Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Book Review: If you take ideas seriously....
Summary: 5 Stars
this book will change you more than any other event in your life. There are my years before Atlas Shrugged and my years after. I shouldn't have picked-up this book when I did. I should have been revising for exams. I couldn't put it down for two days. I was crying for more as I finished the 1,100 pages and have been revelling in Rand's mass of other works ever-since. I've never experienced an intelligence such as hers before.Rand is probably the most spiritual writer of the century and the most rational. She builds a temple to human greatness and shows you how to worship. She challenges every idea you ever held to make you 'check your premises'. It is a work of philosophy set in a fast-paced novel with the grandest characters. How many characters can you remember from the last novel you read? You'll remember at least fifty, superbly drawn, heroes and villains from this one. Rand never writes in grey, only black and white.
Because Rand was an ardent moralist, she was a capitalist. Never heard that combination before? There's a thousand other contradictions to riddle with. The contradictions are yours not hers.
If you're a socialist, this book will offer the most serious case against your philosophy. Don't read it unless you want to be seriously challenged. You'll probably hate her, but you will admire her and won't be able to ignore the power of her arguments.
It's a great read. It will be an education too. It will change your life more than any other book you've ever picked up. That's why this book still sells 100,000's of copies every year, even 50 years after its publication.
Book Review: The Greatest Book of the Last 100 Years
Summary: 5 Stars
And I mean it.This is without doubt the most influential, satisfying, life-changing book I have ever read, and I've read a lot.
I've heard this book called unrealistic, its characters two-dimensional and without depth, its philosophy clownish, OK for juveniles and the socially inadequate perhaps, but not to be taken seriously by adults, who after all must live in the "real" world.
The real world. Now let's see... Half of what you earn is taken by force to be used either to feed, clothe and house the mainly idle and feckless or to employ more faceless deskmen to pass more regulations restricting you in your attempts to earn a living. Defending your property and loved ones from burglary by most probably these same idle and feckless can earn you a jail sentence. Your property? What property? When a council can tax whatever arbitrary sum they dream up and you have to pay it, who really owns the property, which you've paid for, by the way? A world where if you're old and ill and admitted into a state-run hospital (you can't afford anything else by that time, they've been stealing all your money, remember) it is only to die, not from your condition, but some superbug infection caused by the surrounding insanitary filth. A world where increasingly it seems you're committing a terrible crime by driving a car...
Those are just a few small examples, but you get the idea. So, what has that got to do with this book? Everything. In fact, what is this book, which for 50-plus years has engendered such fierce debate and has so many enthusiastic defenders and ferocious detractors, really about? Again the answer is everything. Everything of importance anyway, from the motivation behind building a monumental business empire to the choice of a sexual partner. Whether or not you agree with everything in this book is up to you, it's your choice. But you see, THAT is the point.
Ayn Rand's philosophy is most of all pro-individual, and by extension pro-capitalist, capitalism being the only economic system which acknowledges the freedom of the individual.
Crucially, she also states categorically in the book that all material wealth exists only because of the great spiritual wealth that first envisaged it. Indeed this is a key recurrent theme.
It's rather like the early history of America: one minute deserts and virtually empty plains, the next cities, trade and the greatest outpouring of wealth mankind has ever seen. What brought about such a huge exertion of effort and energy, such foresight, enthusiasm and ingenuity? The promise of wealth, and the freedom to pursue it.
Atlas Shrugged celebrates that, and identifies what went wrong and is going wrong today. Not realistic? There are incidents in there that are uncannily parallel to current events.
The book is an inspiration. If I'm working, and find my concentration drifts or I get a bit bored with what I'm doing and am tempted to do a shoddy job, I think of Francisco d'Anconia, and I'm focused and alert once more. When I think that maybe a goal I've set myself might be too hard, and maybe I should forget it, I think of Hank Rearden, and in a moment I'm pursuing it like the very devil. That's why this book is so great, not only for its scope, range and vision, but even for its most criticised aspect(excluding the sizable minority who dislike its philosophy, of which there are two types: those chronically bored drones who don't understand it, and, more damningly, those tin pot would-be politicians who blast it to heaven) which is its standing as a work of art.
Ayn Rand herself said what art was supposed to be. She often defined terms which most people don't even think about. She was clear-minded and very much on the ball that way, an extremely powerful thinker and intellect. Anyway, she said that the purpose of art was to renew the mind and spirit, to give a "lift", to draw from the individual experiencer an affirmation, a sense of value recognition, a "yes". The feeling that "I can understand something of what the creator of that piece felt when creating it." See, appreciating art is all about emotion, but the highest emotion comes from "the finest discernment of the mind". And emotion is closely linked to energy. To renew one is to renew the other. Look at Michelangelo's David or hear Bob Marley and feel refreshed.
Anyhow, what I'm trying to say is: Read this book. To all those of you who might read these reviews before deciding to spend time with a book, I say again: Read THIS book.
I believe many of you who do just that will thank me.
Book Review: Warped and disturbing
Summary: 1 Stars
It seems inconceivable that anyone would consider altruism a fault, but that's the basis of this horrifying book's philosophy. It encourages and applauds selfishness and reviles any action for 'the common good'. If you've got more money than you know what to do with, just enjoy it and don't spare a thought for the starving millions outside your window!!! No wonder so many Americans rave about this book; it encapsulates everything that is wrong with that country's ideals.Disregarding all the propaganda, this is also an atrocious piece of writing. Reviewers who describe this as 'a work of art' or a 'literary classic' must be the same people who send the likes of Tom Clancy and John Grisham to the top of the bestseller lists.
If you have have a penchant for badly-written novels and feel Thatcher wasn't right-wing enough for your tastes, this is the book for you. If you have a single spark of humanity or compassion in you, leave this one on the shelf.
Book Review: read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best book I have ever read. It's made me anylise the things I do and see the world in a whole new light. I haven't been brainwashed I already had the feelings that the book is intended to inspire and already behaved in the way the book try to persuade me to behave in. But I never knew why I behaved as such.. Don't bother reading this book if you haven't ever wanted to kill someone for being incompitent and above you in a long chain of power.Book Review: So badly written! Can...barely....type...for...laughing
Summary: 2 Stars
I don't know enough about philosophpy to criticise Ayn Rand's ideas but God, as work of fiction this is awful. The characters are just empty mouthpieces for the various viewpoints that Rand is trying to get across. The dialogue is laughable in places, or rather would be, if it wasn't for the fact that you had over 1000 pages of it. Avoid now, thank me later.