Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition)
by Ayn Rand
|
List Price: Our Price: $24.05 You Save: $15.90 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $19.94 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Edition)
Book Review: The greatest book I can't finish
Summary: 5 Stars
Atlas Shrugged is the best piece of literature I've ever read. It is a masterpiece, a monument to achievement, a symphony to the triumph of the human spirit. It's the greatest book I've ever read.
Only I haven't finished it.
You see, the copy I received from Amazon.com is missing the last 50 pages. They are literally not there. Page 1141 is attached the back cover, with no other pages behind it to bring me to page 1192.
If you're familiar with The Fountainhead, there's a moment when Roark has a few buildings in construction that would essentially solidify his status as an amazing architect: the most important of which being the Stoddard Temple. However, following the trial concerning the controversial building, Roark's other projects remain untouched, becoming skeletons of what could be. He's been cut off from his achievement by the incompetent masses.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, like its predecessor The Fountainhead, denounces such incompetence. Several problems that plague the Earth--in the book and in real life--stem from people who refuse to use their rational minds. It is disgustingly ironic, then, that my copy of such a book is a defective product of incompetent workers. A person of reason wrote the book, men of reason created the printing presses, and men of non-existence defaced this wonderful work of art. Like Howard Roark, I have been cut off from my achievement--from my joy--by the incompetence of men who refuse to believe that A is A. This is not only extremely frustrating and outrageous, but it completely reinforces Rand's message and the importance of this novel. It stresses the importance of men of mind and the state of non-existence and indifference that plagues our world.
Like Roark eventually finishes his buildings, I will complete this book. I will have to do so by catering to incompetents like Henry Rearden trying to obtain illegal amounts of copper, but it will be done, and I will finish it. I will because it is the single most important piece of literature I have ever read. Because it is a masterpiece. Because A is A.
Book Review: Absorbing adventure; accurate caricature
Summary: 4 Stars
A cast of striking characters is developed into an absorbing, suspense-filled narrative presenting the final crumbling of a society crippled by power-hungry egalitarian, fascist-socialist politicians practicing the politics of envy and the confiscation and redistribution of wealth. It tends toward caricature, but is none-the-less a timely revelation of the general, destructive direction in which our government is now moving.
Railing against the "selfishness of the profit-motive," government officials hamstring the private economy with massive regulations and executive orders. Industries, railroads, social fabrics begin to disintegrate. Bureaucrats refuse to rescind their crippling legislation and release their stranglehold on the economy. Nebraska's seed corn is confiscated to feed Illinois. Prosperous businesses are cannibalized to save failures from the bankruptcy they earned. The best creative, productive minds of business [the geese that lay the golden eggs] withdraw on strike, and devastation is complete. If Robin [robbing] Hood doesn't get out of the way of liberty, he must be eliminated.
A few negative comments: This five-star novel [forgiving the excess repetition] suffers from a lack of sophistication in ethics and theology. Atheist Rand identifies all religion with Gnosticism [an early heresy which taught that the body and material world were evil; or with simplistic, literalist versions of extreme Calvinism which know nothing of the God of people like Niebuhr, Tillich, Hartshorne, or Kung.
Rand's either/or mentality leads her to simplistic, misleading ethical maxims. She preaches that work is THE purpose of life, and that we should practice "radiant selfishness," and that giving to a friend is not sacrifice [which she says is always evil]. For her, there is never a place for gratitude [thus, atheism]. She fails to see the distinction between selfishness and self-love [remember "Love neighbor as you love yourself"]. She failed to see that it's not always either/or, but often both/and.
Book Review: Atlas did indeed shrug
Summary: 5 Stars
That book has daunted me since I was fifteen at least. It sat there,in its hugeness, in drug store paperback racks and in book stores and it just looked at me and said HA! all these years, so at the library Saturday, I found it for sale, and paid a whole dime for it, nice small print--just going to let it sit here in the house staring at me and it going HA!
Thought I would try a couple of pages, and rapidly fell inside another world. Gargantuan and detailed and massively bright and evocative enough for me to see totally beyond what I had seen before. The writing is so skilled and sure handed and somehow wide eyed all at once. It is the heart of philosophy written as a gripping novel.
