My first wife. I wasn't much of a reader then, but she recommended Atlas Shrugged. She never recommended a book before, but she thought I'd like it. I thought, well that's curious. So I went ahead and started reading it. And the more I read it, the more my attitude changed.

Jun 12, 2020

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3 min

Romanchuk has been involved with The Atlas Society since the 1990s. He spoke with me from his home in Minsk via Zoom.

May 22, 2020

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3 min

I started in accounting at the age of six. My father saw me doing arithmetic homework and said, “Why do you need to solve made up problems?” So he gave me his business ledgers and had me add up the columns.

May 15, 2020

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3 min

There's a difference between willful blindness and being born blind and not knowing what it's like to be able to see. I was born into a closed environment where association with outsiders was forbidden. Even reading was confined to school textbooks.

May 1, 2020

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3 min

By default, many parents are homeschooling now. School closures have also raised questions about whether the high cost of government education is providing decent returns, given the all too often dismal results.

Apr 23, 2020

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3 min

It was terrible. I was ten years old when Hugo Chavez became president in 1999, and life got very depressing. We were no longer free. There was no more respect for us as individuals. There was no more private property.

Apr 17, 2020

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3 min

Grover Norquist is the first person we asked. Norquist is the President of Americans for Tax Reform and a longtime advocate for keeping the size and scope of government in check –– as a result he’s been a lightning rod of criticism for those seeking to blame limited government for the spread of coronavirus in the United States.

Apr 16, 2020

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3 min

A high school English teacher recognized my individualism. He introduced me to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance,” George Orwells’ novels 1984 and Animal Farm, Ibsen’s play “The Enemy of the People,” and David Karp’s novel One.

Apr 9, 2020

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3 min

Friends and members of The Atlas Society are a major source of knowledge and wisdom. Social Psychologist Joe Duarte, Ph.D. recently spoke

Mar 24, 2020

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3 min

Editor’s Note: Members and friends of The Atlas Society provide us with a wealth of wisdom. Atlas Society supporter Jennifer Bukowsky is an

Mar 3, 2020

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3 min

Editor’s Note: Alfred Kentigern Siewers is associate professor of English at Bucknell University and 2018–2019 William E. Simon visiting

Feb 17, 2020

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3 min

I was born in Belgrade, in August 1935, to a Ph.D mechanical engineer father and a conservatory-trained pianist mother. IN LIBRARY WITH R

Nov 5, 2019

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3 min

I think that one thing that Paterson’s writings give us is the opportunity to see what happens when power is concentrated by political mean

Oct 25, 2019

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3 min

Absolutely! I think that what she accomplished intellectually, coming from Russia and going so far libertarian was really just a feat of the

Aug 26, 2019

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3 min

Friends and members of The Atlas Society are among our greatest resources – providing energy, ideas, and support that actively shape our work. Their individual stories are testaments to Ayn Rand’s ideals of reason, achievement, and ethical self-interest.

Jul 29, 2019

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3 min

MM: You will be the keynote speaker at The Atlas Society’s third annual gala October 10 in New York City. Let’s tell people who you are and

Jul 9, 2019

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3 min

In addition to my interest in science I have always had a creative streak expressed in painting and music, but had never considered fiction

Jun 24, 2019

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3 min

To set up the climax of her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand had her protagonist, the genius architect Howard Roark, make a deal with

May 28, 2019

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3 min

In Book 2, Chapter 6 of Atlas Shrugged, on May 15, Dr. Lloyd Ferris, head of the State Science Institute, extorts from Henry Rearden the

May 15, 2019

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3 min

MM: Did you invent the profession of philosophical practitioner?

May 6, 2019

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3 min

Chip Wilson’s dad, an athletics instructor, was coaching his son during a swim meet, with the advice: “Why don’t you just go full out from..

Apr 29, 2019

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3 min

DA: Since the early 1990s. David Kelley introduced himself at a Reason Foundation event (perhaps John Stossel or Margaret Thatcher was speak

Apr 26, 2019

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3 min

In 1972, American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer challenged and defeated Boris Spassky, the defending champion from the USSR, in the World

Apr 15, 2019

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3 min

That’s an interesting question. Yes and no. My book doesn’t directly address the question of trust between the sexes around sexuality...

