Writing a review of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand turned out to be more difficult that I would have thought. This is my third draft. How do you review one of the longest novels ever written, which also happens to be cited as second only to the Bible in lists of books that changed people’s lives? I am going to take the easy way out and start with the nitpicks:

• The breakup of James and Cherryl Taggart’s marriage devolved into immature and unrealistic circumstances.
• Dagny Taggart is portayed as a strong character who takes charge of running a railroad company when no one else believes it can be done. But when she arrives in Atlantis, her attitude turns into that of a little girl which reminded me of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
• John Galt’s speech is like the Energizer Bunny. It keeps going and going. Anyone listening to the three hour radio address would have turned off the radio after 10 minutes.

Those three things are it for the nitpicks, which for a book that is over 1,000 pages long means that the rest of it is pretty good.

While Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction, the point of the novel is to explore the themes of the author’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ever since I first learned of Ayn Rand and objectivism, I had wanted to read Atlas Shrugged. But in the 20 years between learning what objectivism is and the time I finally got around to reading Atlas Shrugged, the book could not possibly change my life simply because my life had already been changed to what the effect of the book would have been. I have believed in objectivism for 20 years, so reading a novel about it could not possibly change my life.

Even though the novel was published in 1957, it is extremely relevant to today’s current political climate. I read Atlas Shrugged in September 2008. In the novel, I was reading fictionalized accounts of the government nationalizing the railroad industry and gaining more and more control over the economy. In the newspapers, I was reading about the government nationalizing institutions such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG and using Wall Street company collapses as an excuse to gain more and more control over the economy. The warnings of the consequences of the growth and abuses of government powers that people have stated for as long as man has been ruled continue to hold truth today. Atlas Shrugged presents a realistic example of how a nation founded on the principles of freedom and democracy can lead itself into socialism and what the consequences of those actions are.

Rating: 9 out of 10.