Category Archives: Ayn Rand

Before 2019 comes to an end, I want to spotlight a few ofour best in-depth articles from the year. They span a broad range of topics. Theresurgence of tribalism. The appeal of Stoicism. Church-state separation. Abortion.The power of reason in science. The life and ideas of Ayn Rand who was anuncompromising champion of reason.

New Ideal helps advance the Ayn Rand Institutes wider aim of injecting the right philosophic ideals reason, individualism, capitalism into our civilizations lifeblood. Will you join us? Become an ARI member by December 31 and take part in an exclusive Q&A with New Ideal writers. And if youre already a donor to the Institute, thank you! (Youll be invited, too.)

The ancient philosophy of Stoicism is enjoying a resurgence of interest today, writes Aaron Smith. Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferris, Patrick Bet-David and others are promoting Stoicism as a valuable guide for living, and its garnering the interest of CEOs, professional athletes and Silicon Valley tech workers. But, Smith argues, there are good reasons to steer clear of Stoicism as a guide to life and to seek a better philosophy.

The metaphor of a wall separating church and state is widely used, but as Onkar Ghate argues, that metaphor is not sufficient to capture the principles that control how a proper government deals with religious organizations. In this essay from Foundations of a Free Society: Reflections on Ayn Rands Political Philosophy, Ghate discusses the arguments of some of the most prominent intellectual advocates of church-state separation. Then he explains how Rand sought to broaden, deepen and render more consistent the Locke-Jefferson argument for church-state separation, grounding her account on the need to embrace reason as an absolute in both thought and action.

Tribalism is everywhere. When its unleashed into the cultural mainstream, encouraged, and normalized, it leads to savagery. But, as Elan Journo argues, the phenomenon of tribalism is poorly understood. Ayn Rands philosophic analysis of tribalism, however, points to its essence. Rand, according to Journo, not only penetrates deeply into the phenomenon of tribalism, she lays out clearly a positive alternative, the ideal ofindividualism, which is the antidote to tribalism.

The detection of gravitational waves is an achievement as profound as the one brought about by Galileos telescope easily one of the most important scientific achievements of the last hundred years, writes Keith Lockitch. Its been deservedly celebrated in the scientific press, and it earned the scientists who pioneered this work the2017 Nobel Prize in physics. This achievement resulted from centuries of progress in science. The backstory behind this achievement is an awe-inspiring testament to the power of reason.

Ayn Rands support of abortion derived from key principles of her radically unique philosophy. Ben Bayer shows how Rands principled, moral defense of abortion rights is not only fundamentally at odds with religious conservatives, but also radically different from what most Democrats and sundry liberals offer to this day.

For anyone curious to learn what Ayn Rand was really like, one invaluable resource is her personal correspondence, observes Tom Bowden. Beginning with the publication ofLetters of Ayn Randin 1995, readers have had an opportunity to see how Rand pursued her values day to day. These letters do not merely tell you about Ayn Rands life, says her longtime student, philosopher Leonard Peikoff. In effect, they let you watch her live it, as though you were an invisible presence who could follow her around and even read her mind.

Become a member of the Ayn Rand Institute, starting at $10 per month, by December 31 and receive an invitation to an exclusive online Q&A session with New Ideal writers.

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Six of Our Best In-Depth Essays of 2019 - New Ideal

I was planning to write a top ten list of the most influential business books of the decade but as I worked on the list--and looked over other writers' lists--I began questioning the premise. Very few business books are influential at the "decade" level. In fact, few business books have a half-life of more than six months.

The scandals that books detailed became old news. The companies that books idolized became part of the landscape. The CEOs that books lionized become yesterday's celebrities. The motivation that books inspire becomes tired and spent. And the conversations those book sparked, why, we barely remember them.

For example, can you name the biggest business bestseller of 2013? Huge sales. Huge. Was all over the news. Every pundit commented. Can you name it? Hint: the author was a Chief Operating Officer. Can you name it now? Well, it was Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, a book full of "women must change" advice that's seems impossibly dated in a #METOO world.

