There are good ideas in Atlas Shrugged, but they're presented so badly as to resemble a strawman argument. My copy is 1069 pages long, but Rand says nearly eve

There are good ideas in Atlas Shrugged, but they're presented so badly as to resemble a strawman argument. My copy is 1069 pages long, but Rand says nearly everything she has to say within the first hundred. Although, to be fair, I'd read about her and was already a small-l libertarian, so there wasn't a whole lot new. But before I forget: yep, I'm a small-l libertarian. Rand and her followers and I wouldn't get along well, for the most laughable -- if they weren't pathetic -- of reasons. Peruse some of the results at http://www.google.com/search?q=objectivism+and+libertarianism http://www.google.com/search?q=objectivism+and+libertarianis.... Pretty sad, really. Rand had a number of other beliefs about topics such as the role of women in a heterosexual relationship and homosexuality that many people living in a modern society in the 21st century will have a hard time swallowing. That her ideas were unpopular doesn't make them wrong, of course. But I think they often were. Back to Rand's writing in Atlas Shrugged, I agree that the dialogue is bad, often simply not credible. But suspension of disbelief only works when some aspects of the story -- be they characters, settings, events, or something else -- remain recognizable from reality. But very little in Atlas is, certainly nothing key to the story. We the Living is a much better book than Atlas Shrugged, for what it's worth.