Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.66 You Save: $15.34 (61%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.98 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: A Great Novel, even more for free-market capitalists
Summary: 4 Stars
Just picture it: the man who supported the world on his shoulders one day decides to shrug. With two words, Rand gives us the premise of her masterpiece of a novel. The men of intelligence who run the world are under attack from the anti-capitalist collectivists who use not their intelligence but their anti-greed morality and coercive force (through government) to drain the brains of the former. One by one, they mysteriously disappear, never to be heard from again...until one intelligent woman refuses to give in to the madness of either the anti-capitalists or the genius capitalists. Rand's hero, who's determined to turn around the failing railroad company left in the inept hands of her fat cat brother, becomes increasingly determined to get to the bottom of these mysterious disappearances. Along the way, she discovers where all the men of integrity are disappearing to, falls in love to two of them, battles Washington fat cats and their incompetent regulators and inspires all her underling workers of integrity.
Rand has the reader respect the achievements and intelligence existing in the capitalist system and the unintelligence of those who simply seek to enjoy its benefits and offer nothing on the table but complaints and legal-based cures that undermine the very fuel of that system. She deflates collectivist ethics and turns it on its head, making selfishness the very heart of virtue. And she makes happiness inextricably bound to active thought and productive life. Capitalism, for her, realizes all this, which is why she takes up its defense. Indeed, this book is the bible for free market capitalists everywhere.
While it makes for an interesting novel and insightful exploration of political and moral ideas, there are several limitations to Rand's framework. The capitalism she has in mind is the ideal that never really existed. The ills of the capitalist/corporate model are completely ignored. She therefore doesn't have to address them and can maintain the white/black, good/bad, capitalist/collectivist simplicity characteristic of her thought. She also ignores the productive aspects of government--which brings us public education, technological innovations like the computer, the internet, public works projects etc. For her, government economic intervention is again an unconditional evil. But the greatest shortcoming is the book's ending. After John Galt's masterful speech that sums up her philosophy, we have a James Bondish rescue finale that, for me at least, was anti-climactic.
Nevertheless, the novel is a great read, enormously insightful and strikingly similar to what we are witnessing today in Washington. (See, for example: [...])
Book Review: A LOT OF WORDS, many of which were worth reading
Summary: 4 Stars
I have mixed feelings about this book.
As a novel, I think "Atlas Shrugged" deserves three stars. The books is filled with interludes in which characters give seemingly endless diatribes, the king daddy of which came near the end and lasts nearly 70 pages. Not only do these lectures demolish the pace of the novel, they are filled with opinion stated as fact, groundless accusations, and sometimes self-contradiction. Oh well, what are you going to do? It appears Ms. Rand wrote this book as a vehicle for expressing her philosophy.
Judged as a story instead a novel, "Atlas Shrugged" deserves five stars plus.
"Atlas Shrugged" is the story of Dagney Taggart, the daughter and co-heir of a successful railroad tycoon. Dagney is a hardboiled capitalist with a good education, a great work ethic, and a desire to succeed. Her brother, James, on the other hand, is lazy, shiftless, and easily misled. He believes in making money the new-fashioned-way, through lobbying.
"Atlas Shrugged" is a dystopian tale of government gone wild as lazy industrialists with well-placed lobbyists plunder the work of the people who make oil, steel, railroad, and manufacturing industries succeed. In this novel, the bad guys' success brings destruction to society.
The thing that kept me reading was the insidious way that Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, Tinkey Holloway, and rest of the profiteers spread their net across both government and industry. They rang so true, these "looters" these re-packagers who produce nothing but instead earn their livings by feeding off others. These were such wonderful bad guys, slick, smooth, and so conniving. Best of all, they played their roles with such absolute conviction.
But, again, even the story cannot be judged as a whole. In some ways it is three stories in one. The first is the story of how James Taggart, Orren Boyle, Wesley Mouch, and other scoundrels manipulated the government and the people for their own self-interests while selling the idea that they really cared about the common good. As I said before, that part of the book was magnificent.
