[Atlas Shrugged] is not generally considered to be philosophically feminist. In fact, it may not be on anyone's reading list for Women's Courses, except mine. But close analysis of the book's themes and theories will prove that it should be. Much that Rand says is relevant to feminist issues. Best of all, the novel has a protagonist who is a good example of a woman who is active, assertive, successful, and still retains the love and sexual admiration of three heroic men. Though the situ...

["Atlas Shrugged"] is a work of fiction, a piece of inspired and thoroughly exciting story-telling that drags only in some of the lengthier speeches which tend to recapitulate points already established by the action. But it is so much more than a mere novel…. "Atlas Shrugged" will satisfy many readers on many separate planes of satisfaction. It has its Buck Rogers flavor—and pace—for those who delight in science fiction. It can be taken as a philosophical de...

["Atlas Shrugged"] is the equivalent of a fifteenth-century morality play. Everyman, personified by Dagny Taggert, the strong-minded lady Operating Vice President of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad, and by her lover, Hank Rearden, the steel tycoon, struggles against the forces of evil as represented by the bureaucrats, the scientists who sell their minds to the bureaucrats, and the craven businessmen who string along for fear of honest competition. What Hank and Dagny do not realize is t...

In a statement published as a postscript to "Atlas Shrugged," Ayn Rand has defined her philosophy, "in essence," as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." "Atlas Shrugged" is [a] … polemic inadequately disguised as a novel and designed to dramatize these views. The result is an astonishing mixture of ant...

If your definition of a "modern classic" is a book which still sells briskly in both soft- and hard-cover editions a quarter-century after its publication, which deals with serious issues in a serious way, and which continues to stir up controversy as each succeeding generation discovers it, then—better brace yourself—Atlas Shrugged fills the bill. Sure, it's a preposterous book; sure, the reviewers demolished it; sure, virtually every reputable conservative from Russell K...

["Atlas Shrugged"] comes among us as a demonstrative act rather than as a literary work. Its size seems an expression of the author's determination to crush the enemies of truth—her truth, of course—as a battering ram demolishes the walls of a hostile city. Not in any literary sense a serious novel, it is an earnest one, belligerent and unremitting in its earnestness. It howls in the reader's ear and beats him about the head in order to secure his attention, and the...