The provocative title of Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness introduces an equally provocative thesis about ethics. Traditional ethics has always been suspicious of self-interest, praising acts that are selfless in intent and calling amoral or immoral acts that are motivated by self interest. Ayn Rand's view is exactly the opposite. This collection of nineteen essays is an effective summary of Ayn Rand's philosophy, which holds the value of the individual...

The decisions of a few industrial leaders shake the roots of capitalism and reawaken man's awareness of himself as an heroic being.

After twelve years of suffering mysterious disappearances of society's most-productive individuals, the nation's economy is on the verge of collapse. As the government pursues policies imposing even greater brutality against those remaining, Dagny Taggart, Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, must make a choice between saving the nation's collapsing infrestructure or the man she has come to love - the man who would stop the motor of the World....

When haughty King Hugo tangles with a sorceress, she causes him to see himself in a more realistic light.

""While the history books are filled with tales of obsessive visionary geniuses who remade the world in their image with sheer, almost irrational force, I've found that history is also made by individuals who fought their egos at every turn, who eschewed the spotlight, and who put their higher goals above their desire for recognition."--The prologue Many of us insist the main impediment to a full, successful life is the outside world. In fact, the...

Simon Blackburn, author of the best-selling Think, structures this short introduction around these and other threats to ethics. Confronting seven different objections to our self-image as moral, well-behaved creatures, he charts a course through the philosophical quicksands that often engulf us. Then, turning to problems of life and death, he shows how we should think about the meaning of life, and how we should mistrust the soundbite-sized absolutes...