• Judging a book 
Hindustan Times (New Delhi) The Fountainhead   Can a book really change your life? [....] No, don't worry, I'm not going to roll out the usual suspects. You know, the books that every generation discovers in college with a fresh flash of recognition and claims for its own: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand; The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir; The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. I devoured all of the above and many more cast in the same mould. But I can't say that any of these books changed my life in any significant way. 08:04 PM    View blog reactions

• • ‘There are only 15 saleable heroes’ 
Syed Firdaus Ashraf, Rediff Atlas Shrugged   The Fountainhead   Harry Binswanger   Interview with writer-director Sanjay Gupta.[Q:] Are you influenced by Aynn Rand's (popular and controversial American philosopher and novelist, most famous for her philosophy of Objectivism) philosophy because your films reflect those things? [A:] I'm a major fan. As a matter of fact, the book is in my bedroom and always next to me. [Q:] Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged? [A:] No, that was long back. What I always keep with me is Aynn Rand's lexicon, Objectivism from A-Z. It's like a dictionary of concepts where she speaks about marriage, relationship and all such things. 06:20 AM    View blog reactions

• Falling back on pseudo-science? 
Praful Bidwai, Frontline The [Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change] comprises hard-core libertarians of the Ayn Rand variety, who dogmatically advocate the free market, including “tax freedom”, minimal or no government, unrestricted individual liberties and strong intellectual property regimes. Libertarians are even further to the right than neoliberals. 06:08 AM    View blog reactions

• Forget love, Gen X wants substance 
MSN India Anil Kumar, who runs a popular second hand bookshop [...], says in the past few years sale of romance novels has come down by 35 per cent. "There was a time when women bought romance novels from me in dozens. Today most young girls ask for Sidney Sheldon, Ayn Rand or Agatha Christie. Romance novels are no more hot with them." 10:37 AM    View blog reactions

• Spotlight: Saif Ali Khan 
Stacey Yount, Bollyspice.com The Fountainhead   Bollywood actor profile.Favorite Book: "Ay [sic] Rand’s The Fountainhead. It’s the only book I’ve read more than twice." 05:56 AM    View blog reactions

• Gold: Cheap at $1000 an ounce! 
Shanmuganathan N., Sify (India) Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal   “Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the ‘hidden’ confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism towards the gold standard.” Thus wrote Alan Greenspan as part of “Gold and Economic Freedom” in The Objectivist (1966), reprinted in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. 09:18 AM    View blog reactions

• • Why it’s OK to be an introvert 
Michel Pireu, Business Day (South Africa) The Fountainhead   Ayn Rand says in The Fountainhead that “the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain … An agreement reached by a group of men is only a compromise or an average down upon many individual thoughts ... The primary act — the process of reason — must be performed by each man alone … This creative faculty cannot be given or received, shared or borrowed. It belongs to single, individual men.” It’s a good argument for ultimately making your investment decisions alone. 05:49 AM    View blog reactions

• • Living life queen size! 
Sushmi Dey, Express Pharma "What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. The basic principles are the same… There is no particular work which is specifically feminine. Women can choose their work according to their own purpose and premises in the same manner as men do," said famous Russian born American novelist Ayn Rand in an interview to Playboy. Indian pharmaceutical industry seems to mirror Rand's thoughts, with high-profile achievers like Dr Swati Piramal, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Dr Rama Mukherjee and Dr Mary Francis. 08:08 AM    View blog reactions

• • Living De good life! 
Mita Kapur, Deccan Herald (Bangalore, India) The Fountainhead   Interview with author Shobhaa De.The real Shobhaa? “Who knows? A person is constantly evolving, all I know is that I am myself. If someone likes me, that’s wonderful and if they don’t it’s fine with me. My literary leanings have changed and will continue to change. We all have grown up reading the Classics, Ayn Rand happened to us. Howard Roark was God, I wanted to marry only him but you eventually grow out of this too.”  11:08 AM    View blog reactions

• • The undertaker 
Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata, Hardnews (India) Atlas Shrugged   The Fountainhead   Personal life   Review of Alan Greenspan's memoir, The Age of Turbulence.Rand, the novelist - objectivist author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged - and apostle of laissez-faire capitalism with its central notion of making it on one's own in the marketplace, became the fount of intellectual wisdom for Greenspan when he was just getting started as an economist, and he joined her circle of close friends. 10:58 AM    View blog reactions

