It took me damn near forever to get through it (just to arrive at an unsatisfying ending) but I enjoyed the bulk of Rand's writing in Atlas Shrugged. This was Ayn Rand's magnum opus designed to demonstrate her philosophy "objectivism." Long story short this book is about mid-20th-century American industrialists in a world dying of moral decay. Her heros are the honest and ambitious businessfolk, industralists, artists, creators; her villains are those that leech from them, stealing ideas, time, property, money, usually via the notion that able men should be forced to sacrifice themselves for the unable, unwilling, and/or undeserving. The book is a good piece of romantic fiction by itself except for its unnecessary length, and sometimes two dimensional characters. In essence a reaction against communism, her philosophy holds that [the following quoted from Rand:] Man—every man—is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of others. He must exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself; reason is man's only means of perceiving reality which exists as an objective absolute.

I gather a lot of wisdom and strength from this in terms of indivduality, freedom and endurance in the face of peer/societal pressure, however I have my differences with it (in addition to the cynicism, elitism, and general contempt it tends to elicit from its ardent followers):

-I don't believe in abolishing all taxes
-I do believe in abstract art
-I don't believe the world is overrun by moral cannibals and even if it were the solution isn't to 'run away to a secret village in the mountains'
-I think she could have had a few characters with more realistic life situations, i.e. heros with children or a close group of friends who could demonstrate that one's self-interest extends to those which s/he loves.

But I am all about rational, non-victimizing self-interest, and capitalism, baby. A lot of people like to bash her work as the bible of selfish assholes and I'm sure many people do misinterpret it as such, but when taken with a grain of salt, her works are inspiring to anyone who creates, values intellectual property, and aspires to greatness of utmost integrity. If you're interested in Rand's philosophy I recommend starting with The Fountainhead. That book changed my life. Atlas was my 30,000 mile checkup.

4 ⭐️ stars from me! “Who is John Galt?” Finally I know what that means! I have heard many references to this story so I’m glad I finally read it. It’s a daunting read, the audio version is 52 hours long! Once I got into the story however, I was captivated and couldn’t wait to see how it was going to end.

People seem to either love or to hate this book. I loved it but also didn’t agree with all of Ayn Rand’s philosophies. The story is very thought provoking and will stay with me for a long time.

Parallels between the society in Atlas Shrugged and our society right now are incredibly alarming. The corruption of our politicians, unions, and bureaucracies are obvious to anyone paying attention. Politicians run on platforms of empathy instead of problem solving. They are “career” politicians and remind me of the Washington cronies in the book.

And the culture! The entitlement and victimization in Atlas Shrugged mirror what I see every day among millennials and main stream media alike. And many seem unable or unwilling to take responsibilities for their own actions. The prosperity and freedoms we enjoy in America are taken for granted. As if prosperity and freedoms are a right and not to be earned. As if all societies from the beginning of time have been free and easy and wonderful.

We live in the most free society that has ever existed! And yet the movement growing at a rapid pace to hate on our country is strong. I think this book should be a must read for college students. If for no other reason, to consider another philosophy, other than the trending socialism.

I don’t agree with all of Ayn Rand’s philosophies. But I think Atlas Shrugged demonstrates a perfect example of capitalism and communism magnified. Any system that robs from the rich and gives to the poor is doomed and will end in poverty for all. I especially loved the portrayal of the decline of the Twentieth Century Motor Factory. The ideal “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” was practiced on a smaller scale at the company. How is it to be determined what a man’s “ability” and “need” are? At the Motor company they decided ability and need would be determined by voting. At the beginning, their experiment was exciting and promising. But the downfall was fast and riveting. And makes so much sense. There’s a reason why socialism has never been successful!

What I don’t agree with is Rand’s belief to “pursue your own happiness as your highest moral aim”. I don’t believe you can find true happiness in selfishness. Being selfless and thinking of others is not a weakness.