--THE SPOILERS START HERE--THE SPOILERS START HERE--THE SPOILERS START HERE--
The next part of the story is almost as interesting. It is the tale of Dagney Taggart and her struggle to keep society afloat as the government takes down all the great capitalists one industry at a time.
Here Rand mixes interesting ideas with a few enormous Dickinsonian coincidences such as Dagney discovering the nearly completed prototype of a revolutionary engine while taking a romantic stroll through an abandoned factory--complete with schematics! There's the time Dagney bumps into an important who just happens to be working as a cook in a roadside cafe, the time the bum stowing away on her train turns out to be a failed engineer who knows the identity of missing revolutionary, and the time Dagney just happens to find an airplane that she can hire in a nearby town after the crew abandons a train. You get the idea.
And then there is the romantic angle of the story--a definite two star affair. First, as an aside, there is the whole rough sex angle. Dagney's first two lovers "Atlas Shrugged" both force themselves on her and she accepts them without a fight. When you remember that Roark raped Dominique in "The Fountain Head," questions about the what these occurrences may say about the author quickly come to mind.
Then there are the questions about Dagney. First she loves Francisco, a childhood friend and a South American copper magnet. When he seems to fall apart, Dagney takes up with Henry Rearden, the inventor of a revolutionary new metal and even more ardent industrialist. Finally a new love appears, an uber capitalist whose views are so pure that even Rearden simply bows his head and says, "I understand your attraction." Believable? I found it ludicrous.
And then there is villains' hideout. Well, okay, they aren't villains, but they have created a mysteriously invisible lair in a valley in Colorado that the rest of the world can never locate. When reading this side story, my mind wandered to the evil lair Ernst Stavro Bloefeld has hidden inside a volcano in "You Only Live Twice." I kept imagining John Galt sitting on a swivel chair holding a white cat a cackling as says, "This will the world to its knees! Bwahahahaha!"
Overall, I give this book four stars but I give these stars with very little conviction. The parts with Boyle, Mauch, and the gang are so amazingly real and I consider them unique and significant additions to literature. I have many reservations about giving this book such high marks; but in the end, it probably deserves them.
Book Review: A Literary Masterpiece, If Nothing Else (and isn't that enough?)
Summary: 4 Stars
"Atlas Shrugged" is the seminal philosophical/literary work of the 20th century.
It excels chiefly as a literary work (not as much, I think, as a philosophical tome). Rand has crafted a masterpiece; the vision of the book is expansive yet driven. The plot, though vast in it's complexity, is at all times feels seamless. As I read the book I had the feeling one often gets when standing at the lip of a large canyon, or gazing up at a hopelessly tall mountain- the upwelling of emotions as you feel small and inspired and scared all at one moment. I was blown away by the magnificent beauty with which the book was written.
One cannot but at least mention objectivism; it permeats the entire book, it is everything Rand believed. I must admit that I don't ascribe to this philosophy, nor do I think that it is ultimately worth much. But one can still (and should, I think) read the book merely because of its amazing literary merit.
Book Review: A Manifesto for Conspiracy Thinkers
Summary: 3 Stars
For people who hate to read, just skip the first 200 pages. They are boring. After the first 200, you will be able to read how a subversive plot to take over the world will begin and how it will be accomplished. Under the guise of being a novel, Ms. Rand had to have insider knowledge about this subject. Of course, 1000 pages is a bit arrogant, but so are the individuals who are acting under the guise of good but are truly evil!
Brings to mind, the Bohemian Grove in California. If you dont know what this is, you need to look it up on the net. Be educated, there's still time.
Book Review: A Masterpiece!
Summary: 5 Stars
There isn't much I can say about Atlas Shrugged that hasn't already been said. This novel is a brilliant piece if literary art. Ayn Rand's ability to articulate her philosophy in this novel is uncanny. This should be required reading in every high school in America.