• Heroic - L. Neil Schulman 
Dan Steward, Nolan Chart Atlas Shrugged  If Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was the elementary school of a very effective education in freedom, then J. Neil Schulman’s “Alongside Night” has to be the post-graduate studies course.     Share on Facebook

• NYC best sellers 
Annie Karni, New York Post Anthem  At the New York Public Library, two books top the list. The first is “The Cat in the Hat.” The library’s 856 copies of the beloved Dr. Seuss tale have each been checked out about 400 times in the past two years, said library spokeswoman Angela Montefinise. That’s a grand total of 342,400 checkouts. The most popular adult book is Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” which has been borrowed 22,800 times in the past two years.     Share on Facebook

• • • Beck should abandon Ayn Rand’s philosophies 
Don Glover, Monroe News Star Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  In the last few months I have detected, as a conservative myself, a small yet traceable seed develop in the presentations of Glenn Beck. They provoked the skeptic in me. In him I saw a move from authentic conservatism toward Ayn Rand and her notorious brand of it. That suspicion has materialized. In his June 15 afternoon TV program, the seed Beck had planted became a full-grown, wild tree. He endorsed, apparently without qualification, the philosophy and writings of Rand, who is further to the right than Attilla the Hun.     Share on Facebook

• Through memoirs and reality TV, studying people 
Eugenia Williamson, Boston Globe Interview with actress Jenna Fischer.[Q:] What books did you like growing up? [A:] When I was a kid, I loved V.C. Andrews and Judy Blume. When I got older, I got into Kurt Vonnegut. [....] And of course, in college, I went through an Ayn Rand phase.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who is ‘productive’? 
John de Graaf, Common Dreams Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  When I read Atlas Shrugged in the 1970s, I found it cold and heartless, full of cardboard characters and intellectually vacuous. But many people, obviously, feel differently. The book, and Rand herself, have actually seen a resurgence in popularity, ironically, just as the “you’re on your own” philosophy they represent has triggered the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s. At its core, the ideology was distilled to a few simple words by a conservative student who challenged me during a speech I gave last winter at Georgia Tech: “So what I hear you saying is that you would take money away from the productive people and give it to the unproductive people?”     Share on Facebook

• • In my library: Nelson DeMille 
Nelson DeMille, New York Post Atlas Shrugged  Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is back as a literary antidote for creeping socialism . . . I was in college in 1964, and this book just spoke to me. Why, I have no idea — that whole objectionist philosophy was so alien to college kids, who have empathy and feeling for everyone. [Rand’s book] really changed my way of thinking.     Share on Facebook

• • • A brief reply to J. Neil Schulman 
Dan Clore, Nolan Chart Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Rand presents as proven, objective fact a worldview that contradicts empirical reality on practically every point. Her followers often become so robotized in their dogmatic acceptance of this worldview purely on her authority (!) that their fellow libertarians have labeled them “Randroids”. Among other errors, they frequently espouse what Kevin Carson has called “vulgar libertarianism”, in which they identify actually-existing state-corporate capitalism with a truly free-market economy.     Share on Facebook

• Vox populi: “All crime is hate crime.” 
Savannah Morning News Atlas Shrugged  “I am irate that a person would make a voting decision because a candidate helped get a family pet to the veterinarian. Please read ‘Atlas Shrugged.’ “     Share on Facebook

• Local politicians want to be your Facebook friend 
Robert Wang, Canton Repository (OH) [Anna] Capaldi [...] in her profile posts a photo of an “Obama Sucks” T-shirt and reveals her interest in the “Young and the Restless” soap opera and two Ayn Rand books.     Share on Facebook

• Don’t let anxieties define your faith 
Bruce Chabot, The Eagle (Bryan, TX) [Companies no longer have a] storefront office you can go to and look a flesh and blood human being in the eye and ask for help and compassion. Ayn Rand would love it.     Share on Facebook

• • “Reading for fun instead of doing school work is my guilty pleasure.” 
Lisa Ehrets, The Morning Call (Allentown, PA) Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Image  What I'm reading: Anthem by Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • From bionic vets to rubbish energy conservation, this week’s winners and losers 
The Guardian (London) Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  Capitalist film news of the week. Ayn Rand’s free-market bible Atlas Shrugged finally goes into production. And who’s directing? Cameron, Scorsese, Stone? Nope: One Tree Hill actor Paul Johansson. Oh.     Share on Facebook

• • For economic progress, lean to the right 
Noel Pearson, The Australian Personal life  There are probably no pure liberals and no pure socialists: we all harbour this dialectical tension or struggle. [....] Of course, Ayn Rand and Joseph Stalin represent extreme examples at either end, but the rest of us give harbour to varying proportions of our inner liberal and socialist.     Share on Facebook

• Europe’s fiscal dystopia: The “new austerity” road to financial serfdom 
Michael Hudson, Market Oracle Capitalism  The idea of a free market in the 19th century was one free from predatory rentier financial and property claims. Today, a “free market” Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand style is a market free for predators. The world is being treated to a travesty of liberalism and free markets.     Share on Facebook

• • Bowler lands Atlas Shrugged role 
Edmonton Journal Atlas Shrugged movie  Atlas Shrugged  True Bloodactor Grant Bowler has snagged his third feature role in as many weeks. Bowler will portray steel magnate Henry Reardon in the Paul Johansson-helmed Atlas Shrugged, based on Ayn Rand’s literary classic. [....] Reardon is a demanding industrialist who becomes conflicted when sparks fly with protagonist Dagny Taggart. The film began shooting in L.A. this week.     Share on Facebook

• • • Rand’s obscure, repetitive ‘Ideal’ far from perfect 
Frank Scheck, New York Post Ayn Rand’s 1934 play “Ideal” has never been performed before in New York. And judging by the off-putting off-Broadway production that opened Wednesday night, fans of the philosopher and writer known for “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” better catch it this time -- it may never again surface. Not only is the play itself a stinker that well deserves its obscurity, its amateurish production doesn’t do it any favors, likely making even the author’s fanatical followers disappointed by this repetitive, static drama about a glamorous actress accused of murder.     Share on Facebook

• • • Americans look to big ideas of liberty 
Linn and Ari Armstrong, Free Press (Grand Junction, CO) Atlas Shrugged  Capitalism  While many liken Rand’s heroes to Nietzschean “supermen,” in fact Rand populates her novels with virtuous people of all abilities and levels of success, and her heroes unfailingly interact with other peaceable people by reason and voluntary consent.     Share on Facebook

• • • No break for meek, or actress on the run 
Jason Zinoman, New York Times Review of off-Broadway production of Ideal.Before long you wish someone had advised Rand to make it three visits, since the predictability of the introduction of a new character, Gonda’s surprise entrance and the inevitable disappointment becomes tedious. But she probably wouldn’t have listened, because never compromising your vision, no matter how strange, is one of the messages of this message-filled play.     Share on Facebook

• • I love anything Bolly 
Ramesh Dembla and Suchitra Chakravarti Shekary, Deccan Chronicle The Fountainhead  Favourite book: Ayn Rand and all her books! I loved Fountainhead.     Share on Facebook

• Comic Brian Posehn brings his head-banging standup act to hilarities in Clevealnd 
Michael K. McIntyre, Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Posehn actually squeezes laughs out of driving power chords and guttural singing. In “Metal by Numbers,” he skewers cookie-cutter metal bands: “So grab your friends, some instruments and start a metal band. Just sing about death, Egypt and wizards, or rip off Ayn Rand.”     Share on Facebook