Just a recap of all her other fictional books. Still enjoyable.

Some of the best rhetoric I've ever read in defense of man's right to enjoy himself -- an extremely logical, extremely powerful, and easily digestible series of speeches on heroes, production, art, sex, and civilization. One of my new favorites of all time.

This is a brief overview of Rand's philosophy using her fiction novels to illustrate key points of her philosophy, objectivism.

Hilariously vicious and hateful in the first half, then boring in the second half

Rand does a good job diagnosing the problems of society, and explicating these in her fictional works. However, her philosophical underpinnings are riddled with holes and contradictions and are overall weak. She seems to think that there is an objective reality around us that man can recognize and then use his independent thought/rationality upon. She also is firm in her conviction that every use of thought must spawn from somewhere inside man, completely independent of any outside factor or influence (I think this is ironic because she hates communism because she grew up in Russia, talk abt outside influence on your ideas!!!)

She seems to think that feelings should be completely ignored and are a weakness (which makes sense considering she basically cheated on her husband) but I’m kinda confused by this because she doesn’t believe in mind/body duality and thinks man should be an integrated being????

This volume contains experts from her fiction that are great and worth the read. However, “For the new intellectual” as an essay can be skipped because it’s kind of a load of crap.

I absolutely loved the book. It's a collection of excerpts from some of her books, including the speech by John Galt. Ayn Rand propounded the theory of objectivism - an ethic of rational self-interest.

The book is a scathing attack on the liberals/intellectuals who claim to know better than most mere mortals. They advocate giving up individual rights in favour of common rights and propagate ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice.
They hate capitalists and treat making money as a sin. However, they do not explain how the world will be run without money. They criticize creative people and inventors but fail to elaborate how their contribution will be replaced in the world.

Though the entire book is quote-worthy and thus a must read in my opinion, some of the below really appealed to me:

The majority of those who posture as intellectuals today are frightened zombies, posturing in a vacuum of their own making.
Some were attacking scientists for inquiring into forbidden "mysteries" and interfering with God's design.
When you suspend your faculty of independent judgment, you suspend consciousness.
Enshrine mediocrity - and the shrines are razed.
It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offering.
We inherit the products of the thought of other men.
We praise an act of charity. We shrug at an act of achievement.
To settle down into a job thay requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion.
Why is it moral to serve the happiness of others, but not your own?
Learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness - and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man.
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it

The greatest of all times

It’s always great to remember what is true and this book refreshes all of Ayn rands ideas and was a pleasure to read, this book sums up her ideas from all of her books.

I readily admit I’m a big Ayn Rand fan. Atlas Shrugged stands for me above all other books save the Bible for its objectivist philosophy of self interest borne out of not living for any other man but for oneself first. There is room for faith and religion in her dictates, fortunately, or else I would have dumped her notions long ago. The New Intellectual is an aggregation of her philosophy that previews the main tenets as well as a preview of her four big novels—We the Living, Anthem, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Her construct opens up with, and develops, the binary personalities reflective of, and opposing her philosophy—the witch doctor/Attila and the producer/proponent. As I have read these four novels previous to this work (and I recommend the same to you to draw your own observations), The New Intellectual added little for me of her work that I didn’t already know. Thus, I would not give it a very high recommendation for reading—read the originals!

The best cannonfodder for debaters on the planet, I especially love her distaste for Kant. A part from these, a good spectrum of her devolopment of objectivism.

Her fiction, non-fiction and biographie must be read. Get to it NOW

Great primer on objectivism; starts with a 60ish page introduction to it by Rand and is followed by selected speeches from her plays/novels that best represent her philosophy.

She thinks she's an uperman-and does a poor job of proving it