loading 
register   login

Atlas Shrugged

by: Ayn Rand
en

0452011876  9780452011878 

 


Atlas Shrugged
By Ayn Rand


 


Book Description:

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



Summary: A must-read for your life
Rating: 5

By far one of the best books I have ever read. Whether or not you agree with Rand's philosophy, this book will make you think.



Summary: A Timless Message
Rating: 5

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is not just a novel; it is an intellectual illustration of the author's philosophy. It is also a suspense thriller, a mystery, a love story, and a self help book all rolled into one. It has been in continuous publication for over fifty years and people are still reading it. Why? Because though the philosophy is not perfect, it is not nearly as flawed as the other philosophies dished up and accepted for the last couple of thousand years. Ordinary man is not a worm; he is an individual and the values he adopts as an individual matter, they are the things that keep civilization moving, or freeze it into a static corpse. In reading Confucius one learns everyone and everything has a place and in this there is harmony, but there is no place for change. This is a major fault found in most philosophies and religious doctrines. The acceptable strategies for achieving happiness are all based on yesterday and today, none of them work when pitted against the only true constant of the universe, Change. Tomorrow always brings change, whether embraced or rejected, it comes and must be dealt with.
The characters in this story at the time of their creation were considered to be much larger than life, but life has gotten bigger since then and in today's world they feel only a little above real people we see in the news all the time. The story exposes the dark side of communism and the dangers of government meddling with the market, while inventors and entrepreneurs struggle to move the world into tomorrow. It begins with the sensing of change, the world is sliding into decay and stagnation. People have adopted cultural philosophies that are not logical and their civilization is not just slowing down, it's starting to fall backward. Instead of admiring achievement, people vilify it, feeling they should support those who can't achieve because this is a more noble way of behaving. Their philosophies are a lot like the recent acceptance of PC (politically correctness), where the truth and validity of an argument was not as important how it was stated and some things could not be discussed at all because such discussions were deemed not PC.
This is a book that will entertain and enlighten you and it could change the way you feel about those who criticize your achievements. At the time it was published the book had a message, but times have changed and interestingly enough the message has grown larger.



Summary: great book
Rating: 5

My husband won't stop talking about how great this book is. Anyone with a business background can appreciate it.



Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Rating: 4

I thought the beginning started out a little slow, but then I was able to really get into the story. I was bored at times with all the philosopical speeches, but the rest of the story is good. This book really made me think. For people that think a lot about the what ifs of life they will really like it.



Summary: As usual, message fiction sacrifices plot for theme, and suffers.
Rating: 2

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Signet, 1957)

I knew a great deal about Ayn Rand's philosophy long before I first experienced Atlas Shrugged. I read a good deal of her nonfiction in college, and a shorter novel, as well as endless articles about Rand and objectivism. I'm an objectivist myself, in the main, so it seems to me that if there's anyone Atlas Shrugged should appeal to, I'm it. Target audience, full steam ahead. Add to this that after a lot of reflection (and when you're in the middle of Atlas Shrugged, one of the ten longest professionally-published novels native to the English language, believe me, you have a great deal of time for reflection) I understood why Rand chose to keep her characters two-dimensional; paradoxically, it helped me remember who was who. But just because I appreciate something doesn't mean I have to like it.

I think anyone who's experienced Atlas Shrugged, even its most ardent defenders, is likely to have remarked at some point that a good editor would've don the book wonders. It could have easily been trimmed to five hundred pages (from its current 1,187) with very little trouble. But length alone is not enough to condemn a book; Stephen King's logorrhea garners sales in the millions, and the books are a great deal of fun to read.

Lack of subtlety in one's message is a reason to condemn a book, even when one agrees with the message in question. And yes, I do understand that John Galt's infamous sixty-page speech is a powerful piece of writing. What it is not, however, is something that has any place in a novel. It's as much fun to read, in its context, as the interminable, useless two hundred pages during which the action stops in Moby Dick so Melville can treat us to a treatise on how to kill, skin, and eat a whale. "But," the defenders cry, "it's all about theme!" Yes. That's my point. It's a novel. If you stop the action and address the reader with two hundred (or, in this case, sixty) pages of theme, you're no longer writing a novel, you're dolling up the editorial page and attaching your characters to it. And Galt's speech is, of course, only the culmination of many times-- dozens, at least-- Rand stopped the action, ignored the plot, and allowed her characters free rein to have endless discussions about the finer points of objectivism. All well and good, if you're writing a treatise on objectivism. But this is supposed to be a novel-- with well-drawn characters, a gripping plot, that sort of thing. Atlas Shrugged is not. It's the similarly execrable La Bas for a more enlightened crowd. It doesn't matter how much I agree with Rand's philosophy, or how much I enjoy her novels when they clock in at under half a million words. This is a book that almost demands you to read an abridged version. **