I told someone (you’d better be reading!) I would make a list of some of my favourite books, so I thought I would post them here. I was going to put them all in one post but after writing some of the reviews, I decided that they could stand alone. Also, these are in no particular order, just as they happen to occur to me.
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: 
Rand was born in Russia and lived through the revolution that led to the rise of communism. Her experiences in communist Russia were apparently decidedly BAD as evidenced by her anti-communist, anti-socialist and anti-religious leanings. Atlas Shrugged takes place in an America that is slowly and covertly abandoning a free market economy. In response to this, the country’s most talented minds decide to do something drastic about it. Some deliberately run their businesses into the ground, others merely disappear, leaving their ventures to be run by people who are less competent. The story continues as the blundering government tries to make do without the more intelligent entrepreneurs. You can probably see where the story is leading and it is very political. I still found it very entertaining and well written.
The development of objectivism is attributed to Rand and many say that this book is where she perfected her philosophy. At times the novel gets very heavy and even overwhelming but even these parts are worth reading. I learnt a lot from reading these parts. As someone who lived through the Cold War but didn’t really know much about world politics, I never really understood what the big deal was. Reading Atlas Shrugged and other books by Rand I have come to realize that communism, the way it was implemented in the Soviet Union is really very dangerous and destructive. In my opinion (as a good little Canadian socialist) her viewpoint is extreme but after going through what she did, I think she is entitled to a little extremism.
I would suggest that before a person tackle Atlas Shrugged (1000+ pages – eek!) a good starting point is another of Rand’s novels – We The Living. Rand herself has said that this is the most autobiographical of her works and it definintely helped me to be more sympathetic to her ideas.
