Painfully bad - Rated 
Upon completing this book, I threw it in the bin. How this women ever got any recognition for anything is beyond me. The book is badly written and execrably dull. The `characters' are pathetic, stilted drones, the `story' plods on and on as we read of the valiant struggle of the heroes hoping to save their silly little railways, steel processing plants, etc. who cares. This book and the other twaddle she wrote could have been condensed into a single paperback, but lacking any artistry whatsoever she deemed fit to bulk her stories out with the same dismal pontification repeatedly hammering home her anodyne message.
I'd leave it at that, however the fact that this book was apparently a blueprint for her `philosophy' is worrying. Her asinine school of thought actually has a following.. The author was a humourless misanthrope who took herself and her laughable creed seriously. She should have got over herself and her inadequacies spared us all this horrible waste of paper.
Virtues of Individualism and Free Market Capitalism - Rated 
Atlas Shrugged has an extremely black-and-white quality; either you are an embodiment of highest virtues or you are unredeemably evil. There is no middle ground. All the characters in this book are as if they had come from some sort of a Baroque opera. No doubt, Atlas Shrugged would have benefited, if it had had a better editor.
Like Albert Einstein the physicist (and the philosopher), Ayn Rand has an absolute belief in the law of causality. I cannot help but wonder what her views on quantum mechanics and Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle were.
Notwithstanding these flaws, the book makes many a good point:
- Reason is the main epistemological tool of acquiring knowledge about reality. Thinking and rational mind are what separate us most clearly from other animals.
- Do not apologize for your virtues.
- Altruisms, when forced upon by the State, is a grave sin.
- Mankind makes quantum leaps forward by brilliant and free individual minds.
- In its core, capitalism is a system of individualism, thus inherently capable of making quantum leaps forward (in science, innovation, etc).
- Communism, or any collectivism for that matter, cannot work, not even in theory. Enforced socialism is to be opposed. (Ayn Rand's views on socialism and capitalism were probably influenced by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich A. Hayek).
I find it rather fitting that exactly 50 years after Atlas Shrugged was published (1957), the Nobel Prize in economics (2007) was awarded to Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin, and Roger Myerson for their work on mechanism design, which deals with the problem of arranging "our economics interactions so that, when everyone behaves in a self-interested matter, the results is something we all like." Since the 18th century, we know (thanks to Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson) that the pursuit of self-interest is not a zero-sum game.
The book is worth the reading effort. It will induce you to think about the nature of humanity, the perils of far-left egalitarianism, and what the struggle for happiness is all about (needless to say, Ayn Rand was no closet Aristotelian).
Compelling but Repulsive - Rated
This is a major novel, very philosophical, original and outspoken. It seems to predict political correctness, modern socialism and mind control through new psuedo religions. Ayn Rand was a self proclaimed philosopher but her brand of philosophy many will find repulsive in today's World, this is not to say the book should not be read, I believe it should be a compulsory work in any A level English Lit curriculum, sociology students could gain rich experience picking it over to separate and discuss the good ideas from the bad. It is a great novel in some ways but I hated it not because it is poor quality or has a weak story (it is neither) but for the alternative religion of selfishness as rammed down our throats by Miss Rand.
Unfortunately also to its detriment it is a somewhat contrived and long winded story, the plot being manipulated to illustrate to an obvious degree the philosophy of its author. It is a story about a brilliant individual in conflict with a smothering society of losers where social and economic success is not driven by genius or talent but by conformity to the strictures of the lumpen society to the exclusion of all innovation. There are definitely prophetic tones which throw into sharp relief many of the problems which aflict our society today (removal of competitive sport from school curricula so that the losers do not feel inferior for example). Of course the object of a novel is to entertain as well as educate. The question is does it succeed in the former. The answer is a qualified yes, it does entertain because of the comparisons which can be drawn with modern Britain and an admiration for the prophetic side of the work, rather like a Sci Fi novel from 1900 predicting todays space explorations, computers and reliance on machines etc.
Parallels with George Orwell may be drawn about the writings of Ayn Rand however, her focus is 100% opposite from that of Orwell, he was a life long committed socialist however, pointed to the danger of the overweaning socialist state in his two very powerful novels about this. For me Orwell is the greater because he highlighted the danger of following his own declared creed to its logical conclusion. In Rand's case she extolls the virtue of rampant capitalism and gives no weight whatsoever to any of the positive benefits of socialism at all.
In summary, it is a very powerful and prophetic novel with heavy political and sociological undertones. It depicts a vast canvas promoting the power of the individual pitched against an over powerful, suffocating state.
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