fully aware that Objectivists and the Libertarian Party do not always see eye-to-eye) philosophy, Atlas Shrugged falls short primarily because it fails to address the strongest arguments of the opposition. I fully believe that most of these arguments it ignores are incorrect anyway, but they can best be discredited by addressing them rather than ignoring them. This is perhaps a limitation inherent in utilizing the novel form to disseminate political philosophy (many people already seem to consider this novel too long). In any case, in order to complete what Atlas Shrugged begins, the reader would be well-served by reading not only Rand's nonfiction works, but also the great writers of the libertarian philosophical tradition: Locke, Smith, Mill, Hayek, and Nozick, among others. I do find it strange that Atlas Shrugged (and Rand's other novels) have not achieved their deserved renown as part of the dystopian literary tradition of the early 20th century. When read in conjunction with Orwell's 1984, Huxley's Brave New World, Zamyatin's We and other similar works, Rand's novels form an important part of the early 20th century reaction to and fear of the spectre of socialism. In at least one way Rand expresses this fear even more clearly than the other authors mentioned: she sets Atlas Shrugged (and Fountainhead) not in a distant future, but in a time that looks eerily like the present. Finally, I refer those who claim the title of "greatest" for Atlas Shrugged, either as a pure novel or as a pure philosophical work, to the other works of Ayn Rand. As a novel, Fountainhead is a far stronger offering: with both hero and villain she achieves a degree of realism that no character in Atlas Shrugged approaches. As for her philosophy of Objectivism, Rand gives much clearer formulations in her nonfiction essays. Atlas Shrugged is certainly the greatest "philosophical novel" produced by Ayn Rand, and it may well be the greatest philosophical novel ever produced by anyone. It is not, however, either the greatest pure novel or the greatest work of pure philosophy of all time. This may seem shocking, but I think that the most accurate analogue to Rand's Atlas Shrugged is Marx's Communist Manifesto. In philosophical content, they are obviously polar opposites, but the roles they fill (and the controversies they fuel) are quite similar. Neither is the author's clearest exposition of his or her philosophy, yet each is its author's most influential work. Both were intended as introductions to political philosophies, and both appeal strongly to the emotions of their audience. Finally, and most importantly, both works raise as many questions as they answer, and hopefully this encourages their audiences to do further reading on the subject rather than to consider the subject closed. So read Atlas Shrugged, but read it as an introduction rather than as a conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: Changed
Review: This is what will happen when you read this book. The plot brings out a horror so terrible that it hurts to even think of it. I litterally threw the book across the room against the wall it made me so upset. I know that my entire outlook has forever changed. No deep meanings, no literary terminology, just a realization of what some people see as the only right way to go and how helpless we could all end up. I've never had a book change me before but this one did. It made me look at the way I live my life and decide, do I want to be a looter, or a producer?
Rating:
Summary: Lighten up People
Review: I find the adulation of Rand's supporters almost as amusing as the hysteria of her detractors. Read the reviews here and notice all of the petty shots taken. Yes folks there are many intelligent and educated people who, agree with Rand, but people who do not are not budding fascists (the true Philosophy Rand is opposing in this book.)
Rand's essential points, that reason is a better guide to public policy than emotion, that it's wrong to take from others by force or the threat of force, that religion has no place in public policy, are all fine. It is Rand's contention of non-contradiction, that creates the problem in this novel, I would expound on that further, but it is not My intention to debate Philosophy here.
As for Rand's literary style, keep in mind that Russian writers tend to focus more on ideas than character.
So over all I would recommend this book, not as a manual for life, but far better than it's hysterical critics would have you believe.
|