So, no, there aren't many business books whose influence spans a decade, but there was one business book (interpreting the category broadly) that continues to be highly influential, gradually changing the foundations of how we view capitalism: Le Capital au XXIle Sicle aka Capital in the 21st Century by French economist Thomas Piketty.

The premise of the book is simple: wealth doesn't automatically "trickle down" as a "rising tide that raises all boats" but instead wealth flows upward, increasingly enriching a diminishing number of the super-rich. The observation that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is centuries old, but it was who Piketty revealed the mathematics behind the bromide.

For people who think about the nature of business and the acquisition of personal wealthy, Capital in the 21st Century was the "red pill" that changed everything. Before Picketty, most businesspeople espoused an Ayn Rand-ian view that the rich were rich because they were makers while the poor were poor because they were takers. It's an attitude that's still exists but now rings hollow. We now know the super-rich are takers rather than makers.

For entrepreneurs, this is a red pill that's hard to swallow. We tend to think of billionaires as role models. We try to imitate their thought processes and replicate their success. But while a very small handful of entrepreneurs join the ranks of the super-rich each year, it's clear now that the game is massively rigged to favor the already-wealthy.

In short, Capital in the 21st Century was the tipping point where the concept of the meritocracy crumbled under the weight of mathematics. It's a book that's changed, is changing, everything, and will no doubt remain influential long beyond the current decade.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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The Most Influential Business Book of the Past Decade - Inc.

The ride Ford v Ferrari Photograph: Merrick Morton/AP

In Ford v Ferrari (AKA Le Mans 66), Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) has been tasked by the Man in the guise of Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) to build a racer that can beat those rotten eye-talians who think they are better than us. Shelby can do it, but he needs Letts to get off his back with the rules and regs and let his genius soar! (Ayn Rand would love this movie.) After some comedic business, Ford winds up in the test vehicle alone with Shelby, who zooms him through sphincter-clenching turns at incredible speeds. When he slams the brakes, Ford sobs.

At first you think the scene is just to mock the unmanliness of this pencil-pushing suit. Then it changes. Shelbys velocity has so rattled Fords emotions he explodes in grief that his late father cant see his name on such a powerhouse, and in deep sadness that hes not a man of vision himself. He recognizes in Shelby everything he isnt, and it floods out his eyes and nose. It is a weirdly tender moment, reminding us that even comedic baddies in a dad film are people, too. JH

Jennifer Lopezs dazzling pole dance caused a ripple of gasps around the screening room where I saw Lorene Scafarias clever con movie Hustlers. Its not just that J-Lo looks so great for her, or anyone elses, age. And its not just that the moves required for this dance are so demanding, she later released a YouTube video of the rehearsals in which she gazed horrorstruck at her own bruised thighs. Its mostly that its a very old-school star move: the flaunting of talent, professionalism and charisma that we associate with a routine by say, Fred Astaire. But also, Ramona is the films central enigma and this moment, her first appearance, sums up the movie.

Her gymnastic display inspires something more tangible than mere lust: admiration (from an overawed Constance Wu), and financial reward. Ramona hugs those dollar bills close to her heart as she strides off stage. The choice of song, Fiona Apples Criminal, is as prophetic as her payoff line is prescient: Doesnt money make you horny? PH

A quote from Toni Morrison, some grainy analog establishing shots of the Coachella grounds, and then: it is time. The camera dollies up to a drum majorette who taps out a count, mean-mugs for a moment, and then blows her whistle to summon the demi-deity known as Beyonc Knowles-Carter. The director of photographys choreography works in perfect tandem with the dancers as one continuous shot pulls forward while they twirl out of the way to reveal Queen B, so resplendent and regal that both the nickname and the crowds slavering idol-worship of her instantly make sense.

To the strains of a HBCU-styled marching band, she strides down a catwalk to the stage with one foot in front of the other to maximize the swing of her hips. She might as well be walking on water, so supremely in command of this massive spectacle that she reminds us why we talk about pop stars in religious terms. CB

As rapturous as the reception might have been for Noah Baumbachs shattering divorce saga Marriage Story on the festival circuit this fall, no one could have predicted its instant virality earlier this month when it landed on Netflix. But while Adam Driver and Scarlett Johanssons devastating argument became its most memed moment, its the lighter, yet still astute, set piece involving a court-appointed evaluator that made the biggest impression on me.

