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Atlas Shrugged in Contest for Best Book...VOTE!

Posted by $ Suzanne43 5 years, 11 months ago to Books
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During a program on May 22nd, PBS introduced the 100 best loved books in America. Atlas Shrugged was one of them. This is to be a contest. Voting is to take place all summer with the winning book announced in the Fall. You can vote for A.S. every day all summer long. So Gulchers vote and tell your friends to vote. It just takes a few seconds of your time each day. Even if A.S. does not win, we can at least try to keep it in the contest and maybe make it a finalist. The American people need to know that this book exists and is an important part of our culture. Maybe even a few snowflakes will read it. Remember to vote every day so that it is not eliminated. Let's do this! Go to :
PBS.org/greatamericanread

All Comments

  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I think they said it moved to 20 in about about a month.
    A lot of Atlas Shrugged fans dropped the ball. The rules allowed for voting 6 times a day using 4 different mechanisms for about 5 months. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

    I think they said the winning book got about 56,000 votes. At just one vote a day that is only a few hundred people. At maximum voting frequency it is equivalent to only about 60 people.
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  • Posted by minesayn 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I wasn't as PBS was asking for submissions back in the spring. I submitted Atlas Shrugged then; I am sure that I wasn't the only person who suggested it.
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  • Posted by minesayn 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Again, did you submit the title of your chosen book? If you didn't, then it wasn't going to appear on the list. PBS requested readers to submit their favorite books. Books on the list were submitted by readers. I KNOW I submitted Atlas Shrugged. This was way back in April, May, or June.
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  • Posted by minesayn 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Did you submit the book title when PBS was asking for input? I know I submitted AS, and I am sure I wasn't the only one. The 100 books on the list were chosen by readers, not PBS.
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  • Posted by minesayn 5 years, 6 months ago
    Did anyone watch the final show to see where Atlas Shrugged ended up?
    Number 20! And it moved from number 43 to 20 in the last few days, or so Meredith Viera said during the broadcast.. Of course, I wanted it to be number one (as it remains my favorite all-time book), but overall, I think it did well.
    I know I voted nearly every day for it. I suspect that this community certainly helped it climb.
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The abbreviation was for "professional", not "professor", as already explained from the quote. You first claimed that the participants were called "doctor", which isn't true, then "professor", which isn't true, and now strain to reinterpret an abbreviation despite the explanation why that is not true. Why?
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 5 years, 11 months ago
    Voted for AS, but had to vote for the all-time greatest Scifi novel ever written- Frank Herbert's "Dune".
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    In the transcripts they were called "Prof. A... Prof. M." Maybe I should start calling mysefl Prof. M. and when people call me "Professor" I should correct them and make them call me "Professional." That is ridiculous, of course.

    My reference to the Black Widowers was only a cultural aside to show that calling them all "Prof" when some were not was itiself not so peculiar.
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    All the participants were not called "professors". They were referred to as "professionals in philosophy, plus a few in physics and mathematics". Some were professors; most or all the rest were advanced level graduate students. "Prof" does not mean "professor". Only two, who were professors, were called "professor" in the text. Neither the workshops nor the account of them had any relation at all to Asimov's Black Widowers. and would not even if all the participants had been professors.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    They were all called "Professor" even though (as you pointed out) some of them were not.

    For the purposes ot fhe book, it was first a courtesy, but also served to further anonymize them.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Dr. Thomas Trumbull, as the evening's host, brings a Doctor Doctor Arnold Stacey to dinner. (Note: the rules of the club dictate that all members and guests receive the title of "doctor," so all with doctorates are known as "doctor doctor.") Upon questioning by James Drake, it is revealed that Stacey's "lesser doctorate" is in chemistry, and that he teaches at the university where Drake got his doctorate. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph_as_i...

    That was the second Black Widowers story. The courtesy of calling everyone "Doctor" does not appear iin the first one, "The Acquisitive Chuckle." It may be repeated in later episodes. We have a complete set, but I am not going to go on with this.
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It wasn't a dining club, there was no spoon-rattling for silence and no one was grilled to justify his existence.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Thanks. I went back and read the Foreword. "The workshops were opportunities for professionals in philosophy, plus a few in physics and mathematics, to ask Miss Rand questions about her theory of concepts, which had first appeared in print in her own magazine."

    In the Appendix, they are all called "Prof." from "Prof. A through Prof. M." Are you familiiar with Isaac Asimov's Black Widowers?
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Loyalty to your own principles is integrity. Rational principles are not a Siren's song.
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  • Posted by ewv 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    'Professionals" is more accurate than "Professors". Most were not yet professors. The great value was Ayn Rand's responses.
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  • Posted by BCRinFremont 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I’ve read most of Ms Rand several times over and other Objective authors. My suggestions for the PBS list were for inclusion of interesting authors, not specific philosophies or books.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Well, that's nice. I just replaced my "everyday carry" copy with a newer used copy. I have a first PPB on my shelf that I never open. But have you read any of Ayn Rand's other works? Have you read her non-fiction? I just bought my third copy of ITOE to mark up. (It is the newer edition with the seminar discussions by "professors.")
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Apparently, you do not understnad the philosophy that created the fiction. Camus and Nietzsche are antithetical to Objectivism.
    Also, 2001: A Space Odyssey was actually a short story called "Sentinel." The so-called "novel" was just a result of the screenplay of the movie. And, to the point, while the movie had its important moments, and while "The Sentinel" has an interesting plot, the fact is that not much in them can make your life better. They are far out-classed by Atlas Shrugged..

    Have you read any of Ayn Rand's other works, such as her non-fiction?
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 5 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Have you read any of Ayn Rand's other books? I have to ask because your off-hand comment about President Trump's "leadership" makes me think that you do not understand the philosophy underlying Ayn Rand's fiction.
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