Muy buena obra...grande; genial! Siempre he sido un gran seguidor del objetivismo de Ayn Rand, pero con esta obra, tal y como he leído en otras reseñas, soy de la opinión de que ese súper hombre en específico, al que ella hace alusión aquí, tal y como lo describe no es realmente así. No existe! Es una novela capitalista hasta la médula. Resalta la virtud de los ricos y la élite mundial vs. la incapacidad de los pobres por lograr nada. Ojo! Ayn trata y plasma aquí las verdades, maneras y desquicies de la actuación del hombre empresario más allá del pleno deseo de ganar dinero, sino más y más poder.De poseer y dominar es de lo que se trata. Me quedo corto con esta reseña y os dejo con el resto de las que hay por aquí bastante más completas.Es una obra demasiado larga para nuestro tiempo. Los tiempos de hoy día y la sociedad te exigen escribir menos, pero al mismo tiempo contarlo todo! Y sí... sí se puede. Muy buena obra: fría y calculadora. De todas formas ese capitalismo duro pero en el que se debe anteponer la honorabilidad de las personas y la equidad en el reparto del mercado está muerto! El capitalismo de hoy es esclavista hasta la médula y el poder se reparte más que nunca entre unos pocos clanes ( multinacionales). Qué diría la gran Ayn si de entre los muertos resucitase?! En mi opinión, una Biblia para aquellos a los que no les importan ni los pobres, ni los que carecen de talento para trascender en la sociedad. Un clásico de 4,5 puntos!

With the recent bankruptcy of Sears which - under Edward Lampert - was managed on principles inspired by his love of Ayn Rand and Objectivism, where better place than a review of 'Atlas Shrugged' to celebrate the 'successes' of this widely loved libertarian philosophy.

Doesn't it fill you with confidence to know that Paul Ryan in the US and Sajid Javid, UK Home Secretary, are both great Ayn Rand fans?

Bankruptcy of Sears:

Salon: Ayn Rand Killed Sears
A great description of where Mr Lampert's Ayn Rand inspired business principles lead:

n  It got crazy. Executives started undermining other units because they knew their bonuses were tied to individual unit performance. They began to focus solely on the economic performance of their unit at the expense of the overall Sears brand. One unit, Kenmore, started selling the products of other companies and placed them more prominently that Sears’ own products. Units competed for ad space in Sears’ circulars, and since the unit with the most money got the most ad space, one Mother’s Day circular ended up being released featuring a mini bike for boys on its cover. Units were no longer incentivized to make sacrifices, like offering discounts, to get shoppers into the store.

Sears became a miserable place to work, rife with infighting and screaming matches. Employees focused solely on making money in their own unit ceased to have any loyalty the company or stake in its survival. Eddie Lampert taunted employees by posting under a fake name on the company’s internal social network.n

Bloomberg (subscription only): At Sears, Eddie Lampert's Warring Divisions Model Adds to the Troubles

n  To revive the retailer, Chairman and CEO Eddie Lampert introduced an unorthodox strategy: Every executive must fight to win. So far, the biggest loser is Searsn

Galt's Gulch, Chile - a Randian paradise

One view is that this is a Randian success, as one group of sociopathic conmen successfully defrauded another, larger group of people. Perhaps those more expert than me on Ayn Rand can comment on this view?

Vice News: Atlas Mugged: How a Libertarian Paradise in Chile Fell Apart

n  Two years after Galt's Gulch Chile was founded, the utopian project is mired in personal and legal conflicts and investors now claim that the guy in charge is a sociopath and a con man.n

Salon: Ayn Rand’s capitalist paradise lost: The inside story of a libertarian scam

n  Is it any wonder that a venture inspired by this book eventually defrauded its customers? And yet, despite the allegations against them, Gawker’s Adam Weinstein tells us that, “GGC developers will still sell you a 1,200-acre "Master Estate" for a mere $500,000. As long as you're also willing to extend GGC developers a $2 million ‘Founders Club’ loan along with that $500,000, which they'll totally pay back, they swear.” Weinstein snarks, “That silence you hear? That's the sound of Atlas shrugging.”n

There are many more Randian success stories - not least being Alan Greenspan's Ayn Rand inspired policies at the FED, which lead to the global financial crisis enriching a small group of psycopathic bankers. When I come across more I will be sure to add them.