Its a perfectly calibrated sequence of awkwardness with Drivers theatre director Charlie painfully determined to show that hes a stable parent but knowing, as his soon-to-be-divorced wife says earlier on, that outside observation on any given day would reveal flawed parenting. This tension lingers throughout as he tries to bury his instinctive reaction to his sons gentle insolence while trying, unsuccessfully, to seek some humanity or humour from the unknowable visitor Nancy Katz, played hysterically by the standup comic Martha Katz. Im not sure if another line has amused me this year quite as much as Charlies son asking him to do the thing with the knife over dinner in front of an understandably suspect Nancy and silently raging Charlie. Uncomfortably brushing it off, he eventually decides to explain his trick but it goes horribly, stomach-churningly wrong and he ends up bleeding profusely while trying, yet again, to pretend everything is fine. Its gruesomely, outrageously funny and a reminder of Baumbachs ability to make drastic yet effortless tonal switches. BL

At a graduation eve party in Booksmart, one of the most criminally underseen movies of the year, shy overachiever Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) sits on the floor in a crowded room, sloshing through the end of her drink and admiring an overconfident theater friend belt out Alanis Morissettes You Oughta Know on a karaoke mic. Amy, out for two years but inexperienced, spends most of the film careening from confident and brash, in the presence of best friend Molly (Beanie Feldstein), to tongue-tied in front of Ryan (Victoria Ruesga), her crush of two years; when Ryan hands her the mic halfway through the song, the sound cuts out a fever pitch of nerves. But then Amy crushes it, nailing the songs ending and revealing to her classmates that, low-key, she can sing.

This scene does an impressive amount in about a minute, namely: live out the fantasy that has occupied about 65% of my daydreams since age 13 (I cant sing), prove that Dever has ARRIVED, salute an ultimate banger of a song. But it also captures the warm invincibility at the bottom of your first drink, the high of leaning into someone elses confidence or of unlocking that fearlessness in yourself the type of finely observed, wild yet grounded fun that made Booksmart one of the most resonant high school movies in a long time. AH

When Claire Deniss desolately beautiful science-fiction nightmare High Life premiered at the Toronto film festival, the fuckbox scene became a brief but intense meme for the few on film Twitter who had seen it: in a film that was hard to describe and distil as a whole, it was the salacious detail singled out to pique others interest. Thats a reductive way to tease a film prickling with so many layers of philosophical and sensual detail, but once seen in context, its also an entirely indelible image: Juliette Binoche, nude and scar-torn, entering a space-borne masturbation chamber, straddling a dildo seat and riding it until, as Lil Nas X might say, she cant no more. Performed with abandon by Binoche and shot with visceral candour by Denis making a tensing, thrashing map of the actors back alone its one of the most extraordinary sex scenes in modern cinema: an expression of female erotic autonomy that outlasts any early quips about it in the memory. GL

Ari Asters Midsommar is a portrait of how a toxic relationship quietly, but surely, unravels. At first its subtle: Florence Pughs Dani frets that she overburdens boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) with her own drama and mental health issues, and that her need for emotional support is unattractive. When her whole family dies suddenly, shes desperate to hold on to Christian. She appeases. She apologizes. She stifles her cries after Christian and his friends subtly pressure her into taking shrooms, as specters of her dead sister haunt her.

The whole film is about Dani feeling silenced and invalidated by a man who views himself as the saddled victim. Thats why its so weirdly refreshing when, in Midsommars terrifying climax, the Hrga women embrace Dani for who she is, cupping her face and encouraging her to sob as loudly as she wants. Crouched on the floor, they cry as one, and as their wails reach a communal crescendo, you see Dani finally finding some measure of healing. Sure, its a crazy Swedish cult, but there Dani finally finds someone who actually acknowledges her agony. GS

The quiet sentimentality of Lulu Wangs charming sleeper hit shines brightest for me in a scene where twentysomething Billi (played by Oscar-buzzed Awkwafina) and her grandmother, Nai Nai, practice tai chi outside.

