• • National service and slavery 
Bradley Harrington, The Bulletin (Philadelphia) Anthem  Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead.” - Ayn Rand, “Anthem”     Share on Facebook

• • • LFM visits the set of Atlas Shrugged- Part I 
Govindini Murty, Libertas Film Magazine Atlas Shrugged movie  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Image  Interview with Director Paul Johansson.[Q:] What is your approach to adapting “Atlas Shrugged” as a movie? [A:] You’re talking about an art form, a living breathing art form … “What is a sculpture?” … it’s everything you’ve taken away from it, and what’s left is the sculpture – that’s what a film is. We took some of the densest material available in literature … and we’ve decided that there are certain parts of that story that cannot be told with the amount of time that we have. We’re taking one third of the book – because this is going to be part one of three parts – or perhaps four parts depending on how they’re going to shoot it all – and we’ve taken what we think is the essential part of Part One – which is 127 pages to Wyatt’s Torch. That’s what we’re up to.     Share on Facebook

• A teens take: Allen Mire on writing poetry 
Emily Kern Hebert, The Advocate (Baton Rouge, LA) Anthem  FAVORITES: Book: “Anthem” by Ayn Rand.     Share on Facebook

• • School’s out for summer: What better time to relax with a few of these classic reads? 
Katy Guest, The Independent (London) Anthem  Anthem, Ayn Rand A short but sharp paean to the individual, starring our hero, Equality 7-2521, who works as a road sweeper in a dystopic near-future. A reminder, should any teenager need it, of why it is important always to think for yourself.     Share on Facebook

• • Bye bye Miss American Pie? 
William R. Mann, Canada Free Press Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  I recommend that everyone read [or re-read] Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, Anthem, Atlas Shrugged, and We the Living, to see where all of this leads. These works’ authors all saw the horrors of the Totalitarian State and the Cult of Personality up close and personal. These works will inspire and motivate you to learn more and do more to protect our unique American way of life. “We the Living is not a novel ‘about Soviet Russia.’ It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life ... using the word “Sanctity” not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of “supreme value.” - Ayn Rand, 1958.     Share on Facebook

• What’s on your summer reading list? 
Peg Melnik, Santa Rosa Press Democrat (CA) Anthem  In addition to novels, Jessica Dur’s list includes a book of short stories, a play, a memoir, and a graphic novel. Feed, M.T. Anderson;The Human Fly, T.C. Boyle; The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King; Anthem, Ayn Rand; Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut; An Invisible Sign of My Own, Aimee Bender; Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi; The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Carson McCullers; What is the What, Dave Eggers; Angels In America, Tony Kushner.     Share on Facebook

• Teachers Kirsten and Rathke named as Washburn’s ‘difference makers’ 
Julie Buckles, County Journal (Washburn, WI) Anthem  For Ayn Rand’s “Anthem,” [Olaf Kirsten] had his sophomores create a sustainable dream utopian society in the Chequamegon Bay region. They had to account for family, community, politics, energy and agriculture.     Share on Facebook

• • • Not going well for conservative Christians 
Eric Poole, Ellwood City Ledger (PA) Atheism  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Egoism  Thanks to participants in the Tea Party movement, Rand’s philosophy, and that’s using a term loosely, of anti-government, pro-business beliefs have been rehabilitated. Among her admirers is Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, who, contrary to Internet rumor, was not named in Ayn Rand’s honor. The central theme of Rand’s worldview is [....] that selfishness is one of the highest human impulses and that society benefits most when everyone is looking out for himself. In short, the word “team” does have an “I” the way Rand spelled it. If you’re searching for a Christian-friendly agenda now, you’re probably looking at the Democratic side of the aisle.     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

• • “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

• • What do we cherish “as Americans”? 
Tibor Machan, Sun Journal (New Bern, NC) Anthem  George Orwell’s masterful novella, Animal Farm, amounts to, among other things, a fierce indictment of the effort to politically engineer a society to be equal. Ayn Rand’s novella, Anthem, is no less a superb fictional work that shows the viciousness of such an effort.     Share on Facebook

• • • Re-reading and re-appraising Ayn Rand 
Howard R. Gold, MoneyShow.com Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Rand was a much better writer than the critics acknowledged. Her philosophy deeply reflected her childhood experiences in Russia. She gave us a brilliant defense of the moral basis for capitalism and a scary account of how, step by step, liberty can be taken away by a power-hungry government. But for me, she falls short in her ultimate goal: to create in Objectivism a universal philosophy of economics, politics, ethics, and epistemology. Why? Because she focuses almost exclusively on a small elite of high achievers and has little interest in the aspirations of ordinary people. And she wants to change, not accept, human nature.     Share on Facebook

