UPDATE 7/18/22: In “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand prophesized a worldwide walk-out, depriving the totalitarians of the talent and labor necessary to continue their destruction of people’s lives. This drastic move, “stopping the engine of the world,” seems less and less a fantasy of fiction and perhaps the only way to avert the active ruination of our free, productive way of life.
ORIGINAL POST 8/17/10: An extraordinary writer for our times and all times. Her central theme is always the sanctity of the individual pitted against the tyranny of the collective. Her 1957 masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged” is deemed the second most influential book of modern times behind only the Bible. Rand’s popularity is reason for optimism as the public becomes aware of the consequences of Big Government’s war on the individual and freedom in general.
Read about Ayn Rand at the Ayn Rand Institute website.
Vast resources and further links available at AtlasShrugged.com.
Like Glenn Beck, Ayn Rand Peddled Garbage As Truth — Why Did America Buy It?
By Corey Robin, The Nation
Posted on June 7, 2010, Printed on June 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147133/
St. Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both. Many other people have thought so too. In 1998 readers responding to a Modern Library poll identified Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as the two greatest novels of the twentieth centuryâ€â€surpassing Ulysses, To the Lighthouse and Invisible Man. In 1991 a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club found that with the exception of the Bible, no book has influenced more American readers than Atlas Shrugged….
I’ve included the link containing the entire article that appeared in The Nation, June 2010. A very long-winded, rambling, dismissive repudiation of a revered novelist who was able to describe the current chaotic economic/political landscape with such detailed accuracy, a half century ahead of the fact. Perhaps another reading of “Atlas Shrugged” is in order….?