[JDDunn9]

I just finished reading "Mein Kampf" last month. It's not very good. It's about 20% racist rants. He talks about some legitimate grievances German had at the time and from their history, and military strategy. I didn't walk away feeling like Hitler was brilliant or anything like I did with Trotsky after reading "Terrorism and Communism".

[kafkaesq]

Books are for eggheads; you need to see him live, man. According to a witness at the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch:

I cannot remember in my entire life such a change in the attitude of a crowd in a few minutes, almost a few seconds ... Hitler had turned them inside out, as one turns a glove inside out, with a few sentences. It had almost something of hocus-pocus, or magic about it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch

[Koshkin]

Yeah, there are better books to spend your time on than those two...

[unmole]

I have a similar reaction when someone suggests Ayn Rand.

[LyndsySimon]

I view Rand's work as being instrumental in the development of my worldview... and I can't recommend that most people read most of it.

She was a terribly novelist, but wasn't really trying to be a great one. She was using the novel format as a scaffold to hang her ideology upon for easier access to the masses. She did that passably in "The Fountainhead", which is at least a decent story. She failed utterly in "Atlas Shrugged".

If you're interested enough in Objectivism to read AS, I suggest you read "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" and "The Virtue of Selfishness". If you're still interested, AS provides additional insight and might be worth the slog.

[Grue3]

Except, you know, Ayn Rand's writings haven't resulted in genocides and mass human rights violations.

[soneil]

You could make the same argument that this is why it should be read. Especially with the right being on the rise across the west, there's still much to be gained in understanding how the "average man" was led down this path "last time". "doomed to repeat it", etc.