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Atlas Shrugged
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Manufacturer: Plume
Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Plume
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Our Price: $14.96
You Save: $ 7.04 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Plume
Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Plume
Average Customer Rating:
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Atlas Shrugged Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780452011878
ISBN: 0452011876
Label: Plume
Manufacturer: Plume
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 1200
Publication Date: 1999-08-01
Publisher: Plume
Studio: Plume
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780452011878
ISBN: 0452011876
Label: Plume
Manufacturer: Plume
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 1200
Publication Date: 1999-08-01
Publisher: Plume
Studio: Plume
Editorial Review of Atlas Shrugged
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
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
Customer Reviews of Atlas Shrugged
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Life Changing Book
Review: I have always believed man is a hero. Ms. Rand shares that belief as well and tells a wonderful story about it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Incredible book
Review: Ayn's characters are taken to archetypal extremes to illustrate her point. If you can get past that, this book explores some interesting concepts that I continually find myself thinking back to and relating to modern events.
Simply as a work of fiction, it can be a little slow in parts, but overall it succeeds as entertainment.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Ayn Rand. Best Seller for a reason.
Review: There's a reason Ayn Rand has been on the top seller's list for multiple decades.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read, I absolutely love it, I have told everyone about it. It is truely a good read.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Second Coming of Capitalism
Review: Every few years I pull out Atlas Shrugged and read it again. Amid an intensely structured writing style with detailed characterizations that would make Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton blush, I continue to find ideas that mirror the double-minded world in which we live.
A world where legislators complain about rising oil prices and jobs moving off-shore, punish those who the public perceives as the guilty party, and end up making things worse. A world where popular leaders are less concerned about the correctness of the ideas they advocate, but more concerned about the number of followers they can attract. A world where some highly publicized and popular ideas, if taken to their logical conclusion, would result in the eradication of mankind from this planet.
Ayn Rand attempted to identify the root causes of these behaviors and propose a solution in an epic end-of-the-world story. In brief, in some future or parallel world, everything is grinding to a halt. The primary producers are dropping out and disappearing. They are being replaced by people who are both humanistic and opportunistic, but not very knowledgeable. As a result, industry continues to collapse. Eventually the government steps in and in a series of directives are issued: each more severe and more socialistic. But each directive worsens the situation, until a dictator-like status is reached.
Amid this crisis, the book primarily traces the activities of two individuals: Dagny Taggart, in charge of the operations of the last Transcontinental Railroad, and Hank Rearden, the last of the steel barons. Both characters are very intelligent, responsible, and highly productive. Other important characters move in and out of the narrative: the good, the bad, and the indifferent, but Taggart and Rearden are used to discover the root causes of the world-wide collapse.
Near the novel's end, when the causes (according to Rand) are rooted out by both Taggart and Rearden, there is a long speech (Part 3, Chapter 7: "This is John Galt Speaking") that sums up Ayn Rand's philosophy. It is the notorious 50 page speech, which most people either skip over or browse rapidly. Unless one is reading Atlas Shrugged simply for entertainment, I recommend that you take the time to carefully read the "speech." There are a number of issues (especially her very anti-religious stance) that are spelled out and justified in that speech, but hardly touched in the book.
I believe that Ayn Rand correctly identified some of the root causes that contribute to this double-minded world, but in some areas, she incorrectly identifies the motivations for some groups, probably based on her prejudices. As a result, her solution is partly correct and partly incorrect.
Two trends, one strictly philosophical and the other religious, have contributed to the devaluing the mind and the worth of individuals. Since David Hume stated that no one could prove the existence of either the Mind or Matter, comedians have quipped "No Mind, Never Matter," and romantics have exploited the opening to push their own agendas. By subjugating the mind to feeling, as the Romantics have done, is a recipe for disaster. Rand believes that the reverse should be true, feelings subjugated to the mind.
For Ayn Rand, the mind and the rational process take precedence. For morality, the ability to produce. Religion, as is, is to be discarded, because it ultimately depends on a non-rational activity (the religious experience). So any morality based on a non-rational activity cannot be the basis of a moral code. Besides establishing a moral code on a religious basis, it is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from adopting a moral code from a romantic standard. So you can see where her anti-religious views arise.
For my part, I question whether mind or feeling should be subjugated to one or the other; believing, instead, that a delicate balance needs to be maintained else one falls into the warped condition experienced by the opposing sisters in "Sense and Sensibility." At a time when rhetoric is replacing rational thinking, especially in the political realm, the rational needs to be rebalanced with feelings (a terrible shock to most Romantics), else we too will face a world collapsing.
I also question Rand's attempt to replace a religious moral code with a purely rational moral code based solely on the ability to produce. The first objection, I admit, is solely emotional: that is, the image of Dagny Taggart as a willing sex-slave to the highest producer. Not based on love, that is irrational, rather attracted to the person exhibiting the highest morality, the ability to produce.
The second objection is purely practical: the atheist morality has one significant flaw that no one in Western thought has ever found a work-around - Pride. The ability to compete, no holds bared, without having to acknowledge any higher power would lead to a dog-eat-dog environment that would be Hell on earth for the majority of mankind. Heaven only for the producer, who can out fox, grab, or maneuver the other guy, even if the other guy has a better way - bury him!
My third objection is historic: for every Ford (who paid his staff above Union wage and implemented work safety processes) there were several dozen Andrew Carnegies, John D. Rockefellers, and J.P. Morgans (who abused their workers, stole others' ideas, and manipulated stock prices to increase their own income). Rand would protect all the above, although I suspect that Ford was closer to her model of Rearden then the later Industrialists.