The craziest thing about this story is finishing it and then comparing it to the Green New Deal and/or Roosevelt’s New Deal. Yikes

I loved this book and have read it 2 or 3 times. A lot of people can only see the political views of this. It teaches you to think with your mind, rather than your heart. Use your mind instead of expecting to get the rewards of others who do all the thinking.

The book is wordy, but her words are genius in my opinion. I loved the long radio speech. Is the story black and white? Definitely. Authors have different styles - people complain. If every author wrote in the same style, people would complain.
The people in Ayn's story didn't work for money. They loved their jobs. And she wasn't saying you had to be a rich, corporate big shot to hold the world up. There were teachers and stay at home moms in her little world in the mountains.

Ayn has extremely valuable points. If you can't handle looking at imperfections, this book might not be for you. If you have an open mind and are willing to learn something from every book and experience you have and grow as a person, then you will benefit from reading this book. It's not for everyone. It's definitely ahead of it's time but I liked it.

This book just flat-out sucks. There's no other way that I can put it. You would think that in a book over 1,000 pages long you'd have characters that show certain degrees of subtlety, nuance, and growth. Not so with this book. Absolutely everything is in black and white terms, and the result is something closer to a religious text than a novel probing into the mind of man. I came away from this book hating every single character in it. The "dialog" is the flattest I've ever read...it's nothing more than Rand spewing out her philosophy out of characters that might as well be wearing white hats and black hats as in an old Western film, in case the good/bad distinction wasn't made clearly enough for you. There are some decent parts, such as the first run on the John Galt line, but damn near everything is ruined by Rand's literary version of stamping her feet and screaming "if you don't agree with me, then I'm going to take all my toys and go home!" It's a great endurance test, and I do take a certain snobbish pleasure in saying that I finished one of the longest books ever written, but overall this book was a huge waste of time.

I would like to state one last thing: I happen to agree with certain parts of Rand's philosophy, and I've read Anthem and The Fountainhead. Someone responded to a review I wrote of Anthem stating that a historical perspective was important. Yes, it is important, but all the historical perspective in the world isn't going to make this a good book. You don't need historical perspective to enjoy Don Quixote, or Candide, or the works of Shakespeare. You don't even need to like the characters to enjoy a book: Lolita is a great book, but I disliked everyone in it. I also know Rand's background, how her knowledge of Socialism was a lot deeper than most other writers at the time. I can understand why she would feel the way she felt and why she would write the way she wrote. Still, taking everything into consideration, Rand was still a lousy writer, and Atlas Shrugged is still one of the biggest loads of garbage I've ever wasted my time reading.

The premise: Everyone is stupid except the faith and ideology I want to spread with awkward, bad writing and glorifying sociopathy with a touch of ethical thoughts to make it not look even more inhuman.

Imagine the book with a different plot instead of good capitalist vs evil socialist/communist.
Let´s say
Intelligent, friendly believers of one faith vs the barbaric, cannibalistic tribe members of a sect.
Great, beautiful misogynist vs ugly women.
Any kind of wonderful fascism-, eugenic-, master race- driven lunatics vs all other humans.
Wise feminists vs bad men.
Environmentalists vs evil bureaucracies.
Ingenius racists vs the inferior population.
The good political party vs the evil political party.
Good leftists with pro Nordic model Keynesian strong social state vs evil turbo capitalistic, wait, no, that´s wrong, that doesn´t belong here.

Looks quite different, doesn´t it? One understands the sheer stupidity much better in such an ironized context and it shows the immense main problem of misusing fictional literature to implement agenda and bias in a work of fiction to manipulate so many people in real life to think that destructive ideas are great. Just because someone has had bad experiences with one group of people or a regime, as Rand had with marxism and communism, that doesn´t mean, in a simplified and stupid thought, that everything about the opposite is positive and great.

Why so many adjectives and extreme contrasts in her writing you may ask? Well, if an author is unable to explain things by showing, not telling, and being an objective and talented storyteller, there have to be many little helpers to make it understandable.

