This was a rather hard book for me. It reads easily, and it's only really about 70 pages long, but my problem was with its politics. You see, Rand was a staunch capitalist and she puts forth a brilliant argument for capitalism as being a form of individuality. Thats what the dust jacket says anyway. The truth in my mind is that Rand was arguing only for individuality, not for capitalism at all. Rand see that there is a huge amount to hide behind when the word "we" is used. It makes fools smart and the cowardly brave. Intellectually, this is entirely correct and I agree with her entirely that in the academic world there should be a struggle to be the best yourself, without relying on other people for your intelligence. Economically, I disagree entirely but that really isn't the point of this book. I think that it has since been construed to being a capitalist book by a bunch of capitalists who want to justify their existance, but in reality, this is just a book about not letting the man get you down and homogeonize you until you can't use your brain to the fullest extent of its capabilities. Not letting yourself getting caught up in the lie of "we" so that you never produce anything yourself.
I would definitely recommend this as it really can be read super quick and you get a lot out of it. I would be interested in reading her other works if they were 7gazillion pages long. I'll have to eventually I suppose.
Good readin.
Andrew
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