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Summary: This book saved my life.
Review: Summer, 1969. I'm 14. My older sister throws a worn, marked up paperback edition of AS at me, and says 'Read this.' I do, along with most of her others, and since then, as a selfish pleasure, reread from time and again. 4 years later, I'm at a socialist-chic Ivy League playground, innoculated against the firehose of crap aimed at us, and manage to take my education, instead of getting my indoctrination, unlike the legions of apologist lapdogs who sat up and panted for the trainers; good doggies, all. However, being poor white trash steel mill spawn, I had no pressing desire to apologize for anything, so I passed on the opportunity. Because of this book. But, it was always amusing, spending my summers actually working in mills to pay for college, upon returning to the playground every fall, to hear the plaintive cries of the Last True Friends of The Working Man whine on about injustice, and thank-you Daddy for sending me to this playground so I could see what a rat bastard you were. I would ask these clueless fops if they ever heard the phrase, "F***ing the dog," or if they did, knew exactly what the meaning was in the context of the 'labor' struggle in America in the 70's. Clueless, through and through. (To help, I'll use it in a sentence for you. "Where's Jack? He's supposed to be here." "He's f***ing the dog." "Oh." This was the MOST used exchange at the mill I worked in.) It's black and white clear why, for those like these of a certain bent, this book needs to be burned at all costs. This Soviet emigre who escaped the consequences of the very ideals these puddingheads hold dear nailed these fools to the ground. A couple of decades after her death, and the uncomfortable book-burners are still trying to squirm away from her. So, when I read the few negative reviews in this 600 or so, for some reason I was struck with the thought, "Schadenfreude; it's not just for dessert, anymore." So, thanks, Sis, for saving my life. Wading through life as neither an employee nor employer, I and tons like me have managed to build our own mini-Atlantis-of-the-mind, and have shrugged so far under the radar as to be undetectable. Unless, of course, you count the avalanche of crappy jobs in our economies, and the uncomfortable sense that so many have of "working harder and getting" less. Yet, that is a lament that I often hear, and wonder why? I've listened hard, even in college. Business is abuse; to employ someone is to abuse them, is to take advantage of them, is to squeeze their life from them, and take it as your own. Well, OK. I learned may lesson. That's why I never did; I never wanted to abuse anyone, and take their life from them. Given the choice as to how to expend my finite heat and noise, I chose a way that abused no victims with employment, neither as an employee, nor as an employee. Surely, since I refused to do that, that left more of The Pie for folks to scoop up. So...scoop away, folks. Be my guest. My Sis, the one who first saved me in 1969, did so as a senior in college. The next year, she started teaching in the public schools, and is about to retire. Imagine; 30 years in the public schools, quietly saving a few kids here and there. How did THIS slip past the NEA? Meanwhile, my oldest is 13, going on 14. Guess what he's getting from Amazon.com?
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Summary: The Greatest Novel of All Time!
Review: This is without a doubt the greatest and most important novel of all time! It's both scary and fascinating how prescient Rand was in her analysis of the methods and means that Liberals have used and are continuting to use today to create an ever-growing system of dependence on the government. Just turn on any mainstream media outlet and you can hear them reiterating the same liberal dogma and demagoguery that characters such as Wesley Mouch, Jim Taggart and Orren Boyle spout throughout the book. It's almost prophectic when you listen to the socialist tripe coming from leading Deomcrats today. If you care about liberty, you simply MUST read this book.
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Summary: One of my Personal Favorites!
Review: As my title indicates, this has been one of the most meaningful books in my life. It depicts the triumph of human individualism and intelligence over any obstacles. However, as I have been reading these reviews, I have noticed something somewhat disturbing in a few of the positive reviews. A good number seem so enamored with the premise of the book (ie a few individuals left in a world of parasitic sheep) that they seem to want to project this plot onto their own lives. I have seen nuberous reviews lament the sad state of affairs that the world has degenerated to. The book, despite its many truths, does have a tendency to superimpose this point of view onto otherwise sensible people. I think that its pretty safe to say that Ayn Rand, were she living today would approve of our society far more than her own. Think about it: when she lived Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, probably one of the furthest left presidents we've ever had. In addition, just about the entire intellectual elite in those days regarded communism as the eventual goal for the human race, and considered capitalism a barbaric and unfortunate intermediate step. These days, however, the influence of the left has been largely diminished in part due to the increase in knowledge and technology. In her day, many thought that the USSR was the greatest thing since Jesus of Nazareth. Today there fewer creationists and communists both. For these reasons among others, I think that this age we live in is clearly better than the 1930's and 40's when her main works were written. Atlas Shrugged should be taken as a warning of what the dangers of socialism could bring, not proof that we actually live in such a system now as the characters in the book did. We live in the greatest time and place yet in terms of economic and political freedom. If John Galt were here, I think he would be more than happy to live among us.
