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Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that scienc... (See the whole review)

The Myth of the Robber Barons describes the role of key entrepreneurs in the economic growth of the United States from 1850 to 1910. The entrepreneurs studied are Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, Andrew Mellon, Charles Schwab, and the Scranton family. Most historians argue that these men, and others like them, were Robber B... (See the whole review)

Bought this yesterday, finished it last night. Was drawn to it because of the interest by my 24 year old son. IMO, one of the most wildly effective political books aimed at modern youth ever. And, this is great, fantastic news for Ayn Rand fans. It's crystal clear depiction of heroic individuals in the face of an oppressive to... (See the whole review)

Book Description ... (See the whole review)

The story of people finding the moral conviction to live their own lives, and of a man who stops the motor of the world to pave the way.  This is Ayn Rand's magnum opus. It is her comprehensive philosophical novel, dealing with each of the major categories of philosophy. This book lays down the basis of her entire philosophy in a compelling story. ...

This is Ayn Rand's first popular novel which brought her fame and a large following. "It is the story of a gifted young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggled to defeat him." (back cover) It shows man as a heroic being: Howard Roark, the perfect Egoist.

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial Offenders by Jamie Whyte. (McGraw-Hill 2004, 157 pages.) ... (See the whole review)

A short novella about a man trapped in a future society that has taken collectivism to its full and natural course. He struggles against that society and eventually breaks free and discovers the most glorious word in the english language, "I".

I am happy to announce Objectivity Archive. This site is an archive and library of Objectivity, now freely open to all readers and researchers.   Objectivity is a journal of metaphysics, epistemology, and theory of value informed by modern science. It consists of two volumes, each with six issues. It was a hardcopy journal, for subscribers, p... (See the whole review)

I have just finished this hot-off-the-press book. I can summarize it in one word, "sneering." He sneers at Objectivism, Rand, libertarianism and the Tea Party from the first page to the last. Weiss's goal is to show how the "cult" of Rand has influenced the Tea Party movement and the resurgence of "extreme" right wing politics. He acknowledges the ... (See the whole review)

This is my latest a work with the focus on the non-Utopian nature of the free society.

This is my favorite Ayn Rand novel. Not as overtly philosophical nor as monumental in scope as her later works, strictly as a novel qua novel, it excels those later works. And compared to the work of other authors, it is monumental. Rand tells us a love story set against the background of communist Russia in the 1920's. In part two, chapter 8, s... (See the whole review)

Here's a book allegedly about junk science, and it devotes an entire chapter on the "myth" that free market medicine (as in the US) is better than socialized medicine.  Evidently "science" proves that socialized medicine is actually better.  By what standard, you ask?  Not to fear.  He starts with the assumption that universal healthcare and equali... (See the whole review)

This is the true story of a man’s heroic struggle against monumental difficulties, a man whose motto throughout life was “crashing through,” who, at the age of 46, faced his greatest challenge: to acquire sight, and learn to see, after having been blind since the age of three as the result of an accident. ... (See the whole review)

As a bookstore employee, I've often wondered about the space dedicated to the many useless books on self-help, many of them by the same authors. If each has the answer, why do they need to keep writing books? Obviously it's the failure of the reader to achieve his potential. More likely the need of the author to make more money at the expense of t... (See the whole review)

Years ago, when I began engaging others in Internet discussion forums, I found myself groping for tools to analyze arguments.  As a sad statement of my college education, the logic course I took as a freshman only focused on "truth table" construction and never discussed the powerful body of informal fallacies compiled over the centuries.  A trip t... (See the whole review)

Whether you love him or hate him, Leonard Peikoff has written a definitive, bottom to top, tour de force treatment of Objectivism in this publication.  Newcomers to the ideas of Ayn Rand will appreciate this systematic, integrated, "big picture" overview of her philosophy for living on Earth.  Detractors will complain that this book merely uncritic... (See the whole review)

This sweeping text opens with the author recounting how human civilization and its economies have progressed through a series of ages: ... (See the whole review)