It´s impossible to read this without skimming and scanning, there is so much redundancy, info dumping, characters thinking and telling the same stupid premise again and again to themselves and others, and bad writing that it´s truly hard to stay motivated, but it´s a great exercise for learning how not to do it. As there is always said, to enjoy or produce good art, it´s important to consume the worst possible to learn by analyzing the mistakes. But if you aren´t playing around with speed reading techniques for decades, which includes daily training and consciously switching between both speed and intention of reading to understand, learn, or enjoy, it might be a waste of time to read this horrible book. I mean, what about dialogues or interacting with the world instead of endless, boring inner and outer monologues? Looks like some people never get out of pubertal defiant phase.

It´s not just one of the most dangerous and destructive books ever written, but a poorly written too. So many people saying that they got influenced by this piece of capitalist propaganda show how the misuse of literature can be instrumentalized to promote an inhuman and disturbing point of view. It gives privileged, mostly white, already rich WEIRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol... young people the legitimization to feel great about being elitist, bigoted, libertarian egomaniacs that think that being an important part of the mad machinery that destroys the planet is something good, worthwhile, and to be proud of.

Not even to talk about people who truly believe that it´s destiny, the product of one´s own work to be proud of, or other demented philosophies in the mix justifying it. I have the extreme luck of being a privileged white person, but I don´t think that I deserve it or use pop psychology, fraud humanities, or even economics to vindicate something that is just the coincidence of birth.

In the contrast, I tend to feel ashamed about my first world problems, lack of motivation, procrastination, all these luxury problems, and have a strong attitude towards improving the world by spreading the knowledge about the good, proven, logical, human, alternatives to the stupidity that ruled the earth for millennia. A kind of obligation to be thankful, mindful, positive, and progressive. I don´t get it why educated, intelligent people are still falling victims to ideologies, it must have something to do with a genetic predisposition to believe, no matter how illogical it is.

I really said myself that I wanted to objectively understand why people are adoring such a piece of trash like this, if it´s at least an entertaining work of art, but it isn´t even that. It´s the worst of both worlds, a bad fictional pseudo intellectual, fringe science, wanna be philosophical, collection of garbage and something pushing and downplaying turbocapitalism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, and the destruction of everything needed to build a fair and sustainable economic system and society while giving the perpetrators a pseudophilosophical vindication for doing so. Because they are superior. Extremism is always the same, boring concept, look at all the great historical examples with the same mentality, I live in a country with a history lesson around that you might have heard about.

Trash like the Rands´ pseudoscience of objectivism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objecti...
is why I am meanwhile avoiding many humanities that are mainly fairytales built around elements of the replication crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replica...
and propaganda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaga...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychol...

One of the best, short reviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j56I...

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Ayn Rand’s classic novel first published in 1957 should be a wake-up call to today’s millennial's, who have been taught to believe socialism will bring forth an even better American lifestyle, including zero school debt, free healthcare, along with sunny days relaxing with a good book sipping fine wine and eating an appetizer at an outside café. If only it were true. Socialism and communism are not so grand when freedom, independence and personal liberty are lost to societal leaders monitoring government control under “the principle of public good”.

"When geniuses are free to think and create, the common man flourishes. When geniuses are stifled and restricted, the common man suffers." Where do you think we stand today? I am rather embarrassed to find that I have reached my current age and have never before read Atlas Shrugged. Written in 1957, the novel was thought to be almost "science fiction", but not so today. In a way I am happy to have read it for the first time.

How much government intervention is too much government intervention? Is it when we need new laws to correct the damage of the former laws? Is it when the President's Inaugural speaks of collective action instead of individual responsibility?

When you read of Rand's Anti-Dog Eat Dog rule, how can you not think of the auto bail-outs, TARP, or any company that is "too big to fail." How about the Equalization of Opportunity Bill, doesn't it resemble any redistribution of wealth scheme, including taxing the rich? Is New York's Fair Share Tax Reform one reason for the trend for citizens to leave states with "millionaire tax"? Are people really leaving states like Maryland, New York and California because of a tax situation? And honestly when you read about Rahm Emanuel sending a decaying dead fish to a pollster who had angered him, how can you help not thinking of Floyd Ferris in Atlas Shrugged? Does Mr. Thompson statement that he "has" the press make you wonder about what you have been hearing in the media. Is Atlas Shrugged fact meets fiction....I hope not!

