I appreciate the thoughtfulness of this response. I spent my high school junior year of english reading most of Rand and writing a 30 page paper on her. She has some very useful and powerful insights - but beyond my initial enthusiasm I grew to find her morally repulsive. There is some really weird shit in there like her constant need to be submissive to powerful men. Still, 20ish years later I'm a designer, engineer and entrepreneur and I find myself often referring to moments and characters in her books. However, I find it slightly upsetting that Atlas Shrugged is so often on people's #1 list.