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Summary: Atlantis it is!
Review: Ayn Rand has finally done it, Atlas shrugged is a perfect tribute to individualism. Dagny Taggart and Francisco D'Anconia literally leap out of the pages and take up residence in your mind, influencing everything you do or say for the next few years. The story is perhaps an idealistic one but it cannot be described as impossible. Who knows... if the best minds in the world really do decide to go on strike may be they'll manage to create their own Atlantis. Galt's Gulch from Atlas Shrugged really is my idea of a perfect place. The flawless system is the one in which everything happens for a reason. You can't really tell why a person is doing something, unless you actually see what he is gaining from it. And everybody has something to gain.... The people portrayed as "looters" in the book make their own little profits under a well-glossed pretence of contributing to society. For all that people object to Ayn Rand'd theories, it is true that they apply to the "real" world as well. If society lifted a finger to help itself, a lot of chaos could be avoided. Ayn Rand characters have often been described as cold. Objectivism is not the same as coldness. A person who insists on getting the job done is an efficient invidual, not a heartless one. Anybody who dimisses Dagny Taggart as devoid of feeling, probably hasn't read the book properly... the people Ayn Rand upholds in her story are more passionate than their ordinary contemporaries. They have a zest for life that a lot of us could use. Perhaps such people do not exist....but I like to think that they do. Atlas Shrugged is definitely superior in quality to Fountainhead, I couldn't see any of Dagny's forceful character in Dominique. Although it is one of my favourites, I must add that certain parts of the book are not to be taken literally, even Ayn Rand can go wrong sometimes. But I cannot argue with the general philosophy...the mind IS to be held above everything else... to lose one's individuality is to lose everything.
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Summary: Check your premises.
Review: Most of the reviewers on this forum have taken stands on opposite sides of the barricades, some claiming that Ayn Rand's way of thinking is the supreme measure of human developement, and others deciding that she is the quintessence of evil. I prefer to do neither--since I have read her works, and have found myself in agreement with many, but not all of her premises--but rather to turn the attention of the reader to a simple point that has, thus far, gone without notice--namely, the purpose of this book. This is not a novel in the precise sense of the word. This book is not meant to bring to life its situations, nor to set new limits in the art of plot and character developement. The purpose of this book, written in the fifties when the US was drowning in a sticky morass of pseudo-benevolent bromides about selflessness and brother-love, was intended as a call to the only action that was possible by the only group for which it was possible. It was intended as a call to thought, for those people who were still capable of thinking, independently, clearly and objectively. This book calls upon the reader to look around, to see society clearly, to look through the various slogans and groups to see their purpose and their premises--whatever these may be--and then to decide upon their morality. This book was a call upon the society which Ayn Rand adopted as her own to fight the tendency to stifle thought, creativity, independence and love of life which had once created this country. This book was a warning, and a call to action for the vanguard of young intellectuals who had not yet given up on the value of the mind. Ayn Rand was born in the stifling, oppressive and false atmosphere of the Russian Empire. She grew up under the passionate, poisonously beautiful and unimaginably evil slogans of the Communists. She escaped the Soviet Union while it was still possible, and brought to the United States a fierce determination not to allow the evil cancer which had destroyed her old country to destroy her new one. This was the intnt of her book. As a warning. And as such it should be read, and understood. I may be mistaken, but I consider that if the purpose (not the content) of her book could be expressed in a single sentence, it would be: "Fight those who seek to rob you of your mind, the only thing which you cannot afford to lose."
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Summary: Take as an extreme example!!!!
Review: I though this was a great story and I loved the characters in it. That doesn't mean that I am going to base my life on it or think that the world is going to end. Sometimes people use very extreme examples to get their point across! I think that this a a great book. Very thought provoking. People need to chill out don't get so uptight about it. Although I have read in people's reviews that liberals won't like this book I did and I am very liberal. I thought that the story was very intelligent and I'm glad that I read it. I would recommend it to anyone!