Atlas Shrugged is not an easy read, but an important one. I have learned so much by reading it. I have learned I value personal responsibility and will work harder to achieve my own highest potential. I know the difference between a looter (Wesley Mouch) and a moocher (all of Hank Rearden's family) and a producer (Hank and Dagny). I worry that someday looters and moochers could outnumber producers. If that should happen, how we would survive as a nation?

I think Atlas Shrugged encourages us to examine how America was and how America is and how Amerca will be. I am reminded of one of the favorite movies of my nieces, The Princess and the Frog. The character Tiana (very much like Dagny!) sings a song, "...I've worked hard for every thing I've got, and that's the way it is supposed to be..." Perhaps instead of equality of outcomes, our government should be examining equality of opportunities and allowing each individual to soar.

I recommend this book to everyone. It is an important book with an important message.
P.S. $

I have a soft spot for Ayn Rand. Not for her ideas, God no, her frothing, short sighted capitalism worship and rape fetishes are fouler than Satan's unwashed boxers. Nonetheless, Ayn Rand the wordsmith and person is still strangely fascinating, and she is undoubtedly the B-movie star of philosophy and the Ed Wood of literature.

Her villains are single minded robots made of spray painted buckets and colanders; her protagonists are as one-dimensional as background props with garish colour jobs. Her plots are endless rambles of terrible exposition and philosophical speeches, shoe-horned in because the director worried the metaphors weren't clear enough. She also has her absurd 'robot leopard versus giant octopus in a volcano' moments no sane writer would attempt.

The above description is true for all her books and plays (save  Anthem which is unforgivably boring), but as for Atlas Shrugged itself:
I liked Dagny. She's a no nonsense, get shit done heroine with sexual independence and agency, which is especially commendable for the time this was published. It's a shame then that she is ultimately seen as the 'grand prize', awarded to whichever of our male protagonists can demonstrate they're the most obnoxiously objectivist stud. Two of our male protagonists were "alright", but the infamous John Galt is simutaneously the most interesting man in the world and rather forgettable in person. Every other character has their role rigidly defined, with good and bad split exclusively into 'blood sucking parasite villains' or 'salt of the earth paragons of objectivist ideals', and eveyone's dialogue is so unreal and prescribed it becomes hilarious pantomime, all with the authenticity and power of sock puppets.

Ayn Rand, from a story telling and philosophy standpoint, is not very good, but I find her just competent and incompetent enough to enjoy as unintentional comedy.

And that would be fine if that's how we all treat her work,  A Modest Proposal written by an actual cannibal, but the problem is Rand is also competent enough for people to take her seriously, because she appears to agree with their own bias that everything should be about money and looking after number one.

What's even more annoying is many of the people who applaud her for that clearly didn't do what I did, which was actually read this brick from start to finish, including the John Galt speech (I'm still angry a chocolate biscuit didn't materialise from the ether to reward me for that). Rand praised people who create, stuck to principles (flawed as they may be), are willing to get their hands dirty and take risks. Someone who makes cash by selling off production to sweat shops or through aggressive stock takeovers, all while knowing Daddy or the government will bail them out when it all goes tits up, were never Rand's idea of Objectivist heroes at all. They don't make anything but money and they're doing Rand a disservice by claiming she'd approve. She openly hated Reagan, and I can promise you she'd have vomited when Trump claimed she was his favourite author.

Should you, if you're economically left of Milton Friedman, read this book for a laugh? No. It's a thousand pages of synthetic strawmen tosh and I am a masochist. If you're genuinely interested about Rand but want to keep your sanity, then watch her movie adaption of her other book  The Fountainhead instead. It sums up her views found in Atlas Shrugged as well, and it's only two hours of adorably dumb melodrama and phallic metaphors, which is still an hour shorter than that bloody John Galt speech.