Nai Nai coaches her granddaughter through some of the movements, lightly nagging Billi about practicing tai chi everyday in that cute, but kind of annoying, manner family members are known for. Its obvious Billi has no plans of practicing tai chi after this scene and doesnt deem it particularly useful. Then Nai Nai proudly and confidently credits the martial art for her continuing good health, a big smile on her face. Thing is: Billis grandmother has terminal lung cancer but does not know it. So Billi performs the tai chi movements with a renewed energy, owed to the strange mixture of guilt, sadness and stress she feels over the secret illness. She pushes out bad energy and inhales good, yelling out an awkward, meek Hai!

An hour later, at the end of the film, we see Billi walking down the streets of south Williamsburg. Shes still upset over her grandmothers cancer and visibly overwhelmed and stressed. Out of nowhere, she stops in the street, takes a deep breath and yells out a loud, reverberating Hai! The circularity of the moment Billi going from disinterest in tai chi to seeking relief through it highlights how our families can arm us with specific tools to handle the stressors of life. It reminds me of the hours me and my late grandmother would spend putting together 1,000-piece puzzles. As a kid, I was confident I would never take part in such a boring, odious activity as an adult. Today, its my favorite pastime. AW

Generally speaking, scenes in which lovers kiss and make up following an infraction are joyful affairs. They come at the close of a movie, following heart-rending misunderstandings that have left a happy ending in jeopardy. Thats not the case in The Souvenir. After months of casual, incremental borrowing to fund his heroin habit, Anthony (Tom Burke) stages a robbery at the flat of young girlfriend Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne). This is purely to bankroll smack not the luxe trip to Venice they embark on soon after, which she pays for, and during which she twigs what hes done.

When they return to London, Julie asks and Anthony admits. But hes not sorry. Hes wounded she has brought it up his abhorrent behaviour compounded by this cavalier attitude. Youre shocked, and relieved surely shell give him the boot?

And she quietly forgives him. Anthonys arrogance and obfuscation, his hurt words about only doing what he needs to, in a world she wouldnt understand, which hes protecting her from, fall on appalling open ears. Blame is smoothly shifted. Repentant Julie strokes his foot and forgets her heirlooms.

Joanna Hogg shoots the confrontation in one static shot; the couple sitting opposite in armchairs, until Julie bridges the gap. The viewer knew the truth would out and assumed it would be a bigger scene. That its not moves the relationship into new territory. You can no longer underestimate Anthonys actions or his hold over Julie. The moment she reaches out in supplication is the chilling heart of a fairly scary film. CS

Ignore the whys (the film-makers did); basically, its Keanu Reeves versus a bunch of faceless goons in a surprisingly tooled-up antiques shop, and for me, one of the most exhilaratingly gruesome action scenes in recent memory.

It starts with a few gunmen, easily dispatched, but things really kick off when Reeves and an opponent realise they are in a corridor of glass cases packed with all manner of bladed weapons. So much glass-smashing, knife-throwing, shooting, stabbing, punching, kicking, grunting and limb-twisting ensues, you can barely keep track. It is brilliantly choreographed and executed, but whats so great is how messy it all looks. And painful. Nobody is neatly killed. Knives miss their targets. The deaths get ever-more cartoonishly horrendous. And the scene ends with a flourish: the last, wounded assailant sits groaning in the foreground; from way back down the corridor Reeves hurls a final axe, which, of course, hits its target in the side of the head. The first time I watched this scene I laughed out loud in horror and admiration, which was kind of awkward as I was sitting on a crowded plane. SR

Painfully clean-living as I am, I have never understood why so many films I like feature the consumption of heroin. Christiane F, Trainspotting, The Souvenir, Permanent Midnight and of course, the champ: Requiem for a Dream. Now we can add another to the list: Pedro Almodvars autobiographical reverie Pain and Glory. Now, most films posit heroin as a one-way ticket to the morgue, or at least to total social dysfunction; for Almodvar, though, it seems to be the next best thing to an after-dinner mint. His alter ego Salvador (Antonio Banderas) appears to handle it all with remarkable ease, using it to soothe his emotional worries and act as a vehicle for remembrance. Experiencers of the real thing may have a different view, but I presume Almodvar knows what hes talking about. Its quite the eye-opener. AP

