Nunkey Publishing
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I'd been recommended by my mentors in the self development field a million times to read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged before I finally got round to getting it: Christmas 2006 - some six years after I'd first heard of it. And even then, it lay dormant on the bookshelf for another few months. Before I continue, let me point out that there will be spoilers of form in this review.
Being an avid reader of anything self development, its one thousand plus pages put me off reading it, since I was expecting a much shorter, non fiction book of true self help style and not some monster of fiction; I didn't want to spend a few weeks or months plowing through a book, hoping it would measure up, only to discover I'd wasted my time on rubbish when it could've been spent on a decent read, such is the value I place on my time.
Eventually, on reading the synopsis one day, which resonated heavily with the philosophy I'd been furiously honing for a while, I decided it was time to delve in, reasoning that it was now or never. And was I pleasantly surprised. The more I read, the more I couldn't believe what I was reading! Every chapter, every scene, every interaction, left me reeling and exclaiming, "Yes! That is how to live!"
To say that this book, which is the fictional representation of Ayn's 'Objectivist' philosophy, fit with my own, new, growing philosophy - is an understatement. Rather, at a time when I was just building the foundation for my site, I was suddenly given fresh purpose and impetus.
The book itself is very well written. The plots are racy, the characters - deep, the backdrops - massive and the moral - right. Ayn Rand leaves no stone unturned in giving a detailed background on all major characters - and even some of the smaller, less important ones.
The book's events are broken down from every relevant viewpoint, allowing you to form your own alliances with the teams and characters of your own, calculated choice. Although you won't have gone too far in Atlas Shrugged before taking the right side.
Indeed, for anyone that has a flicker of, at the very least, 'suppressed' anger at the seemingly unrelenting, merciless, surreptitious journey toward a totalitarian state - worldwide, I challenge you to not get riled and fired-up at the evil in the book - because it is this evil which is represented in our media today.
The antics of the enemy in the book will fill you with fight, passion, cause and ambition and you will duly feel inspired to become your own version of a Hank Rearden, John Galt, Dagny Taggart, to step out your door and face our own Dr. Robert Stadlers, Mr. Thompsons and Jim Taggarts. And you wouldn't be alone: A poll carried out in 1991, by The Library Of Congress and The Book Of The Month Club reported Atlas Shrugged to be the second most influential book behind the Bible.
And if a survey of 1,239 American adults - conducted by Freestar Media/Zogby between October 10 and October 14, 2007 - asking the question, "Have you ever read the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand?" is anything to go by, its 8.1% affirmative would seem to suggest that I'm not a member of an exclusive club in being a reader myself.
Quite simply, if you're reading this review, there's a good chance that this book will do something to you. Something good. I strongly recommend you make it the very next book you read. And when you have, come and tell me what you think. I could use someone like you...
To freedom,
Scotty Stevens
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An epic of style and substance
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Atlas Shrugged is quite simply an awe-inspiring book, literally as well as in terms of content. As previously mentioned, it's a veritable behemoth, weighing in at 1180 pages.
However, much like War and Peace, its size stops being as issue the second you get involved with the book. The plot is incredibly detailed, often to extremes - 50 pages of various men discussing social sanctions is quite usual - but it never becomes dull because of the combination of incredible characterisation and genuinely refreshing philosophy.
Obviously Ayn Rand's philosophies are not 'new' as in 'brand new', but they are a largely under-read and under-valued capitalist philosophies which are of genuine interest. The fact that they are delivered through at least four of the most finely detailed and realised characters ever committed to paper - Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco D'Anconica and 'John Galt' - makes this novel hard to put down.
Part social commentary, part science fiction, part mystery, part romance, part philosophy - and the sheer bulk of the novel's content draws it all together superbly.
So much of it is fresh and engaging, and genuinely thought-provoking, that this is a novel which must surely go down as one of the all-time classics, not only for this generation, but for all time. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Get through the first few segments, get used to the fact that you're reading mostly about the construction of railroads, and a gem of a novel awaits.
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A Not-So-Torrid Romance Masquerading as Great Art
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I knew absolutely nothing about Ayn Rand when I won a copy of this book in a review competition, and thought it was wonderfully ironic that the first novel I had 'chosen' to read since 1990 turned out to be a 1,168 page long philosophical treatise. Divine retribution, indeed, for having inflicted a 1,014 page novel on the public myself.