Apr 8, 2019

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3 min

Boston U. S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, who broke the case charging parents and university officials with cheating on college admissions

Apr 6, 2019

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3 min

Matt Cook, Ph.D. is an economist, bestselling author, and composer based in Los Angeles. He founded Braveship Media, an entertainment consul

Apr 1, 2019

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3 min

Police are investigating what motivated three university students to set fire to the Tulane University dorm room door of Peyton Lofton...

Mar 28, 2019

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3 min

Ayn Rand wrote about envy in her novels, her popular nonfiction, even in her journals and letters. It was a problem she examined from every

Mar 18, 2019

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3 min

I grew up in California in the 1960s and 1970s, then graduated from UCLA with a BA in Mathematics. Since my parents were divorced, I worked

Mar 7, 2019

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3 min

In his recent book, The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties, Paul Collier mentions Ayn Rand. The comment is a one-off, so I’ll

Feb 21, 2019

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3 min

Growing up during the 1950s, Robert Bidinotto became enthralled by TV vigilante heroes, such as The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and Batman. That

Feb 18, 2019

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3 min

“So you think money is the root of all evil?” That is the question the wealthy, dashing copper magnate Francisco d’Anconia asked at the...

Jan 28, 2019

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3 min

W. S. Gifford, the president of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, called London on January 7, 1927 to speak with Sir Evelyn...

Jan 3, 2019

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3 min

On December 15, 1791, the United States Congress ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution guaranteeing indi

Dec 11, 2018

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3 min

On December 5, 1933, Congress ratified the 21st Amendment and repealed Prohibition. While Ayn Rand personally rarely drank alcohol, she

Dec 3, 2018

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3 min

In the fall of 1943, Warner Brothers paid Ayn Rand $50,000 for the movie rights to The Fountainhead and for Rand to write the screenplay...

Nov 26, 2018

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3 min

Ayn Rand recognized the important role music played in Western culture: “To the Western man, music is an intensely personal experience and

Nov 20, 2018

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3 min

Ayn Rand had no love for war. In a journal entry from 1946 she recognized that war was the purest expression of statism and the antithesis

Nov 12, 2018

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3 min

As the midterm elections come and go, it is a good time to remember that Ayn Rand defended limited government. She had concerns about just

Nov 9, 2018

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3 min

PBS announced the results of The Great American Read on October 23, 2018. Out of 100 novels, fans placed Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Nov 1, 2018

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3 min

This is how it starts. You read We the Living and get a taste for freedom. You read Anthem and develop a benevolent sense of life. You read

Oct 19, 2018

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3 min

Early in Atlas Shrugged, Dagny and her then-lover Hank Rearden, the brilliant and hardworking founder and head of Rearden Metal, decided to

Aug 20, 2018

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3 min

A second critical difference that sheds light on the divergent universes of Henry James and Ayn Rand is how they conceived human action.....

Aug 13, 2018

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3 min

The Portrait of a Lady is considered the greatest novel by one of the greatest novelists in the English language....

Aug 6, 2018

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3 min

Henry James did not consider the subject matter of his novels to be inherently the proper one for all novelists. It was the proper one for

Jul 30, 2018

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3 min

Henry James wrote his essay “A Lecture on the Art of Fiction” in 1884 in response to novelist Walter Besant. Besant gave a lecture at the...

Jul 23, 2018

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3 min

Henry James (1843-1916) is a major American author. His numerous novels and novellas include What Maisie Knew, The Turn of the Screw, The

Jul 17, 2018

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3 min

Ayn Rand was right of course. Rand was right about living conditions in Russia. She was right about the logical conclusions of communism....

May 25, 2018

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3 min

As Dreiser depicts them, Clyde Griffiths and Roberta Alden are not lovers so much as they are victims. Biology and society conspire against

May 14, 2018

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3 min

Dreiser’s Hortense Briggs and Rand’s Rita Eksler are both femmes fatales, but whereas Dreiser seethes with resentment that such a girl exist

May 7, 2018

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3 min

It is difficult to think of two American authors more antithetical than Ayn Rand and Theodore Dreiser. According to his 1965 biographer, W..

Apr 23, 2018

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3 min