• • • 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

• • • Haters go after the ‘Ground Zero mosque’ 
Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Leonard Peikoff  Inaccurate  How does a mosque, or, more accurately, a Muslim community center, “objectively entail a threat to the rights of others”? According to Peikoff, all manifestations of Islam – the very idea of Islam – is “objectively” a threat to the United States. Therefore, by his “logic,” it’s okay to violate the property rights of Muslims – any and all Muslims. Indeed, killing them all would be a good thing, according to his sick perversion of Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• • • We The Living 
John Gray, New Statesman Atheism  Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Inaccurate  Book review.Rand's religion - a brand of evangelical atheism so extreme that Richard Dawkins's version sounds almost reasonable - required that everyone think alike and live in the same way.     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

• • • Far from perfect 
Nistula Hebbar, Financial Express (India) Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.The book points the finger at the one thing, in fact, which makes most people uncomfortable with Rand’s philosophy despite the brilliance of her premises, the fact that this is an imperfect world, and not everyone is a genius. By demonstrating rather comprehensively the fact that Rand needed the help of a host of mediocre “Ellsworth Tooheys and Paul Keatings”, to succeed and the approbation of the world quite at odds with her devil may care, solitary genius heroes, exposes the vulnerability of the philosopher. In her world, Howard Roark and John Galt may have been oblivious of bad reviews, but Rand went through much pain when her work was “misunderstood.” It is at these intersections of her world and the “real world” that the portrait of Rand is best captured in this book. A must read for all those who thought “man worship” was the way to go, if this doesnt send you back to those dog eared copies of We, the Living, nothing else will.     Share on Facebook

• • • Who was Ayn Rand? 
William R Thomas, The Individualist ( The Atlas Society) Ayn Rand Archives  Atlas Shrugged  Night of January 16th  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Leonard Peikoff  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.Ayn Rand and The World She Madeis biography done right: well-rounded, engaged, judicious, thoroughly-researched, occasionally revelatory, and often moving. It is focused on Ayn Rand as a person. With whom did she have personal relationships? What were the sources of her drive and independent thinking? What were the origins of her story ideas and her aesthetic approach? What was she really like, beneath the mythological view of herself that she presented to readers, fans, and even many friends?     Share on Facebook

• • Westside speller advances 
Joe Dejka, Omaha World-Herald We The Living  [Spelling bee contestant Emma Johanningsmeier] enjoyed Ayn Rand’s “We are the Living,”a semi-autobiographical novel examining communism’s impact in post-revolution Russia.     Share on Facebook

• • At the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee 
Jordan Carr, The Awl Atheism  We The Living  The best religious irony of the contest was when a girl who listed Ayn Rand’s We the Living as a book she likes received the word “fleuron” and got a sentence involving bishops and prayer.     Share on Facebook

• • Omahan has just one place in mind: First 
Joe Dejka, SW Iowa News We The Living  Emma Johanningsmeier says there are generally two kind of kids in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Those who are just glad for the experience. And those who want to win. Emma, 14, who represents Nebraska and western Iowa in the competition, counts herself among the latter. [....] Her favorite books are from the Harry Potter series. She also enjoyed Ayn Rand’s “We the Living,” a semi-autobiographical novel examining communism’s impact in post-revolutionary Russia.     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

• • • Love, politics and Ayn Rand 
Cathy Young, Forbes The Fountainhead  We The Living  Personal life  Ayn Rand, the Russian-born American philosopher-novelist and crusader for capitalism, has been enjoying something of a revival, due partly to the belief that her warnings of creeping socialism are coming true under the Obama Administration. Those interested in Rand’s oeuvre should take note of the recent DVD release of We the Living, a film adaptation of her first novel, by the same title. But this movie should also appeal to those who love old films and rare finds from film history.     Share on Facebook

• • What was to be done? 
Ben Steelman, Star-News - Bookmarks (Wilmington, NC) We The Living  Egoism  Personal life  When Vera, in [Nicolai Chernyshevskii’s] “What Is To Be Done?” falls in love with a biologist, her husband — a true rational egoist — understands completely and promptly leaves the country, faking his dead so the two lovers can unite. Self-interest, properly understood, is the one true good. Does this sound familiar? I was reminded of the objectivism of Ayn Rand — born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1905. That was well after the date that Chernyshevskii should have cast his spell on the Russian mind, but I had to wonder: Was Rand, who lived in Russia until 1926, ever exposed to the novel? There’s little evidence.     Share on Facebook