Rating: 
Summary: Ayn, Archer and Asimov
Review: I'm reviewing this book as a novel, as something to read, not as a collection of ideas. And as a read, it's awful. The "characters" don't achieve even two dimensions, and their dialogue is - literally - unbelievable. That is, time after time I'd come to the end of a speech, words that the writer put into the mouth of one of her cyphers, and ask myself, "Is there any way to speak those words and sound natural? Could you for a second imagine an actual live person saying something like that?" And I couldn't. This is a science fiction novel in more senses than the author intends. That is, it isn't about people but about robots, hence their lack of internal life, and robots constructed by aliens, hence their lack of convincing resemblance to human beings. But does Rand intend something as subtle as that? Is the constant, jarring incongruity of her characters' words and actions some kind of intentional distancing effect? I think not, because the writing is just as bad in the non-dialogue sections. Sentence after sentence reads as if Rand dictated them while she had her mind on something else, an effect I also get when reading Geoffrey Archer. In fact of all writers, Archer's thumpingly limp prose comes closest to Rand's. So why is this incompetently-written pot-boiler still in print, and why have 600-odd people ardently raved about its unapparent genius? To get the answer let's compare Rand not with Archer but Asimov, the "Foundation" series. There too, the writing is thin stuff, with characters that don't acquire the depth and texture of cardboard, and dialogue that clunks like a mouthful of rocks. (Though Asimov's trilogy is significantly better written - though still bad - than "Atlas Shrugged".) But what has carried the book is not really the "characters", still less the author's style, but the "ideas". But Asimov's idea, "psychohistory", never gets beyond a shadow of an idea. In Asimov's defence, "psychohistory" is more of a McGuffin, a plot device, than a seriously intended science. Rand, on the other hand, takes her ideas seriously, and expects you to do the same, even though "Objectivism" is essentially a mix of Max Stirner's right-wing anarchism (no Kropotkinian collectivism for our Max) with Nietzschean stuff about how the herd hold back the really free human beings like the author and also the truly superior being who has been good enough to buy the author's book. But it is this aspect of the book that keeps it in print. Neither Rand's nor Nietzsche's readers consider themselves part of the "herd" - you and me, I'm afraid - that each writer treats with such contempt. It's the ultimate authorial suck-up; where a lot of writers leave their readers feeling challenged, perhaps even a little appalled by their own relative lack of powers (Shakespeare, for example, or even an Amis), Rand assures her readers that they're special, they're a breed apart, and that it's everyone else -- the herd, democracy, collectivism, morality, etc -- who is stopping them from doing the brilliant, great things that they dream of. Hence the book's great appeal to adolescents (see the nearly 600 reviews, below), also to people with, um, issues. Criticism of Rand is often said by the more passionate Rand cultists to be simply a matter of leftists attacking a right-wing writer, but that seems to be based on a misunderstanding, or more likely a bowlderisation, of Rand's ideas. Rand was an atheist and in principle though not in practice a libertarian, just like them secular humanist liberals that so many Rand cultists hate. In many respects she is closer to the non-Marxist left than to the god-fearing, pro-censorship, abortion-banning American Right that has adopted her. My problem with Rand's ideas is not Whose Side They're On, but that her ideas were second-hand and second-rate, top-of-the-head stuff that was neither researched nor well written. Anyway it's ideological fervour, rather than any merit of plotting, characterisation of writing, that has kept this bnook in print. So if you're approaching it at a level of, "Is _Atlas Shrugged_ a good read, for a plane trip or winter evening?" I'd say no. Try Geoffrey Archer if you're in the mood for brainless crap (and that's a reasonable mood to be in); Archer certainly didn't have Rand's overweening pretention. And if you want Big Ideas that turn out not to be very taxing at all, try Asimov's "Foundation" series. Asimov isn't much of a writer either, but as you read him you can't help liking him for being a big engaging peach of a man, where Rand is a prune. Cheers! Laon
Rating: 
Summary: A Noble attempt by a Confused and Frustrated Author
Review: Ayn Rand lived a tough life, there's no doubt about that. She suffered through the Russian Revolution and somehow survived in America and managed to make a semi-successful career as a writer. All of that aside, her writing reaches average at best. Her dialogue and character descriptions are so out-right and blatant and the philosophy she bases around reason and creative thought contradicts itself with her dogmatic forcefulness. She herself scolded any of her followers for questioning her. This book has a place and a time, appropriate for teenagers finding their way through adolescence. Otherwise, it is a drawn-out work of average merit.
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Summary: Not for liberals, maybe, but a great novel
Review: Even conservatives have trouble with some of Objectivism's tenets (this is the philosophy founded by Rand that is the premise behind Atlas Shrugged.) For one thing, it has hints of Nietzsche (the will to power, the rejection of suffering being acceptable as the will of God.) It also has some problems for feminists, because the sex scenes are just short of being outright rape. Nevertheless, this is one fantastic novel and not one to be missed. Rand's experience as a Hollywood screenwriter shows through; the actions scenes are vivid, and no one could write a cocktail party scene better than she could. And some of the events in the book, written in the 1950's are scarily clairvoyant. Rand's ear for names, especially of politicians and celebrities is apt. The book is a bit dated in places, though it is set in the indeterminant future; some terms and slang have fallen into disuse. Even so, the search for John Galt and the mystery of who is stopping the "motor of the world" is gripping.
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Summary: Crystal Ball
Review: If anyone wants to look into the future of the California power crisis, read this book.
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