Despite my objections, I believe that Any Rand correctly identified the imbalance between the rational and emotional as the underlying cause for the inability to produce or to solve significant political or economical problems. I still have to ponder her idea that the logical conclusion of the romantic is nullity. In any case, I will probably come back and re-read Atlas Shrugged many times in the future. Highly recommended.
Review Summary: Life Changing Book
Review: I have always believed man is a hero. Ms. Rand shares that belief as well and tells a wonderful story about it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Incredible book
Review: Ayn's characters are taken to archetypal extremes to illustrate her point. If you can get past that, this book explores some interesting concepts that I continually find myself thinking back to and relating to modern events.
Simply as a work of fiction, it can be a little slow in parts, but overall it succeeds as entertainment.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Ayn Rand. Best Seller for a reason.
Review: There's a reason Ayn Rand has been on the top seller's list for multiple decades.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Atlas Shrugged
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read, I absolutely love it, I have told everyone about it. It is truely a good read.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Second Coming of Capitalism
Review: Every few years I pull out Atlas Shrugged and read it again. Amid an intensely structured writing style with detailed characterizations that would make Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton blush, I continue to find ideas that mirror the double-minded world in which we live.
A world where legislators complain about rising oil prices and jobs moving off-shore, punish those who the public perceives as the guilty party, and end up making things worse. A world where popular leaders are less concerned about the correctness of the ideas they advocate, but more concerned about the number of followers they can attract. A world where some highly publicized and popular ideas, if taken to their logical conclusion, would result in the eradication of mankind from this planet.
Ayn Rand attempted to identify the root causes of these behaviors and propose a solution in an epic end-of-the-world story. In brief, in some future or parallel world, everything is grinding to a halt. The primary producers are dropping out and disappearing. They are being replaced by people who are both humanistic and opportunistic, but not very knowledgeable. As a result, industry continues to collapse. Eventually the government steps in and in a series of directives are issued: each more severe and more socialistic. But each directive worsens the situation, until a dictator-like status is reached.
Amid this crisis, the book primarily traces the activities of two individuals: Dagny Taggart, in charge of the operations of the last Transcontinental Railroad, and Hank Rearden, the last of the steel barons. Both characters are very intelligent, responsible, and highly productive. Other important characters move in and out of the narrative: the good, the bad, and the indifferent, but Taggart and Rearden are used to discover the root causes of the world-wide collapse.
Near the novel's end, when the causes (according to Rand) are rooted out by both Taggart and Rearden, there is a long speech (Part 3, Chapter 7: "This is John Galt Speaking") that sums up Ayn Rand's philosophy. It is the notorious 50 page speech, which most people either skip over or browse rapidly. Unless one is reading Atlas Shrugged simply for entertainment, I recommend that you take the time to carefully read the "speech." There are a number of issues (especially her very anti-religious stance) that are spelled out and justified in that speech, but hardly touched in the book.
I believe that Ayn Rand correctly identified some of the root causes that contribute to this double-minded world, but in some areas, she incorrectly identifies the motivations for some groups, probably based on her prejudices. As a result, her solution is partly correct and partly incorrect.
Two trends, one strictly philosophical and the other religious, have contributed to the devaluing the mind and the worth of individuals. Since David Hume stated that no one could prove the existence of either the Mind or Matter, comedians have quipped "No Mind, Never Matter," and romantics have exploited the opening to push their own agendas. By subjugating the mind to feeling, as the Romantics have done, is a recipe for disaster. Rand believes that the reverse should be true, feelings subjugated to the mind.
For Ayn Rand, the mind and the rational process take precedence. For morality, the ability to produce. Religion, as is, is to be discarded, because it ultimately depends on a non-rational activity (the religious experience). So any morality based on a non-rational activity cannot be the basis of a moral code. Besides establishing a moral code on a religious basis, it is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from adopting a moral code from a romantic standard. So you can see where her anti-religious views arise.
For my part, I question whether mind or feeling should be subjugated to one or the other; believing, instead, that a delicate balance needs to be maintained else one falls into the warped condition experienced by the opposing sisters in "Sense and Sensibility." At a time when rhetoric is replacing rational thinking, especially in the political realm, the rational needs to be rebalanced with feelings (a terrible shock to most Romantics), else we too will face a world collapsing.
I also question Rand's attempt to replace a religious moral code with a purely rational moral code based solely on the ability to produce. The first objection, I admit, is solely emotional: that is, the image of Dagny Taggart as a willing sex-slave to the highest producer. Not based on love, that is irrational, rather attracted to the person exhibiting the highest morality, the ability to produce.
The second objection is purely practical: the atheist morality has one significant flaw that no one in Western thought has ever found a work-around - Pride. The ability to compete, no holds bared, without having to acknowledge any higher power would lead to a dog-eat-dog environment that would be Hell on earth for the majority of mankind. Heaven only for the producer, who can out fox, grab, or maneuver the other guy, even if the other guy has a better way - bury him!
My third objection is historic: for every Ford (who paid his staff above Union wage and implemented work safety processes) there were several dozen Andrew Carnegies, John D. Rockefellers, and J.P. Morgans (who abused their workers, stole others' ideas, and manipulated stock prices to increase their own income). Rand would protect all the above, although I suspect that Ford was closer to her model of Rearden then the later Industrialists.
Despite my objections, I believe that Any Rand correctly identified the imbalance between the rational and emotional as the underlying cause for the inability to produce or to solve significant political or economical problems. I still have to ponder her idea that the logical conclusion of the romantic is nullity. In any case, I will probably come back and re-read Atlas Shrugged many times in the future. Highly recommended.