Who is John Galt? Actually, I think he may be alive and well, and residing in the US Senate this very minute. I hate to accuse anyone directly, but I think he may even be from my own state. Metaphorically speaking of course, because he has many imitators around the world. When I read a book I usually try to seperate the writers personal views and opinions from the novel and read it for what it is, a work of fiction. That's hard to do with Ayn Rand, especially this book, because she hammers you with them in every paragraph. ("Socialists are weak and evil, capitalists are strong and good. The 99 percenters are trying to feed off the genius and success of the 1 percenters"). I didn't like the agenda put forth in this book, but I gave it 4 stars because when it comes to putting pen to paper, Ayn Rand could write. She just didn't write what I want to hear. I also gave it 4 stars because it's important for us to pay attention. This book has had, and still does have, a huge influence on millions of people. When Modern Library selected their 100 best novels of the 20th century Atlas Shrugged wasn't on the list, but they also allowed readers to vote and select their favorite novel. Atlas Shrugged was number one. That might have given us a little hint why someone like Trump could be elected president. As I did in my review of The Fountainhead, I will quote Pogo; "I have seen the enemy, and he is us".

"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. $

Rant from ages past

uff..so tiring!! After having plodded through more than 700 pages I couldn't go on reading it any more. Ayn Rand sees everything in black and white. The message of the book seems to be that any character who doesn't completely agree with her point of view doesn't deserve to be alive. Except a handful of Ayn Rand-ish characters, no one is worth a damn. And all she does is preach her extremist philosophy throughout the book. Once a character starts talking he would ramble on for pages and pages making the same point. Can't she spew out her fundae in a subtle manner or does she believe that we readers being normal people(i.e; different from her idea of a perfect individual) are too dumb to understand her message in any other way.

Guest column by The Sexual Intellectual, Quink Magazine

Ayn Rand, that "objectivist" proponent of selfishness...

In the idiotic Ayn Rand's pugnacious and polemical novel Atlas Shrugged, a book "nearly perfect in its immorality", according to Gore Vidal, the verb to give is forbidden. Her work is about self-centeredness, plain and simple, a song to the snatch, the shove, and the grab. In her earlier novel The Fountainhead, her character Dominique Francon would much prefer passively to sit by and watch every last one of architect Howard Roark's buildings explode rather than see their balconies hung with diapers. The "heroic WASP ideal" in Rand's skewed view excluded virtually everything female, in fact...

He says some more pleasant things about Ayn Rand in context of his essay, but let's just stick to her books here.

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.

I started reading this book eight years ago. Today, I finally finished it. Eight years! This book had been haunting me for eight years. It just sat there on the shelf, taunting me, saying: "oh no, dear reader, you dare not pick me up again. You know how boring I am. You know how tediously overwrought I am throughout, and you fear me! You fear me, don't you, Mr. Reader?"

And now I can finally turn around that hallucinogenic monstrosity, and say: "No, Book! I fear you no longer!" Because somehow, in a fit of immense willpower, I managed to finally force myself through the last several hundred pages of Atlas Shrugged this afternoon.

This is certainly the most overwritten book that I've ever read. In fact, I'd be inclined to nominate it for most overwritten book ever written. Reading it is like running a marathon, except you are only allowed to slowly walk during this marathon, and after the first two miles of the marathon, the scenery disappears as you are directed into a narrow room, wherein the walls contain the same repeated texture over and over again for the rest of your seemingly endless journey. Ayn Rand is not a subtle writer. This book batters you over the head with her philosophy again and again and again and again and again and again. And for those who have not gotten their head around her philosophical ideas by close to the end, there is an infamous seventy (!!) page speech explaining them all again. For me, it was infuriating.

I don't even take issue with Ayn Rand's philosophy. I disagree with it (quite strongly), sure. But it doesn't offend me in a powerful way like it offends so many people. Instead, this book offends me. I only really finished it to say that I had. It's a detestable reading experience, and I recommend it only to people seeking to serve some kind of penance.

A few good points:
+I actually came to care much more about railroad management than I expected I would. The first part, where the focus is mostly on railroad management, is probably the best part of the book. I don't really know what it says about the rest of the book though, when its most entertaining portion concerns rail logistics.
+The sense of decline over the course of the novel is palpable. I did feel like a great deal changed over the course of the story - but Rand did spend over a thousand pages creating this sense of change. Like literally every other element of the novel, this could still have been streamlined.
+Eddie Willers is a sweetheart.

BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD:
-THE MANY HOURS OF MY LIFE I SPENT READING THIS THAT I WILL NEVER GET BACK.

This review probably lacks nuance, but I'm so glad to have finally finished this book. If you're interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy, there must must must be better ways to explore it than by reading Atlas Shrugged.

I've read this a few times & it never fails to move me. Rand paints a very monochromatic view of the world - you either adhere to her ideal of integrity &, though the road is hard, find paradise or you're hopelessly lost in the general sea of humanity. I enjoy reading her philosophy books, although I need to keep a dictionary at hand - it's work. This is probably her best effort at putting her philosophy into a story that is both readable & speculatively fictional. It isn't a particularly pleasant story, but she does point out a lot of flaws in our current society.

Atlas Shrugged is a ferocious defense of the concept of capitalism. Although Rand depicts capitalism from her objectivist perspective and makes monumental over-exaggerations, she succeeds in demonstrating the importance of such basic social necessities as self sufficiency, personal responsibility, accountability, punctuality, and hard work. She equally condemns such economic poisons as socialized industry, redistribution of wealth, laziness, entitlement, and incompetence. Rand shows how these economic poisons also have the power to poison the human soul, embodied in the character of James Taggart. The ideas discussed in Atlas Shrugged are of monumental importance and Rand successfully unveils the consequences of a large-scale destruction of capitalism and how and why such destruction could become reality.

Aside from the political implications inherent in Atlas Shrugged, the book is also an excellent work from the fictional literature perspective. Critics condemn Rand’s bipolar use of almost godly heroes and devilish villains, claiming this as a failure to create human characters. This misconception is obviously false, based on the fact that Rand includes a Greek god’s name in the title. Creating god-like characters to emulate is not failure, it is an effective tool Rand used to establish a moral framework in a mythological industrial era. The only real criticism I can offer of this masterpiece is the use of repetitive, far too lengthy orations on objectivism, which culminates in John Galt’s two-hour speech over radio waves near the end of the book. This book could have, and probably should have, been shorter than it is. That said, I couldn’t put the book down for the first two-thirds of the story. The last couple of hundred pages were arduous, but the ending was worth the effort.

I recommend this book to adult readers of all ages, creeds, and political interests. The story is gripping, and the concepts it teaches are of great value. The enjoyment and enlightenment found in the over one thousand pages of this book are well worth the time and effort it takes to get through it.

Hey, if everybody acts like a total dick to everybody else, then everybody will be happy. Good call, Ayn.

This was really, really thought-provoking.

I'll come right out and say it: I am, in fact, a capitalist. So this book didn't challenge my ideology so much as confirm it, although I don't agree with much of Rand's objectivism. In fact, I have a great many bones to pick with her ideology, but I don't really want to go into a ton of that here.

I think this book falls into two categories: the story and the philosophy. The story is the conductor for the philosophy, but they're still somewhat separate elements, even if the story could not exist without the philosophy. So...I'll deal with them both as separate elements xD

STORY:
The story is deeply complex and vast in scope. We've got Dagny Taggart, our heroine, a whip-smart business executive who runs a train company and has horrible taste in men. We've got Hank Rearden, the steel tycoon who's only loosely based on John D. Rockefeller and who really isn't as sympathetic as he seems at the beginning. We've got Eddie Willers, the only decent man in this story in terms of morality, who's really just trying to do his job. Then there's Jim Taggart, who's a horrible, horrible person and needs to die. Lillian Rearden was my least favorite character in the whole book--while I could have felt bad for her if she'd let herself be the victim, the way she played everyone else was infuriating and I honestly completely understood why Hank hated her. The cast of both heroes and villains was vast. I loved that.

In terms of plot: this honestly read a lot like your average YA dystopian. We've got Special Snowflake Girl Dagny, who's completely unaware that she's sort of the driving force of a revolution even as she opposes it. There's four separate guys who are in love with her; this kind of drove me crazy. Every one of those guys (except for one, who was my favorite character overall because he was just Plain Nice) is the aggressive alpha male type guy who has a creepily strong sex drive and feels the need to act on his rush of feelings long before he actually states his love. The sexuality in this novel was entirely of one nature, and I hated it, if I'm being frank, which is part of the reason for the deducted star. Faaaar too much on-screen sex and the attitude of the characters toward it...I was quite uncomfortable with that whole thing. xD So...definitely can't recommend on that count.

