Ayn Rand's Atlas and Fountainhead are literature in the same sense that Harriet Beacher Stowe's "uncle Tom's Cabin" is literature. These three pulp novels addr

Ayn Rand's Atlas and Fountainhead are literature in the same sense that Harriet Beacher Stowe's "uncle Tom's Cabin" is literature. These three pulp novels address important topics, but in shamefully oversimplified ways that almost defame the topics they present. Their authors both caught lightening in a bottle by accident. West Point has no business assigning either book to any class presented to a future Army Officer. I mean it: None. I would get rid of any instructor who required students to read either Atlas or Fountainhead. The heroes in both books behave immorally by any sane standard, in terms of what West Point Cadets are being taught in their other classes. Howard Roark commits a violent rape in Chapter Two -- later, he blows up a sky scraper. John Galt would simply be considered a terrorist today.