Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Nicole Schlinger Book Review)
If you love your capitalism with a healthy dose of action and adventure … then Ayn Rand wrote all 1100 pages of Atlas Shrugged just for you.
Many conservatives say Atlas Shrugged is their favorite work of fiction. I have no doubt a few of them have read it cover to cover.
My take on Atlas Shrugged is a little bit different.
Yes, I love the self reliant nature of Dagny Taggart. I love the dedication is took for John Galt to launch and maintain a strike of the producers … his commitment to stop the motor of the world. (Although I have a hard time believing he could maintain such an intensity for such a long time based mostly on getting even for someone not liking his motor.)
What I really love about Atlas Shrugged is the complete and total prescience of Ayn Rand.
Published in 1957 … how could she known that women would one day run major corporations (railroad or otherwise)? She had little to no example in real life.
How could she have created a female heroine who slept with ALL of the major male characters in the book? Think about it … Dagny was at one point with Fransisco D’Anconia, Hank Rearden, and John Galt.
Frankly, I wish she ended up with Hank Rearden. I think he was the best of them all with his awesome metal … but that’s just me.
And last but not least — how did she know almost to the T exactly how “feelings” and “good intentions” would be used to entirely subvert free markets and demonize producers?
She could not have just surmised this from her experience escaping communist Russia.
She looked at what was, and correctly surmised what was yet to be.
So yes, Atlas Shrugged could have easily been the greatest book of all time at 600 pages rather than 1100. But who knows what we may have missed? What small detail you overlooked that is yet to be?
Nicole Schlinger’s favorite quote …
“She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought- and never worried about it again.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Make a liberal made … Vote for Atlas Shrugged in the PBS Great American Read … http://www.pbs.org/the-great-american-read/books/#/
Did you know Atlas Shrugged has sold over 7 million copies since 1957. It peaked as #3 on the NYT Best Seller list on December 8, 1957. But it is one of the only novels in history whose sales have increased over time. On April 2, 2009, Atlas Shrugged ranked #1 on Amazon for fiction and sold over 500,000 copies that year.
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