review – Alexander Shyrokov's blog

Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand

Alexander Shyrokov — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:44:36 +0000

I have finished reading Atlas shrugged by Any Rand. The author talks about strong people, fighting and winning. The book is long and I had a feeling that the book consists of three more on less independent books. But towards the final pages I felt that I do not want the book to end.

I read “Atlas shrugged”, because I liked “The Fountainhead” by Rand (my wife suggested both books to me). “The Fountainhead” talks about struggle of individual men to remain true to their values. “Atlas shrugged” takes this struggle to a national level. Now the fight is between groups of people. One group is represented by men of mind aka industrialists, and the other group is men of no-mind aka politicians. The book outlines what methods are used by both groups and why they use them. The main point of the book is that a person must use mind to live and happiness is the ultimate goal. The author provides very logical explanation of why this statement must be true. Of course, the statement comes with a premise that one can not obtain happiness by the price of someone else happiness. I did not remember that it was explained why this premise is logical. In either way, my major concern with the book is that it creates a vision that people achieve by the means of logical reasoning alone. Rearden (one of the books main characters) spent 10 years in the lab to create his metal. The picture that books draw is that logic was the tool for discovering the metal. As a scientist myself, I know that it is very unlikely scenario. “Intuition” by Osho has a very good explanation of the sources for our achievements.

Overall, “Atlas shrugged” is a great book. It is very well written and the subject of the book is worthy of writing a book about.

Healthy at 100

Alexander Shyrokov — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:00:00 +0000

“Healthy at 100” by John Robbins impressed me with the amount of scientific references the author used to support his points. I found this book a little too long, but it’s hard to disagree with the approach that John uses in his book. I have found certain statements in this book surprising, because of my assumption, that information of such importance would be known. But it turns out that even though there is a lot of conclusive research on some important subjects (nutrition, exercise, cancer, heart disease, etc…), I would never know about it. The excuse for that is that I do not read medical publications (how many people do?) and the research is not widely publicized in any other way. But the actual reason for my ignorance is that I never even tried to look for this information. Hence I never knew what the white flour is and why we have it. It has low nutrition value (lower than 50% of whole grain flour) but long shelf live. As a consumer I see no reason to chose white flour instead of whole grain flour. It maybe a common knowledge for some people, but it was not for me.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior

Alexander Shyrokov — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I was advised by my friend Cory (who is a gymnast) to read Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman. I enjoyed this book a lot. Highly recommended to people who suspect that “thinking” is not our only option.

More on Ishmael

Alexander Shyrokov — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I even wrote a short pitch (review) about Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Must read book

Alexander Shyrokov — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:00:00 +0000

I’d say that Ishmael by Daniel Quinn is a book everyone must read. It gives the answer to the question “What’s wrong with this picture?” (picture being everything around).

Interesting book

Alexander Shyrokov — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have finished a book by Stephen Hawking “A Brief History of Time“. It was interesting to read and it does explain terms such as relativity theory and uncertainty principle using normal language.