Photon_Man62

Thanks for all the input! Shame that Atlas is the one that fits my needs best, it's just too long for me to read efficiently. I'll probably stick with The Fountainhead for now, and read Atlas myself some other time. And "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" sounds great as well, and is pretty short, so I'll have a look at that too.

This is not homework help. I'm a libertarian and would like to interest some book-loving friends in individualism and capitalism (this is a book-club thing). Doing that, I'd love to get into Ayn Rand myself - summaries and other student materials are useless for that, this is for my own enjoyment and intellectual growth as well. I'm personally leaning towards The Fountainhead currently, but have some reservations - from what I gather, TF serves as a sort of "overture" to AS, which is why I'm afraid the motifs of individualism and capitalism would be too simple in it compared to AS. A perspective of an Ayn Rand fan would be great, most "TF vs AS" discussions that Google throws up just discuss which book each person preferred, and those opinions are pretty much split 50/50.

I'd like to do a short presentation on capitalist motifs in literature. Naturally I was drawn to Ayn Rand. I originally planned to read Atlas Shrugged, but it's very long and it would be quite time-consuming. I then turned my attention to her other work, which seems just as interesting (and is, luckily, shorter!). I've already read Anthem and enjoyed it, but it was pretty short and didn't touch on capitalism that much. I'll probably read both The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged sooner or later, but for now I have to choose one. Could any of you please recommend me which one would be more appropriate to my needs, and shortly explain why? Thanks in advance! P.S. Sorry if this is the wrong section, the "books" one is nearly abandoned.