One of the most intellectually challenging books I have ever read. Funny how I finished this on July 4th! Her thoughts are especially relevant in the modern age.

I like a lot of Ayn's philosophy, but why use 1100 pages when you can use 400? I do fault the book for being a bit too wordy during the impassioned speeches. There was a lot of redundancy and overlap and the story (which was excellent) could have progressed a bit more (especially in the early parts of the book) if characters did not feel the need to give 54 page monologs.

Perhaps all of our leaders have not read what she has to say, given the length of her work. She does have another book, "For the New Intellectual" which takes the salient points of her philosophy and the character monologs and breaks them down into little quotable chunks. You can use those at your next rally.