Hels no. She speaks of a utopian world that we can all strive for. Government is our next best solution. I am libertarian at heart, democrat by living.

But it is very long and drawn out. I didn’t read it myself — I listened to it. I don’t know that I could read it, and I really, really like to read.

My favorite part of the book is d’Anconia’s speech at the dinner party (you’ll know it when you get there). It is:

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.”

For those who do not want to read or re-read the book, the entire speech that this quote was taken from was published in Capitalism Magazine in 2002 is available free at their website: http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1826

I wonder how many other people are starting to dust those books off here in the age of bailouts and resdistribution…Are we witnessing the dark before the Libertarian light?

All in all, I enjoy reading books that are huge. (I’ve also read the entire Dune cycle and the Baroque Cycle more than once.) But the philosophy behind Rand’s work seems smart on first read, but when you really examine it, it’s simplistic and, much like Communism (and most of these sorts of things) it functions better in theory than in practice.

The suggestion of getting it from the library strikes me as slightly ironic.

I too have owned AS for > 20 years and have attempted to read it many times; I finally was able to force myself to slog through it about 5 years ago, and as others have commented it is truly a reference bible for libertarianism and free-market economic thought.

Entertainment, it ain’t; I think of it as a textbook rather than a novel.