Gotthelf reports that the book (a collection of papers delivered to the Ayn Rand Society of the APA) has gone to the publishers (University of Pittsburgh Press).  It's the first volume in the Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Papers.  No publication date given.  <eom> (See the whole review)

This is a great book with a lot of interesting content.  The theme of the book is why we should be optimistic about the future. ... (See the whole review)

The book states, "While healthy, smart, happy, successful, virtuous parents tend to have matching offspring, the reason is largely nature, not nurture." Hopefully, it will help encourage more rationally selfish people to have more kids. World demographics are trending toward a shrinkage in their numbers and huge increases among populations ... (See the whole review)

This book is a fantastic introduction to economics. It explains a simple but important idea, and the entire rest of the book is an elaboration on the idea. The "one lesson" is the need to look beyond the first order effect of an action or policy, and see the many different consequences.  Each subsequent chapter goes on to apply that lesson to diffe... (See the whole review)

1984 is a dystopian story set in the future of a statist world. The main character, Winston Smith, struggles to live in a world where there is no privacy, and the government controls every aspect of your life. The symbol of the government is Big Brother, a fictitious leader who is said to benevolently watch over his people. In practice, the citizen... (See the whole review)

Book Description After the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, Ayn Rand occasionally lectured in order bring her philosophy of Objectivism to a wider audience and apply it to current cultural and political issues. These taped lectures and the question-and-answer sessions that followed not only added an eloquent new dimension to Ayn Rand's ide... (See the whole review)

While I have only just begun reading it, this book further proves that there is no prose writer alive with more wit, acumen, erudition, or clarity. Even when you disagree with him on minor points, you do so with enjoyment, because Hitchens always makes himself so clear that you cannot help but know both where and why you differ with him. A small ex... (See the whole review)

A marvellous, small book on atheism for children and adults alike, wonderfully written. May I recommend everybody at Rebirth of Reason to read it (and, perhaps, even give some copies away as a gift to relatives and friends?) See more of it and view some of its pages in http://www.amazon.com/What-About-Gods-Skeptics-Bookshelf/dp/0879751061 ... (See the whole review)

This small book is simply fantastic and fun to read. It also contains some interesting observations.

Put this in your Rand-sighting file: "Egoless Egoists: The Second-Hand Lives of Mad Men" by Robert White, published in Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems (part of the Philosophy and Pop Culture Series.) Much of Mad Men fits the theme of The Fountainhead in its expose of second-handers, and White gets it right: "Presumably, Coo... (See the whole review)

This Hugo and Nebula award winning masterpiece captures the world from a small child's point of view amazingly well.  Ender is a little boy who is smaller than everyone else his age and smarter than most everyone else of any age.  His very existence is due solely to the hope that he might one day save the world.  He is persecuted by his jealous cla... (See the whole review)

http://www.larryelder.com/larrysbooks.html I highly recommend this book by libertarian author, Larry Elder. He has courage and confronts racists of all colors.   (See the whole review)

Barbara Branden commented sometime ago that she hadn’t known much writings about the lives in Communist China. I have since discovered Ha Jin, a Chinese born author and Professor of English Literature at Boston University. Ha Jin writes both poetry and fiction, in English. The subject matter of his fictions so far (except his latest novel War Trash... (See the whole review)

This was an interesting read.  For a number of years in the late 1970's, Reagan had a radio show where have gave what appears to be about a 5 minute speech.  He wrote most of them, and this book is full of them.  Each one shows the text, including edits.  It has a few copies of the originals as well. ... (See the whole review)

Occasionally a book will appear on the scene that embodies the written equivalent of jewels among feces.  This book represents such an example.  I found it both enlightening and infuriating at the same time.  I only read it back in late 1999 because I received it at no charge as a bonus "best seller" for joining a book club. ... (See the whole review)

Like the subtitle indicates, this book is about induction. When and why is the inference from "some" to "all" legitimate? The narratives about some famous scientists arriving at their inductive generalizations are interesting and illuminating. There are ones about Benjamin Franklin, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, atomic theory, and chemistry. Harriman's ... (See the whole review)

