Selected Book
Atlas Shrugged
- Paperback
- Author: Ayn Rand
- Publisher: Plume
- Release Date: August 1999
- ISBN-10: 0452011876
- ISBN-13: 9780452011878
- List Price: $24.00
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryAt last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Epic read but worth it
Rating:
I'm torn with this one. I was disappointed that Eddie didn't get to go to the gully. I was disappointed that Dangy ended up with John, Hank would have made sense, Frisco even more but I didn't get the John thing. I agree with the basic meaning of the book although it enforced it too much. At times I couldn't stop reading, at others it was a struggle to keep going. Sometimes I think all I held onto was the love stories.....I can't be that shallow...can I? Overall I'm glad I read it
An Epic
Rating:
The hardest part of reviewing this book is breaking it down into catagories as to not give the book as a whole the rating deserved by only single aspect of the book. These catagories help:
Story
The story of Atlas Shrugged is excellent. It is about a group of industrialists struggling to maintain their businesses in the face of a government which is looking to socialize. It contains some love story elements, some action, some suspence, and some brief humor. It is an intersting story and will keep you entertained.
Philosophy/Moral
Rand's philosophy is one of extreme individual expression. Happiness comes from the ability to maximize one's potential in terms of productivity. The moral is that some can produce, while others cannot or will not produce. Those who do not are leeches living off those who do.
Politics/Economics
Rand uses the story to build a strong case for laissez faire capitalism by showing the downward tendency of socialism. When wealth is taken "from each according to his ability to each according to his need", the tendency is to need rather than be able. She also shows the self serving tendency of the people put in charge of regulating the economy, and the violating nature of depriving an entrepreneur of his or her production.
Criticism
Rand's work can be seen as highly materialistic. The way she portrays characters is as either all good or all bad, which does not accurately portray life. Rand is very harsh and intolerant of any view other than her own, and comes across as such.
Praise
The demonstration of the digressive tendency of socialism is excellent. The book was entertaining and thought provoking.
All in all I really like this book. I highly recommend it as a window into socialist policy played out.
If you like it or dislike it, it is best to describe which catagory your criticism falls into, as not to dismiss or praise the book entirely.
Zero Stars
Rating:
I read this thirty five years ago and actually thought it was good at the time. It is said that the only true judgment one can make it to judge who you are today against who you were in the past. Thank you Ayn for revealing to me how I have grown. I recently purchased the CD version for a ten hour drive. The CDs are very well done. It is just too bad about the content. Today this material is pure paranoid dribble. Rand exhibits the fear that existed in the 1950s toward socialism AKA thinking with your heart. Thank God those days have passed, at least for those that have evolved.
Atlas may have shrugged, but I really cringed
Rating:
** Spoiler Warning ***
Oh, boy, where do I start? First, let me say this: that hero of hers may have stopped the motor of the world, he certainly could not slow down Ayn Rand's FURIOUS typewriter. This edition has 1,168 pages in tiny fonts. It should have been, and easily could have been, condensed to 300-400 pages. At most.
As a literary work it is flawed. There is not much I want to add to what other reviewers have already commented: it is long, the characters are two-dimensional, the dialogs long and repetitive, etc.
The only good thing I can say about this book is that it exposes the hypocrisy of those "benevolent social planners". Read in light of our current times of government bailouts and "wealth spreading", it is eerily familiar (for this I give it more than the minimum 1 star).
But it is not a novel in the traditional sense, it is a vehicle for Ayn Rand to expound her philosophy. And expound she did, with a vengeance.
Maybe one day I will write a full review of her philosophy, which I think is also flawed (though it has some good elements). Why is it called "objectivism" anyway? It sounds more like "subjectivism" or "absolutism" to me: she views everything as black-or-white, there is no middle ground, and those who do not agree with her are branded "irrational".
Since this is a review of the book, let me focus on it now. It being a vehicle for her philosophy which presumably she wants the user to apply in real life, then the fictional world she constructs must be at least somewhat realistic. But it is not. It is populated with three types of people only: 1. the industrialists whose only goal is to maximize his or her profit; 2. hypocrites who pay lip service to the abstract concepts of "social justice", "equalization of opportunity", but whose real purpose is to restrict the freedom of the industrialists and 3. the gullible "public", waiting to be rescued by their heroes. Aside from the fact that there are more types of people in the real world, even the ones in the book are not believable. The villains are singlemindedly against the heroes, to the point of absurdity (and Ayn Rand thinks herself as the champion of reason). For example, why is Jim Taggart so against his sister's success when he is the president of the same company? He stands to profit from it! Yet he persistently tries to run his own company to the ground. All the villains are absurd caricatures in her book.
Even the "good guys" are not believable, and their relationships are just bizarre. Consider the following conversation between Rearden and Dagny, after they had sex for the first time (Keep in mind these are two main characters and heroes of the book, they went on to have a long relationship, which is fraught with contempt, despisement and violence).
Rearden: I want to you know this. What I feel for you is contempt. But it's nothing, compared to the contempt I feel for myself. I don't love you. I never loved anyone... I wanted you as one wants a whore .. You're as vile an animal as I am. .. I held it as my honor that I would never need anyone. I need you. ...
Dagny: I want you, Hank. I'm much of an animal than you think. .. You'll have me any time you wish, anywhere, on any terms. .. If I'm asked to name my proudest achievement, I will say: I have slept with Hand Rearden. I had earned it.
Yet this is supposed to be a model relationship between the good guys. Now ask yourself if you would speak like this and have a relationship on such grounds. And Dagny is supposed to be a driven, shrewd and rational businesswoman. Give me a break. With heroes like these, who needs villains?
Caution - Tiny type
Rating:
I cannot add anything to what others have said about "Atlas Shrugged." However, I was a bit dismayed with this particular edition and the tiny typeface used.
It's a great book, but the tiny type is annoying.
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