Just finished this book. It realy kicks ass. Only a hundred pages; a pretty easy read. I reccomend it highly.

Now try Atlas Shrugged...it's only 12 times longer!!!![:0]

Edited--duplicate--can you tell I'm new at this?

[b]Anthem[/b] was pretty good -- in the one and only Political Science class I took in college, I tried to contrast it to Plato's [b]Republic[/b], but the professor (an ardent socialist) reamed me a new one for daring to think.

Er, I mean for daring to think that Plato's scheme wouldn't be a wondrously grand utopia for the masses.

[img]http://www.attackcartoons.com/libman2.GIF[/img]

Atlas Shrugged will absolutely fry you - you'll start seeing things all over that remind you of something in that book...

Looters are my favorite...read it and you'll know what I mean..[:)]

Why not get really bold and read: "The Virtue of Selfishness"??

This one will really test your will to preserve your stagnated social conditioning!

"An Introduction to Objectivist Epistomology" IS the one that will fry you (i.e. your brain).

Ayn Rand: The greatest thinker of our time, only to be formally recognized 500 years from now---only because that's probably how long it's going to take to accept Objectivism, as a philosophy and a way to live, en masse.

R.I.P. Ms. Rand

What M4C said.  Exactly.  

I would recommend starting with "Philosophy:  Who Needs It?".

-kill-9

Etext of Anthem:

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext98/anthm10a.txt

Edit: Copy and paste the url. Looks like Goatboy messed up the URL parsing code for FTP addresses.

I've heard the Rush song.

I got introduced to Rand by reading Fountainhead, which is IMHO, still a good introduction to Rand for people who are new to that line of thinking.

Of course, Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus and Anthem is an excellent reading also.

This link is broken, the link is:
http://[url]ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext98/anthm10a.txt[/url]

Looks like Goatboy needs to work on the URL parsing code. The forum added http:// to an ftp:// URL. Bad, bad Goatboy...

The Fountainhead was my first exposure to Rand, the second being Atlas Shrugged.  This was not intentional, only by consequence.  Nevertheless, I feel very strongly that if one is going to dive into Rand, that The Fountainhead should be read first as it serves as an excellent primer and whets your appetite for more.  Then move onto Atlas Shrugged.  Then I guess it is appropriate enough to say...THEN move on to Galts speech towards the end...and absorb it.

But that's just me.

"who is John Galt?"
from everything I've heard, I screwed up by
reading Atlas Shrugged before The Fountainhead
In my opinion, one of the most pertinent works
of fiction of the 20th century. Unfortunately,
the only sociopolital movment that has picked
up objectivism are the friggin' atheists. This book should be the bible for all good anti-socialists.

BTW,If Bill Gates turns up missing, we'll know
whats up.

I had a Philosophy Prof. who was just like that, though I got by with a  4.0 that no one ever got in this guys class just by referencing WWII and the “Never Again” signs above the former concentration camps.

edited to say that I got through the first 100 pages of [i]Atlas Shrugged[/i] before my mother grabbed the book from my bookshelf. And that I haven't read anything else by her... YET

I don't know if the names were supposed to be ironic vis a vis the characters who held them.  The names, in general, were chosen nicely:  Equality, Solidarity, International, all the buzz words of the leftists of the '30s.

Well, Rand [i]was[/i] a hardcore atheist. . . .

Besides, most religions seem to have a "give everything you own away so that you can bask in happy poverty" mentality.  Rand's attitude was best summed up by a response she gave to a girl at a university speech -- the girl asked something like "what about society's responsibility for the homeless?", and Rand's response was, "If you wish to help them, no one will stop  you."

Someone got really, really pissed after Windows 95 trashed another hard drive?? [:p] [uzi]

These books will shake your life up!  You will look at everything different.  ONly beef I have with Ms. Rand is that she failed to recognize that she herself made an arguement for Creation.  

It was when Eddie was coming back from Cali and the train broke.  He didn't want to leave it so he tried to fix it.  It was too complex.  

Ms. Rand was trying to disprove the notion that creators of things such as automobiles were just a natural sign of mans "Tool making instinct" so lazy people could just say the creators weren't special, since after all it was just an instinct that made them create an airplane.  

Back to the story:  Eddie tries with all his might to make the train work again, he pulled levers pushed buttons ripped wires out and he finally realized it wasn't an instinct but an act of true genius that made this train, because instinct could not have created this train as a natural extension of mans "handiness"

I know long winded.  but that whole ordeal really made an arguement for creation, because after all, man is a complex being with too many things to just have come together by "instinct" or "accident".  Think about it for awhile, I did.

Anyway, Rand is THE best author and the most intelligent person to grace this earth.  She will be celebrated soon enough.  Been going over and over the book Philosophy: Who needs it?  and I love it.

[):)]
NSF

If you've read all of these:
Fountain Head
Atlas Shrugged
The virtue of selfishness

Try reading 'Capitalism: The unknown ideal'
Its a collection of essays from various people who agree with the principles of Objectivism.  There are several in there written by Alan Greenspan that are very interesting.