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Summary: active minded
Review: This was a great book for anyone that truly wants to excercise their mind. Ms. Rand proves that no one has gone their whole life without being influence by a philosopher such as Kant, Plato, or Nagel just to name a few. What she presents is basically a user-friendly version of Aristotle. Anyone with sense would realize that faith in God is what has caused many of the problems in this world today, and that the only religion that makes sense is logic
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible book
Review: This was the first(and last) book I bought by Ayn Rand. This book and her ideas belong in the philosophical scrap heap. Throughout her book she attacks Kant and how his philosophy is "evil" and "man-hating," but she never explains how. Regarding behaviorism, she attacks Skinner personally and never on the evidence of his findings. She tries to destroy the ideas of the existentialists with simple hand waving generalizations without trying to explain why other philosophies are bad.Objectivist philosophy is anything but philosophy.
If your interested in a real introductory book on philosophy then I'd suggest "Philosophy for Beginners" or Bertrand Russels "The Problems of Philosophy."
But if you just want to hear irrational attacks on communism and altruism, then you'll like this book.
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Summary: rand's best non-fiction
Review: Though I enjoy Rand's fiction considerably more than her excessively hyperbolic non-fiction, this is undeniably good stuff. Once you seperate the precise reasoning from the loony exaggerations, you have a terrific introduction to objectivism and philosophy in general. Contrary to previous tirades, some of which have been cut and pasted onto all of her book review areas, this book is full of original ideas (I'd really like to know who else preaches individualism like this, otherwise); it punctures many of today's warped worldviews and is quite readable. Buy this book - everybody owes it to themself to glean wisdom from this flawed but brilliant mind
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Summary: This page is a joke!
Review: Unbiased reader: Don't take these other people seriously! I have been studying Rand for seven years or so, and I think that this is her best book; although there are some embarrassing articles in it like "From the Horse's Mouth," it also contains "Causality vs. Duty," "The Metaphysical and the Man-Made," and the title essay, which are surely some of Rand's most deep-thinking compositions. When reading AR, you have to *work* back from her essay to what the technical theory behind it is - hey, she's not going to come out and tell you in clear language. But in the case of these essays, the work pays off. She has some interesting things to say. [For PHILOSOPHERS reading this: You'll find that, among other things, Rand rejects what Kurt Baier and Sidgwick call the "[distinctly] Moral Point of View." She refuses to break rightness into moral rightness, legal rightness, and prudential rightness, and then do a bunch of deflationary semantics and/or Chisholming on these notions. She argues that this approach, taken by most contemporary ethicists, obscures the real origins of normativity and takes for granted concepts that really have no application. She also argues that philosophy is goal-oriented - in fact, survival and flourishing oriented. She shows why philosophy is *not* thinking about fun little puzzles and/or contemplating the mysterious call of Being. So she is a Kantian with respect to why do philosophy (b/c ethics is the why), but is a fervid anti-Kantian, for example, on the existence of categorical imperatives. She argues that they're all hypothetical. She also rejects the necessary-contingent distinction, and shows how this notion is descended from - and only makes sense in the context of - a mythology that includes an all-powerful God. When analytic philosophers say, "Surely it's possible that Australia have been off the coast of California," AR stops 'em and says: "Whatchu mean? Don't you realize all the controversial doctrines about meaning and concepts and mental functioning that you're taking for granted?!!"] Anyway, so it's a good book. But now, I want to comment on the absolutely RIDICULOUS things that are posted on this page. Although the hundreds of interchangeable Randroids saying things like, "This is the only rational philosophy," is amusing and also sad, my favorite contribution is "The role of philosopher as participant-observer." It's really funny: try to find it. This guy is using all this loopy cont'l rhetoric terminology to describe AR. Unfortunately, it would be funnier if it made sense, which it doesn't really.
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