Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (Paperback)

~ Robert Mayhew (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 536 pages
• Publisher: Lexington Books (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739127802
• ISBN-13: 978-0739127803
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #186,043 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Many levels in Rand's Atlas Shrugged, October 10, 2009

By	Paul Beaird "Disciple of Causation" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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If you enjoyed Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and you want see how the author combined characters, action and themes together in this book which clearly reveals Ayn Rand as a moralist and lover of life on Earth, you are in for a treat between the covers of Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Robert Mayhew has published in one place the insights of some of the best writers on Rand's Atlas and offered them to you for at least a month's worth of enjoyable reading.
The essay by Onkar Ghate, "The Part and Chapter Headings of Atlas Shrugged" is worth the price of the entire book on its own. He shows you the connections of the characters and the novel's action, as they develop through the plot of the novel, in such rich detail that you wonder how anyone could add any more insight on the novel. But, every writer collected here does that.
You get two explorations of the hidden conspirator, Galt. You get a romantic reflection on the cheerful energy of the very deliberate Francisco. Greg Salmieri's "Discovering Atlantis" reveals the moral theme of Atlas by showing, step by step, how the events in the novel and the thinking of Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden lead them from stages of not knowing the value of their lives and work, gradually, to complete understanding and their final choice to join Galt's conspiracy. What you see here is Ayn Rand's mind at work, understanding what the elements of the moral life are and in creating events that give the characters the chance to learn those elements. That is novel-plotting, characterization and moral thinking on a dimension that has no equal in human literature before Atlas. High praise? Well, read Atlas and Salmieri's essay and see for yourself.
The briefest piece is offered by Dr. Harry Binswanger who compares the writing style of Rand's Atlas and James Joyce's Ulysses. He says, "Clearly, one of these novels is a stylistic masterpiece, and the other is trash." The fight over which is which reveals much about the culture and souls of those who care about the matter.
Darryl Wright provides "Ayn Rand's Ethics: From The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged". Here we get to see Ayn Rand, the intellectual, putting herself through the merciless examination of her earlier theme "the independent mind", until she works out the basis for a full-fledged moral theory with its actual roots in reason and the nature of life. Few presentations enable you, the reader, to see an author's, a philosopher's, mind doing its inner thinking. Rand was a hero who did not let easy generalizations block her way to the truth.
My favorites in this book are the fighting essays of Dr. Tara Smith "No Tributes to Caesar: Good or Evil in Atlas Shrugged" and "'Humanity's Darkest Evil': The Lethal Destructiveness of Non-Objective Law". Here is the application of Rand's ethics to issues of danger to the civilization in which you and I live today. There is a boldness in her words that tells you she is serious about protecting the values that preserve your life in our world. And, Smith is not alone as one of the New Moralists you'll read in these pages.
Atlas Shrugged has one of the most original plots of any novel you'll find and it is the kind of adventure story that will make you re-think every idea you have ever heard or lived your life by. The writers in Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged help you see how the author grappled with those very ideas. Hours of happy mental grappling here for you, too.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Broad Exploration, October 10, 2009

By	Caleb Hirsch "Caleb" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have enjoyed reading this book. The essays cover a broad range of topics surrounding the characters, the events surrounding the release, an exploration of the writing as a whole, and much on Ayn Rand's thoughts on these things.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top of the Line, October 12, 2009

By	Andrew Layman (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Atlas Shrugged is the most complete artistic expression of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, which she called "a philosophy for living on earth" and described as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." This collection of essays in turn is the most complete, scholarly, and philosophical analysis of Atlas Shrugged. Every essay in the book revealed to me new insights on the means and justification of living a full, happy life. As with his earlier collections such as Essays on Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Dr Mayhew has placed a feast in front of us.