The scope is impossibly huge. The characters are not who they seem to be, many of them, but far more, gaspingly so. I could see them. I could almost hear them breathing. A book of huge muscles. Rugged and human as fictional humans can be.
The writing is a wonderful mystery science fiction character driven juggernaut that is a pleasure to read, a pleasure that comes from deep inside. It says listen to me, it says let me tell you the story of existence and does.
Its philosophy would never work in "reality" but the book's world is fascinating and honestly so otherworldly, while being at the heart of this one, I felt like a meteor had crashed through and the sky rained blood--it has such sureness, such courage and ocean depth, this book, like John Gault's fantastic engine, like Atlantis is indeed real and in this novel on the map.
I felt she was searching so deeply,so surely, so logically, for her own way and I was there beside her in my small brain looking at a world peopled with giants. Like socialism, objectivism would not succeed, for persons just don't work that way, and Gault would wind up being what he strove mightily against.
But in this novel. God, in this novel, Atlas did shrug. And the world did tremble. And so did I. Has there ever been a dime spent so wisely? Not for me. Not ever.
Book Review: A modern Classic on Individualism
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book in 1985, and found that it had an enormous influence on my thinking for a long time. As a result, I snapped up all her works that came to the Indian book shops. Ms. Ayn Rand was a staunch believer in individual freedom, and an enlightened capitalism. She opposed, in principle, that one man be expected to serve another, either through private charity or through enforced socialism. However, as I grew up, I found that this philosophy had a limited relevance to one's life.
The novel, nevertheless, is extremely well-written and has a very unique plot. It traces the lives of individual entrepreneurs in the land of freedom, who are being held back by laws and people who want them to serve others instead. Ayn Rand uses the characters to make long, powerful, speeches about her philosophy. She also weaves this in very deftly with the lives of the heroes, and shows what can happen when we put creative, dynamic people in bondage. There is a pleasant, surprising ending, which affects you like a fresh dawn
As fiction, the book suffers from these long speeches. As a book on Ayn Rand's philosophy, the story helps us understand her philosophy better. Her skill is such that each is meaningless without the other. Therefore, if you just read the story, skipping the speeches, you will miss most of the flavour. And if you read some of her other works, without having read this novel, you will find it very difficult to visualise the implications of her complex arguments.
While I am sort of glad today that I found a more, multi-faceted, multi-hued approach to life (than what Ms. Rand offered), I do envy you, if you haven't read this book so far. If you buy this book, you are sure to be in for a treat.
And later, even if you move on, some of her philosophy will perhaps always remain with you. And you will find yourself to be richer for it.
You may also find some of her other works interesting. I particularly recommend (The Fountainhead, Anthem, and The Virtue of Selfishness.
Book Review: A powerful message within a semi romantic novel
Summary: 4 Stars
.....Its a love story and a mystery all packaged to convey to you a philosophical and economic theory. There is no free lunch, peoples selfish motives are the mother of invention etc. and the path toward socialism is the path to ruin via murder, genocide, war, police states, fear....See Nazi (National Socialism), Maoist Communism, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Ethiopia (the great famine of the 1980's was social engineering - putting people on collectives), Russia and the economic stagnation & ever high unemployment rates that is Europe. It's a powerful message that gets told in a way that allows it to spread to a much larger audience. If your are a guy, give this "love story" to the gals in your life. Consider it a vaccine against the socialist mindset.
.....If you want a more analytical approach to this theory read Friedrich Hayek The Road To Serfdom. His arguments echo Ayan Rands in that he lays out how within centrally planned systems control over all resources and goods will naturally move into the hands of a small elite group which cannot process all the info necessary to properly allocate resources and goods in an economy. Dissatisfaction with the plan and disagreement over next steps lead to coercion to achieve anything. Failure of central planning is then looked upon by the citizens of the state as a lack of power by the state to bring about a good idea in the public interest. This then leads to the people actually handing more power to the state, which inevitably leads to the rise of an all powerful leader who is ruthless and willing to get things done by any means necessary. Totalitarianism then becomes the next step with one strong man after the next struggling for power and throwing the economy into fits and starts of chaos. In the end all individual economic and personal freedom is lost. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany both fell in this trap and are the models he studies. His worry back in the early 1940's were that other democratic states were precariously following the same path.