Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | The most profound book I have ever read

Atlas Shrugged | Ayn Rand | Celebration of the individual

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Atlas Shrugged

	Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand Plume, 1999 - 1200 pages average customer review:based on 1533 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback.

With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers.

Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.

* Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club

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The most profound book I have ever read

This novel is incredibly long, but the finest peace of literature I have ever read, and I have read many. This story is an intriguing tale that somehow relates to reality in a way that can clarify what seems to be so very wrong with society. This lady was an incredible writer. Even thought the entertainment value of this story made it worth the time, I can honestly say that it changed me and got me think about things I had never thought of before. It changed me for the better.

Celebration of the individual

There is something solid about a book where the story echoes in reality fifty years after it was written. It amazes me how I can see the story of Atlas Shrugged play out in today's world again and again with different characters filling the roles. In this book Ayn Rand has captured many of the truths of our world, many realities about the personalities that inhabit it and many unspoken rules about the way we interact. This book celebrates individual accomplishment and those who change the world through sheer personal will power.

In regard to some of the comments I have read - this book is not by any means conservative leaning, especially in today's political environment. It actually attacks both political ideologies of the major political parties here in the United States. If you didn't catch that then you really weren't reading close enough.

The book is very wordy and the ending isn't as moving as most of the book is. However, it is a great read for anyone regardless of ideology. Every person who thinks themselves open-minded should read this book. Afterward you will think twice about the laws that we have put in place.

Atlas Shrugged is definitely a classic and one of my favorite books, although very wordy. Few readers I have known have agreed with every part of objectivism but Atlas Shrugged has in at least some small way affected the way they look at life.

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A 14 year-old's essay on 'Industrialists I Have Loved'

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 more '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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A hard to put down pulp

Atlas shrugged has the same issues the Moby Dick does. Under a thousand page novel, a wonderful 200-300 page novel is struggling to get out. The book is a page turner, hard to put down, but is weighed down by the illogical worship of money and power. The assumption that the best minds will always float to the top and that those who are rich are more virtuous destroys a wonderful pulpy thriller. If she had stuck with fiction and ignored philosophy, this would be a 5-star review.

I read this book in one night, skipping the speech at the end going to the next part. That speech, in its own right is a horrible piece of drek that should have been edited out by any right-thinking publisher.

Pros: Gripping, hard to put down, somehow motivates you to find out what happens next
Cons: 2-dimensional (or less) characters, simplistic plot, unnecessary length, stupid pseudo-philosophy.

Conclusion: Not bad for a flight across the US if you can stand the embarrassment of carrying it.

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