However, despite having lost the patience with novels years ago, I had taken this one on with the promise to review - and review I would, and no skimming bits either!
Atlas Shrugged is a simple story. For all its supposed breadth of scope and 'epic' qualities its essence can be boiled down to very little.
Indeed there is something strange about the fact that although it discusses (at great length) supposedly large philosophical issues, and sets itself in a curiously dated industrial 1950's America, it feels rather like someone trying to expand a very narrow range of experience into the semblance of something 'deep'.
Ayn Rand can write, and it seems a great tragedy that she bogs down her obvious talent in a great mishmash of half-baked teenage notions repeated ad nauseam, as if in repetition they will somehow gain credibility.
She writes her 'philosophy' exactly like a fourteen year-old at the debating society: Is Capitalism a Force For Good or Evil?
Ayn believes it's good. It's good because capitalists build stuff, because competition encourages even better stuff, and because Steel Smelting Plants look great at night.
Ayn believes industrialists are sexy. They are muscular, lean, tanned, have aquiline profiles, look good in dinner suits and are very confident.
You can tell she never met Richard Branson.
In fact, Ayn hasn't really conceived of men like Richard Branson - undoubtedly hardworking, competitive, indeed everything that Ayn expects 'great creators' to be, but missing the fact that now, a mere 50 years later, these men don't really create or build anything.
Ayn's 'great' philosophy didn't even make a hundred years before it went out of date. Her notions of how business works are frighteningly naïve and her determination to batter you to death with crudely-handled polemics reduces her scintillating poetic descriptions into The Collected Speeches of Senator McCarthy.
Atlas Shrugged may be considered a 'classic', but for me it will remain only a classic of How Not to Write a Novel, and a testament to how bad experiences in a communist regime do not necessarily make you very astute, let alone a 'philosopher'.
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Virtues of Individualism and Free Market Capitalism
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Atlas Shrugged has an extremely black-and-white quality; either you are an embodiment of highest virtues or you are unredeemably evil. There is no middle ground. All the characters in this book are as if they had come from some sort of a Baroque opera. No doubt, Atlas Shrugged would have benefited, if it had had a better editor.
Like Albert Einstein the physicist (and the philosopher), Ayn Rand has an absolute belief in the law of causality. I cannot help but wonder what her views on quantum mechanics and Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle were.
Notwithstanding these flaws, the book makes many a good point:
- Reason is the main epistemological tool of acquiring knowledge about reality. Thinking and rational mind are what separate us most clearly from other animals.
- Do not apologize for your virtues.
- Altruisms, when forced upon by the State, is a grave sin.
- Mankind makes quantum leaps forward by brilliant and free individual minds.
- In its core, capitalism is a system of individualism, thus inherently capable of making quantum leaps forward (in science, innovation, etc).
- Communism, or any collectivism for that matter, cannot work, not even in theory. Enforced socialism is to be opposed. (Ayn Rand's views on socialism and capitalism were probably influenced by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek).
I find it rather fitting that exactly 50 years after Atlas Shrugged was published (1957), the Nobel Prize in economics (2007) was awarded to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson for their work on mechanism design, which deals with the problem of arranging "our economics interactions so that, when everyone behaves in a self-interested matter, the results is something we all like." Since the 18th century, we know (thanks to Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson) that the pursuit of self-interest is not a zero-sum game.
The book is worth the reading effort. It will induce you to think about the nature of humanity, the perils of far-left egalitarianism, and what the struggle for happiness is all about (needless to say, Ayn Rand was no closet Aristotelian).
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Who is John Galt????
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this novel is a great way of exposing how in the wrong hands, e.g regulators politicians and ivy league rich (never mind wall street) can strangle the economy and the ideas which fuel it. i feel the republicans in the 80's may have misunderstood the agenda in this book, it is a denouncement of socialist Russia but also highlights the obvious and corrupting influence of the few on the many in the capitalist economy as well.
the story has twists and turns and is very fantastical. Reading about the gradual destruction of the companies and railroads is heartbreaking to read, but the main characters are well rounded and you have there sympathy.
It is a more hard edged book "The Fountainhead" but none the less it deserves its cult classic status. I await the film adaption with curiosity.
And if you read this book you will know why the question in the title of this review was poised
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