I read this more than 40 years ago, at the urging of someone in our newspaper office, so I'm not really in a position to write a review, but someone asked why I gave it one star, so I'll try to remember what I did think!

I'd heard Ayn Rand extolled before, by people whose views I didn't admire, and so I wasn't too keen to read a book by her. But since my colleague nagged me, and lent me the book so I didn't have to buy it, I started reading it, and found it rather boring. I told him so, and he said, "It's not the story, it's the philosophy." And I said that I found the philosophy rather repulsive, so if the story was boring, there wasn't much left.

I did, however, lash out on a book of essays, with the title "Capitalism, the unknown ideal", which laid the philosophy bare, and made it clear that Ayn Rand was trying to do for capitalism what Karl Marx tried to do for socialism -- give it an ideology. And both were atheists. But Karl Marx's version retained a vestige of Christian values, diluted and degutted, perhaps, but still discernable; Ayn Rand's had none.

So evil philosophy and crummy story -- one star.