[BillyBoy]

These guys don't seem to be fans of any books written in the last two centuries, do they? ;-) LOL. Since I'm just getting out of college now, here's all the books I've read out of their wish list:

The Bible
The Federalist Papers
The Divine Comedy, Part I: The Inferno
The Illiad
King Lear
Hamlet
Oedipus Trilogy, Parts I & III (nobody ever pays attention to II)
Animal Farm

All were required for various classes except the last one.

There are a couple on their list that I haven't read but would like to, such as "The Conservative Mind" and "A New Birth of Freedom".

Oddly enough, I was forced to read Ayn Rand in High School and hated it. I don't get all the Ayn Rand worshipers on this forum who says Rand "converted" them to conservative thought. I was conservative long before Rand and her novel Anthem put me to sleep, Orwell wrote on the same theme and did it much better instead of hitting you over the head with it. And the fact that she's a pro-abortion athetist doesn't endear me to her either.

[Remedy]

I don't get all the Ayn Rand worshipers

Nor do I - The Ethics of Ayn Rand: A Preliminary Assessment

[js1138]

My father has started getting paranoid at age 93, so I have become a big fan of King Lear. Where did Shakespeare get all that stuff? It's just amazing how he nailed the human condition.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Ayn Rand is to literature as WJC is to ethics.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

These guys don't seem to be fans of any books written in the last two centuries, do they?

It really takes a minimum of a century or two in order to really be able to identify works that are going to be of lasting and significant importance. A better approach might have been to rank the top three-to-five works written prior to 1800 in each of a number of major disciplines.

[muir_redwoods]

I'm glad Anthem put you to sleep. TYou were probably a good student. It was designed to be as simple a statement as possible and is often recommended for children. She wrote it for the express purpose of reaching semi-literate people who she felt needed to start somewhere. Of her fiction, Atlas Shrugged is the most on-point of her philosophy.

Yes she is not religious and does not try to mask that to gain a broader audience. Many of us are not religious but that does not detract from what she has to say about objectivism

[A_perfect_lady]

About Rand, try to understand, many of us were brought up with only two options: the liberals and Jerry Falwell. For those of us who just couldn't get onboard with Christianity, just couldn't swallow a philosophy that says "believe this weird story or the merciful god will make you burn in hell forever," Rand was a bolt of lightening. If you were already conservative, nothing she said was all that shocking. But if you'd been stewing in marxist propaganda all your life... ALL your life... this was... a revelation. And it didn't require you to believe in some guy who came back from the dead, didn't require you to believe in prophecies, angels... nothing! I'll never forget the first time I read THE FOUNTAINHEAD.

[E Rocc]

Oddly enough, I was forced to read Ayn Rand in High School and hated it. I don't get all the Ayn Rand worshipers on this forum who says Rand "converted" them to conservative thought. I was conservative long before Rand and her novel Anthem put me to sleep, Orwell wrote on the same theme and did it much better instead of hitting you over the head with it.

Heinlein did more to make me a conservative than Rand did, and many of his books are more teen-friendly.

-Eric