In this book, Bastiat defends free markets by crushing the arguments for intervention.  He goes through one economic fallacy after another, demolishing them with logic and especially wit.  Bastiat explains his ideas through stories and examples, always showing the absurdity of these bad ideas.  The style is funny and light-hearted, and he makes the... (See the whole review)

Roger Dawson delineates the attributes of a successful negotiation and explains in detail how to make the people with whom you negotiate feel good about the deal you want to make.  When he overhears a person accuse him of wanting to snatch the gold fillings from people's teeth, he explains that such an action would amount to stealing, not power neg... (See the whole review)

The newest Harry Potter book went on sale this morning at midnight.  My daughter was one of those silly people lining up to buy a copy at midnight and she stayed up all night reading the entire book.  She told me that the books are getting darker and Hogwarts isn't the fun escape it used to be.  Someone very important dies in this book.  (She told ... (See the whole review)

I have found this book to be more beneficial as an introduction to "Objectivist Thought" for the layman than any of her other writings. I have tried to talk to people at the ARI and TOC, but the minute I mention this title the subject is changed or the communication terminated. "For the New Intellectual", "A Time For Truth" by William E. ... (See the whole review)

Theology professor Dr. Robert Price has written a chapter by chapter refutation of evangelical Christian Rick Warren's best seller The Purpose-Driven Life.  Following Warren's format of 40 days of meditation, Price focuses on dissecting Warren's message by carefully examining the actual meanings of the Biblical passages Warren quotes.  In effect, P... (See the whole review)

Upon rereading Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose for the first time since I read it at age 16, I am struck by the obvious influence of Jorge Luis Borges on the work. When I first read the book in 1984 I was not aware of Borges, and had only just put down my first reading of Atlas Shrugged. The book itself is presented, in Borgesian manner, as a ... (See the whole review)

This is the magnum opus of Ludwig von Mises. Being one of the best books on economics ever written, its philosophical content is often ignored. This is applied philosophy at its best, and a careful analysis will show a variety of ideas useful outside of this particular field.

In 1958, Ayn Rand, already the world-famous author of such bestselling books as "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", gave a private series of extemporaneous lectures in her own living room on the art of fiction. Tore Boeckmann and Leonard Peikoff for the first time now bring readers the edited transcript of these exciting personal statements. "... (See the whole review)

This book critically examines the Objectivist position on such major thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche and finds them wanting. It includes 3 appendixes; one that provides an overview of Objectivism.

I've just finished reading this wonderful collection of writing exercises, previously unpublished stories and plays and unpublished excerpts from We the Living and The Fountainhead. It is delightful to witness Rand's progress, both as writer and philosopher, in these works written between 1926 and 1938. One of the things I find amazing about... (See the whole review)

To my knowledge, I am the first SOLOist to change my mind about the war in Iraq. My unease with my anti-war position had been going on for some time and a discussion with SOLOist Joe Rowlands when he last visited New Zealand was crucial. But I have to say, this book was what really did it. If you thought Lindsay Perigo hated Saddam and the anti-war... (See the whole review)

A fascinating portrait of the minds that have shaped the modern world. In an intriguing series of case studies, Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Brecht, Sarte, Edmund Wilson, Victor Gollancz, Lillan Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tyan, Noam Chomsky, and others are revealed as inte... (See the whole review)

The classic world history of the events, ideas and personalities of the twentieth century. While you are unlikely to agree with Johnson all of the time, his understanding of statism and capitalism make this book a refreshing departure from Marxist interpretations of history.

Based on interviews with Rand and discussions with those close to her, this biography describes her life from her youth in Russia, to her stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter, and through her marriage, the publication of her novels, and the evolution of her philosophy.

If you like John Stossel, you'll like this book.  It's the story of his intellectual and professional development.  He explains what evidence he ran into that made him a strong advocate of free-markets.  He reviews the major ideas and issues he's dealt with, going over many of his television specials. ... (See the whole review)

This is the first novel in Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, comprised so far of eight books following the life of Richard, The Seeker of Truth.  Wizard's First Rule begins with Richard as a simple woods-guide, but quickly transforms into a face-paced action/fantasy read that spans a massive continent made up of three realms of varying magical qual... (See the whole review)