Anthem: 50th Anniversary Edition

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The year 2005 marks Ayn Rand’s Centennial Year. Ayn Rand’s classic tale of a future dark age of the great “We”—a world that deprives individuals of name, independence, and values—a nticipates her later masterpieces, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Library Journal The difference between this long-forgotten exercise in paranoia and other futuristic visions of a world controlled by the state, such as Aldous Huxley's or George Orwell's, is the extremist tone of Rand's story. The author lived in a black-and-white world in which things social or communal are evil and things individual and selfish are exalted. This "anthem" culminates in a hymn to the concepts of "I" and "ego," where the rebels are those who resist group action; the oppressors are government officials and others who attempt to provide a safety net for the less fortunate. The production is not improved by the theatricality of narrator Paul Meier, which is reminiscent of a ham Victorian actor intoning an overwrought melodrama. Not recommended.-Mark Pumphrey, Polk Cty. P.L., Columbus, NC Categories: Literature & Fiction Genre FictionPolitical Show more