• • • Randed for life 
Nilanjana S Roy, Sify News (India) Ayn Rand Institute  Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.For all that thousands of readers who outgrow Ayn Rand by their late twenties, the list of the ones who don’t is illustrious — John Hospers, Alan Greenspan, Robert Mayhew and other venerables have all indicated their deep debt to her ideas. The contemporary reception to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged is telling: many critics slammed the books for their didactic, “offensively pedestrian” style, and they were right. Many readers bought the books anyway, drawn to Rand’s almost comically force-of-nature heroes and her perversely suffering, noble heroines.     Share on Facebook

• NBA finals anthem watch: Boston takes a 1-0 lead 
Dan Devine, Yahoo! Sports - Ball Don’t Lie Anthem  With the possible exception of Ayn Rand’s Rush-inspiring 1938 novella, it’s universally accepted that anthems are great fun, both to create and to hear.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who is Ayn Rand? 
Charles Murray, Claremont Review of Books Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  Egoism  Personal life  Reviews of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller and Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.Ayn Rand never dwelt on her Russian childhood, preferring to think of herself as wholly American. Rightly so. The huge truths she apprehended and expressed were as American as apple pie. I suppose hardcore Objectivists will consider what I'm about to say heresy, but hardcore Objectivists are not competent to judge. The novels are what make Ayn Rand important. Better than any other American novelist, she captured the magic of what life in America is supposed to be. The utopia of her novels is not a utopia of greed. It is not a utopia of Nietzschean supermen. It is a utopia of human beings living together in Jeffersonian freedom.     Share on Facebook

• • • “Anthem”: Book review 
Monica Alves, The Scarlet Letter (Milford High School, Milford, MA) Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  “Anthem” primarily represents the key to a better understanding of the philosophy known as “objectivism.” Created by Rand, this philosophy can be seen scattered throughout many of her novels such as “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” I recommend this novel to anyone interested in philosophy, or the genre of dystopian fiction.     Share on Facebook

• Amazon reviews by average, unaware customers show lack of understanding of classic literature 
Nathan Gladney, Retriever (U of MD, Baltimore) Anthem  Upon examining the reviews for one of my favorite pieces, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, I came across yet another frustrated high school student who pieced together this work of genius: "I could not stand the way Bradbury writes most authors would say the pit pat of rain he would say the pit pat pit pat pit pat and so on for half a page it was royally annoying and as far as what the guy said about it being about individuality and conformity if you want to read about that read Ayn Rand's Anthem." In what has to be an example of one of the longest run-on sentences I have seen for a single review (with numerous grammatical errors), this person displayed the utter lack of any real point outside of, "writer talks too much, here's another book I liked better because it's so cool."     Share on Facebook

• • Totalitarianism and the politics of sex 
Floy Lilley, Mises.org Daily Article Anthem  Personal life  Sharing the hope and then the horror of Petrograd in the 1920s, Yevgeny Zamyatin and Ayn Rand (Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) were contemporaries. Rand was entering Petrograd (Leningrad) University where she majored in history and took a minor in philosophy. Zamyatin, with a predilection for entering prisons, was doing time. [....] In 1921 he wrote the book that would inspire Rand to write Anthem, Orwell to write 1984, and Huxley to write Brave New World.     Share on Facebook

• Has Iggy read it? 
The Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon) Anthem  Saskatoon-based Life of Pi author Yann Martel has sent Prime Minister Stephen Harper one book every two weeks since April 2007, and the list has grown to 78. Nobody knows how many of the books Harper has read because he (or his office) rarely responds to Martel's gifts. But what about Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader and world-renowned author and academic? Ignatieff, in an interview with The StarPhoenix, reviewed Martel's list and checked off the books he's read. [....] Notable books Ignatieff's did check off: What is Stephen Harper Reading? by Yann Martel, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Financial Expert by R. K. Narayan and Everyman by Philip Roth.     Share on Facebook

• Rush: Rock Music and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown 
Diane Leach, PopMatters Anthem  Book review.Rush’s music makes a lot of “gestures”, including one at “postmodern decenteredness”. Ayn Rand’s Anthem, the influence behind 2112 is “a short novella”. The rest of the writing is dry, tough going unless you are a student of semiotics or critical theory, in which case you might enjoy this book. But bear in mind novellas are short by definition.     Share on Facebook