Atlas Shrugged
In case this is your first encounter with this book, It is a fresh story but a continuation to Ayn Rand's philosophy that started out with books like "We the living" where she new something was wrong but could not put her finger on it. She progressed to books as "The Fountainhead" where she could describe the problem quite well. Now in "Atlas Shrugged she has come up with a plausible answer to the problem. In essence your head can work without your hands yet your hands can not work without your head.
I can tell you of my experience with the book. Normally my reviews are flippant and I include nothing personal. I must have been a late bloomer or just unlucky, because I did not come across "Atlas shrugged" until I was 20 years old. I was in the military and needed some reading material. My younger sister sent me the book. It looks just a little thick to me but I started reading, and reading and reading. I do not know if it was the story or the clarity of thought. Now I saw everything in a new or different light. It felt weird to see the newspapers and politics paralleling the book.
I was in New York (West Point) at the time and three things stood out to this day. The was a public service announcement on the TV "The law says that an apartment owner can not charge more than 30% of what you make" and at the same time the apartment buildings were closing down. The postal carriers went on strike and the military had to deliver the mail. That winter the snowplow drivers went on strike. When the strike was over the snowplows were missing. They found them the next summer in an empty lot.
There is nothing quite as convincing as watching the world and book parallel. I have mellowed out some sense then. However, I really think that this book should be read by high school where it would have maximum impact of one's train of thought.
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The Fountainhead
I have read the book, saw the movie (1949 Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey) and listened to the audio tapes. Each media gives a different feel to her story and brings out the underlying message in different ways. If this is your first Ayn Rand book then either you are in high school (where they think this is the pentacle her work) or you started in the middle of here forming. Other books as "We the Living", she knew something was wrong, but did not know what it was. In "The Fountain Head", she puts her finger on the symptoms and rebels against them. In "Atlas Shrugged", she finally identifies the source of the problem and even if it seems like a surrealistic story, she offers concrete solutions. Out of this process Objectivism was born.