A novel that promises much yet delivers little, with Rand’s bitter and contemptuous view of humanity shining throughout its 1200-odd pages. Compulsively readable but curiously hollow, this really is the ultimate dystopian novel.

Any Rand's ego-driven jungle ME ME ME capitalism is just as repressive and destructive as cod-communism and cod-socialism. Plus it rapes the planet and only serves the super-rich.

GREED is truly the most terrible challenge of our times, and capitalism is its tool, its means to power and more greed.

Greed is a (contagious) mental illness, an unfillable hole, a hunger that denies justice, a brutal expression of broken egos.

Greed is having a million times as much as the poor and still feeling you don't have enough.

Greed consumes the earth without respite, and is a cancer on humanity.

Greed destroys us and our children and their future.

Greed is death.

If you don't agree with Ayn Rand's opinions then you'll probably dislike Atlas Shrugged. I guess this is why this masterpiece has a meagre 3.69 rating. Her philosophy just makes sense to me and even more so in the Covid world. Covid has highlighted how entitled people think they are. I switch on the news and people are just demanding all manner of outrageous things. Nobody has a right to demand anything. I'm sure this will become more apparent now there's a vaccine. The public will be outraged that they'll have to wait for something they didn't create. The genius behind this vaccine will become our very own Hank Reardon. Well fuck people.

Philosophy aside this is also a great story, superbly written with immense depth. It's huge and took 3 weeks but it was worth it. I'm now tempted to tell my lazy fat ass boss to go fuck himself on Monday morning.

I'd say, this is a one controversial book. Some say it was written under the influence of amphetamines and I sort of tend to think that there seems to be a very good chance of that being true. I don't think this book could've been written otherwise: the AR would've probably gotten tired of preaching to the choir, to the passers by, to people everywhere and not even really there...

Basically, this is a very outsized rant, one of the longest and the most monumentally declarative ones I've ever seen. It masquerades as fiction but drat, it's a lecture on precisely how dissatisfied the author is with the world and what could be done for the purpose of reviewing the said world to make it a better place (or maybe just a more boring one).

I have a feeling that someone somewhere had a very outsized commonplace book where every idea that ever crossed their mind was meticulously noted and these same notes (random and mutually irrelevant) made it into this novel and were a large influence on the plot building.

I seriously disliked the postscriptum where AR is so blatantly demure about her place of birth and education. 'Born in Europe', 'graduating from a European college', huh, my ass. She graduated from a Russian University, was born in Russian Empire, was chased out of there by commies - was it so hard to put it like that without all the obscurification? Or was it something else: did she expect that such reveals would negatively impact on her books' sales? Russian Empire is not the same thing as the USSR (or the modern day Russia) - did she expect that that would've been such an overly difficult concept to grasp for the general public? That's sort of a telling tell...

I am not really sure how to rate it, since I can probably rate it every rating between 1 and 5 and even FAV... I think I'll wait a bit and see how I feel about it when I finish this review and do some palate cleaner reading.

Some ideas are inherently incorrect (at least in the most generalized case):
Q:
man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer-because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement. (c) I don't think this aplies to just everyone.

Some ideas are questionable:
Q:
I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. (c) Like uh-huh, should parents just abandon their newbors? You know, those parties won't party themselves and there are these incovenient kids... On the other hand, some people just abdicate of their own lives for the sake of 'bettering' the life for other people: parents smothering kids with unnecessary control, overbearing relatives knowing how everyone else should live and so on... So I'd say this should be interpreted on the case by case basis.

Some quotes are probably tongue-in-cheek:
Q:
In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both. (c)


... and some more are really catchy:
Q:
Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind. (c)
Q:
What is man? He's just a collection of chemicals with delusions of grandeur. (c)

Yet other concepts are quite epic and intriguing:
Q:
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. (c) Now, that's got interesting applications.