• • • The beauty of selfishness 
Monika Halan, LiveMint.com Altruism  Night of January 16th  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  In her biography Goddess of the Market—Ayn Rand and the American Right, Jennifer Burns manages to do the unthinkable: She keeps her opinion out of the book so that the reader has the liberty to react to facts, to the contradictions and the duality. Burns brings out Rand’s grandeur of thought but poverty of emotion, without overpowering the narrative with her own voice.     Share on Facebook

• • • Point of view: Rand more than worth a read 
George Molé, The Riverdale Press (NY) Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Personal life  The best time to discover the writer Ayn Rand, it’s been said, is when one is an impressionable kid, and that’s how it happened for me. One day, in my high school library, a paperback copy of Rand’s We the Living beckoned seductively from a nearby shelf; I studied the melodramatic cover with fascination (“The powerful novel of Soviet Russia — and of three young people who do not submit to tyranny”), then stepped eagerly into her glittering world of heroes, villains and ideas. It was a step worth taking.     Share on Facebook

• • Remembering the ladies 
Audrey Pietrucha, Bennington Banner Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Ayn Rand inspires adoration in some and abhorrence in others, but seldom do readers come away from her works complacent and neutral. Rand wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. [....] Her clear and well-reasoned arguments in favor of individualism, laissez-faire economics and constitutionally limited government helped fuel a conservative backlash against collectivism and also formed the foundation of her philosophical movement, Objectivism.     Share on Facebook

• • • Capitalism’s Leni Riefenstahl 
Max Dunbar, 3:AM Magazine Altruism  Atheism  Ayn Rand Institute  Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Capitalism  Personal life  Yaron Brook  Image  Review of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by Jennifer Burns.Rand lives on, a grinning ghost in the corridors of power. Sales of her books, always at high plateau, spiked during the 2008 crash. To her supporters, the bank bailouts vindicated Rand. ‘We’re heading towards socialism,’ declared Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute, ’we’re heading towards more regulation. Atlas Shrugged is coming true.’ Cult devotees are famously resistant to the lessons of experience. It evidently didn’t occur to Brook that, like Soviet Communism, Rand’s doctrinaire capitalism had already been put into practice, and found wanting.     Share on Facebook

• • Editors’ picks 
C. Rollyson, Choice Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  The Virtue of Selfishness  We The Living  Capitalism  Egoism  Personal life  Review of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller.Although not stinting a concern with Rand's ideas, Heller is mesmerized by Rand the novelist and the person. The biographer pores over Rand's early years in Russia with brilliant results, showing how much Rand (born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum) drew on her experience in the 1920s Leninist state for her impressive novel We the Living.     Share on Facebook

• • • Yevgeny Zamyatin: Libertarian novelist 
Jeff Riggenbach, Mises.org Daily Article Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  We The Living  Personal life  Whatever we decide about whether Rand read We in the '20s or '30s, there's simply no getting around the obvious similarities between Zamyatin's novel and Rand's Anthem. Both are set in the far future in a completely collectivized totalitarian society. Both are told in the first person by their main characters, in We by the mathematician and engineer D-503, in Anthem by the engineer Equality 7-2521. Anthem is the only work of fiction written by Rand to be written in the first person. In We, D-503 meets a woman, I-330, and is led inexorably down a path to rebellion against the government of the society in which he lives. In Anthem, Equality 7-2521 meets a woman, Liberty 5-3000, and is led inexorably down a path to rebellion against the government of the society in which he lives.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand, the philosophy of freedom, and a serial killer 
Gus diZerega, Beliefnet.com - A Pagan’s Blog Atheism  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Egoism  Rand's admiration for a sociopathic murderer is an eye-opener as to the moral sensibility that appeals to all too many 'conservative' and 'libertarian' Americans. She was one very disturbed and deeply wounded person, as her biographies show.     Share on Facebook

• • • Ayn Rand popularity spurs release of lost film 
Duncan Scott, NewsMax.com Anthem  Atlas Shrugged  The Fountainhead  We The Living  Rumors continue that Ted Turner is considering a remake of the 1949 Gary Cooper film, “The Fountainhead.” Film rights to Rand’s novelette, “Anthem,” have been acquired by Hollywood producer, Kerry O’Quinn. But perhaps the most unusual example of the Rand on-screen phenomenon is the recent DVD release of “We the Living,” the long-thought-lost movie version of her first novel.     Share on Facebook