"The Great Gatsby", or "The Last Tycoon", as written by - "300" and "Sin City" author Frank Miller. Regardless of the contemporary context - Ayn Rand reemerging as a conservative icon - this is simply not a very engaging story. Boring characters, terribly cheesy dialogue. --- Not because I would be "offended" by any implicit revelation this book might bring me, but because it's a fairly standard novel of manners from the 1930s. If you like the style, say, á la Galsworthy, then it's going to be something you might want to consider. But otherwise, especially as long as other, better writers from the time remain unread to you - choose them. Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Huxley, they are all just plainly better at writing than Rand is.