• Hundred-year war 
Vijay Prashad , Frontline When asked how he would deal with the recession and the mortgage crisis, [John] McCain flatly told the press: “The issue of economics is something I’ve never really understood as well as I should. As long as Alan Greenspan is around, I would certainly use him for advice and counsel.” Perhaps McCain failed to read Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence (2007) in which the acolyte of Ayn Rand took on the Bush administration’s reckless funding, “They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither.” 08:35 PM    View blog reactions

• Smells like team spirit 
Indrajit Hazra, Hindustan Times (New Delhi) If Kiwi all-rounder Jacob Oram [...] has managed to get $318,000 more than Aussie Matthew Hayden [...] from bidders, that's for the chartered accountants and Ayn Rand to work out. 08:02 PM    View blog reactions

• • Sania’s right: Time we got intolerant of intolerance 
Times of India Atlas Shrugged   Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged envisioned what would happen if the innovators of the world, its movers and shakers and its 'dreamers of dreams', went on strike against the suppression of creativity. A provocative and challenging proposition born out of a romantic imagination. On a more down-to-earth plane, what could the average citizen — who is not a public figure, nor has any pretensions or desire to be an activist — do to show solidarity with the victims of intolerance and bigotry? 10:18 PM    View blog reactions

• • • Ayn Rand and the individualistic cult 
Ipsita Baishya, Zee News (India) Atheism   Atlas Shrugged   The Fountainhead   Capitalism   Egoism   Personal life   While Rand was not the first philosopher to advocate an ethos of individualism, reason, and self-interest, no one articulated it as vibrantly or ardently as she did. Only an individual of Ayn Rand`s all-exuding aura and dynamism could have so unflinchingly believed in `the virtue of selfishness` not as an abject, abstract proposition but as an intrepid vision of defiance, creative purpose, romantic love and self-expression. 08:11 PM    View blog reactions

• • The price of Gandhigiri 
V. Kumar , Hindustan Times “Marxism is no cure and Communism creates a totalitarian State. Only the gospel of Rand will lead us to salvation,” [“R”] said. The Marxist replied in stronger words and much to my chagrin the debate took an ugly turn. I tried my best to convince them that both Marx and Rand had talked about liberating man, but in their own ways. 09:42 PM    View blog reactions

• What has Hercule Poirot got to do with stock-picking? 
N Sundaresha Subramanian , Sify News (India) The Fountainhead   "DNA Money spoke to five expert stock-pickers on books that have inspired them the most."The books that I have loved to read are Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Black Swan and the recent bestseller Freakonomics (because it describes economic theory through events that one had never anticipated). Ultimately, everything leads to investing. — Mugunthan Siva, CIO, Optimix  10:59 PM    View blog reactions

• • A brave new world? 
Bonita Aleaz, The Statesman (New Delhi) Atlas Shrugged   Personal life   Ayn Rand the vivacious Russian émigré philosopher had a lasting impact on [Alan] Greenspan's early years as an economist. [....] Rand was an outspoken supporter of capitalism and was famous for wearing a gold brooch in the shape of a dollar sign. 10:52 PM    View blog reactions

• Everybody loves a good tsunami 
Sandip Roy, Time of India Sandip Roy meets Naomi Klein, the anti-Ayn Rand, whose new book looks at how disasters are a festival of dollars. 04:24 PM    View blog reactions

• • ‘Gender issues disappear at a certain level’ 
Surabhi Agarwal, Financial Express (India) "What is proper for a man is proper for a woman. There is no particular work that is specifically feminine.” This is what author Ayn Rand had said in an interview to the Playboy magazine. Small wonder then that she figures in Kiran Majumdar Shaw’s list of admirers. For, the chairman and managing director of Biocon is a lady who had to break not one but many glass ceilings. 04:10 PM    View blog reactions

• • • An enduring saga 
Sheila Kumar, The Hindu (India) Atlas Shrugged   The Fountainhead   On Atlas Shrugged and the influence of Ayn Rand.A philosophy that preaches the virtues of selfishness, that denounces altruism, that reveres man instead of god, cannot be held aloft as a banner in these times of militant intolerance. However, the Rand connection surfaces, low-key, steady, authentic. Kiran Majumdar Shaw, founder of Biocon, admits to being inspired by Ayn Rand. Footballer Baichung Bhutia admires Howard Roark. “My fictional hero is Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Like him, I try to cross new frontiers,” he says. Listen to Preity Zinta on Rand. “Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead changed my perspective about life,”` she declares. 09:54 PM    View blog reactions