The story was a negative arc, honestly. It starts out with the pinnacle of big businesses and only proceeds to spiral downward from them. I hated that. I hated it more than I could say. But not in a stars-deducted way--in a fury at the characters sort of way. The emotion of this story was expertly written, especially for a story that is supposed to not deal with emotions and only be about the mind. So...points for that.

The ending was another negative point for me. I felt it was remarkably weak, but that's to be expected with a story this long and detailed. How do you land a 1,100 page novel dealing with so many social issues? I don't know, and Rand doesn't seem to either. It was an okay ending in the context of the story, but I would have liked to see a different ending. Not sure what...but I digress xD

Dagny was a very compelling heroine, even if I hated her decisions as regarded men. I started out liking Hank, very quickly learned to hate him, and then had sort-of forgiven him by the end of the story. John...oh, what to say? Who is John Galt? Much of the rest of the cast ran together, although their roles are very iconic (a philosopher pirate? A copper baron playboy? A Cinderella story that ends in utter tragedy?) It's well done and I genuinely enjoyed this purely as a novel. Was it infuriating? Was it annoying? Was it aggravating? Yes to all of that. But...I liked it at the same time. I liked it a lot. I was addicted. xD

Now for:

THE PHILOSOPHY
This book gave two sorts of cautionary tales: one regarding the state of the economy when the government takes over, and one regarding the fact that when man lives without God, man's depravity will unconditionally take over.

The anti-capitalism presented in this story was terrifying. I dislike socialism and I'm not afraid to admit that, but the view of it presented by Rand horrified me. I was especially riveted by Jeff Allen's description of the Twentieth Century Motor Factory; here the ideal of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was put into practice on a small scale, and oh, what a concept this book gave of it. After all, how can we really decide what a man's "ability" and "need" are? Rand's answer--men vote on it, and use it to throw their fellow men under the bus. It's dangerous. It's a dangerous notion and a dangerous act to put into practice.

Yeah, I'm a capitalist, and I'm proud to admit it xD

But in terms of the depravity...oh, such depravity.

That's why I'm not going to embrace objectivism. Rand is unapologetically an atheist and her characters are too, and there is no kindness or love in their hearts. "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" is the mantra of the man characters...and I have a problem with that. Kindness is not weakness. Selflessness is not weakness. Giving to others does not reduce you in esteem. And oh, what horrific things were done by even the good characters. They don't need God, for they are their own gods...and that is a terrible thing for man to embrace.

Who is John Galt? That is the question this massive tome undertakes to answer, and while it takes forever to get there, it does answer it. In detail, great detail. It's fascinating. It's riveting. It's addicting. And oh, it's troubling.

4 stars.

Once, a long time ago, my mother told me Atlas Shrugged was her favorite book. To this day I cannot reconcile this fact with reality: my mom is the meekest, kindest, most considerate little Presbyterian woman on the planet. She's about as far from a venture capitalist as you can get: she works in an infant daycare and makes peanuts by watching the children of working parents who go to their own high-paying, high-profile, high-stress jobs. So when I finally picked up a copy of this book, the year after I graduated college, I was confused. Was she serious? Maybe her telling me that was an elaborate test, to get me to read it and draw the actual conclusion she held which is that of humility and service to others. Or maybe she'd just seen me read big books (The Dragonlance Chronicles was a staple of my childhood) and was trying to bond by naming the longest that she'd ever read. Or maybe I've just completely misremembered the whole conversation. Whatever the case, my mother is the least likely to be called an Objectivist you can think of.

2 stars, in my personal rating scale, means a book that I personally do not enjoy but can see some value in or at least understand its appeal to others. There is some decent writing in this novel (though if you produce a volume this size there's bound to be at least one or two interesting sentences per the law of averages). It is certainly fodder for discussion of various philosophical and moral systems of thought. I wouldn't say it was a complete waste of time that I read it. But I am leery of anyone who says it has shaped their life, inspired them in some way, or is one of their favorites.

Except for mom, of course.