Sydney Pollacks lost concert movie Amazing Grace was finally brought out this year showing the live filming in 1972 of Aretha Franklins gospel album of that name at New Temple Missionary Baptist church in Watts, Los Angeles. Franklins calm and restraint at the centre of this boiling cauldron of musical energy is compelling. The most startling moment involves her father, the Rev CL Franklin, who addresses the congregation and then, while Aretha is actually singing, he rushes forward to mop her brow. Was this the sort of thing he used to do when she was a little girl? Is it touching that he does it now? Or weirdly dysfunctional and coercive? Either way, it is a compelling image in a remarkable film. PB

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Crying! Pole-Dancing! Heroin! The best movie moments of 2019 - The Guardian

Do you still need a few last-minute Christmas gifts or stocking stuffers? If youve considered Timothy Sandefurs gift suggestions for fans of Ayn Rand and are still looking for a few more, consider these.

Most fans of Rand are familiar with the expression that the history of the Western world is a battle between the ideas of Plato and those of Aristotle, and they understand that figures such as Descartes and Kant fundamentally were Platonists, whereas Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, the American founders, and Rand herself fundamentally were Aristotelians.

Arthur Herman extends this line of analysis through all of Western history, drawing a bright line between two antithetical groups of thinkers and the consequences of their ideas. Herman is a historian, not a philosopher, and in some places his analyses of Plato and his followers are too favorable (I say more on why in my review of the book).

Yet, unlike many historians, Herman clearly recognizes that philosophy shapes the course of history, and his dramatic writing makes this seven-hundred-page examination flow like a fun detective novel.

For the history lover on your list, also consider Hermans equally fantastic though more delimited How the Scots Invented the Modern World.

For those who already have read The Cave and the Light or who want a deeper analysis of related subjects, theres David Stoves insightful and hilarious takedown of some of philosophys most irrational ideas, including modern variants of the idealism that Plato inaugurated. Aiming to explain the ways in which thinking can go (and has gone) wrongand armed with the barbed wit of a Mark TwainStove targets George Berkeley, Immanuel Kant, Karl Popper, Robert Nozick, and others.

In some places, Stoves own thinking goes wrong (read my review for details). Still, few and far between are those whove so clearly refuted modern absurdities (he even appears independently to have discovered a variant of Rands stolen concept fallacy), and no writer Im familiar with has done so while inducing so much laughter. Your friends will love this gift (I know I did when I got a copy from Craig and Sarah Biddle!).

Speaking of fun readsand of Mark Twainitd be a crime not to mention Twains lesser-known, posthumously published musings on Christianity. Although Twains religiosity appears to have waxed and waned throughout his life, this charming satireamong the last of his writingsindicates that his mature view was decidedly deist.

Herein, after the archangel Satan makes some admiring remarks about certain of the Creators sparkling industriesremarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms, God banishes him to space for a celestial day. Satan decides to check out the subject of his sarcasms, Earthand more specifically, mankindand, by and by, writes back to archangels Michael and Gabriel about mans bizarre religious beliefs and customs.

In addition to these eleven progressively more critical letters, both a reissue and the original 1962 edition contain several of Twains other writings on religion, bringing together this treasured Americans most irreverent thinking.

Another American humoristand a self-proclaimed thorough Deistwho has much value to offer fans of Ayn Rand is Benjamin Franklin. Whereas the formative years of most of Americas revolutionaries have had to be pieced together by historical detective work, Franklin himself set down the story of his own adolescenceand he thereby bequeathed to mankind a masterpiece in self-improvement.

In fact, his autobiography cast the mold for the self-improvement genreas Franklin himself did for an American ideal: that a free man may rise as high as his ambition will take him, and that his mind and effort are what matter, not his position at birth.

Ive read a handful of books about Franklin, but none are more pithy, witty, useful, or inspiring than Ol Bens own words. Thats not surprising given that during his life, he was, as literary critic Carl Van Doren concluded, the best writer in America. My suggestion: Gift a collection of his writings, and pick one up for yourself.

Given the typically wide disparity in musical tastes, I hesitate to recommend albums at all; but being a musician and passionate music lover, I cant resist.1

In a previous life, I was an engineer at Nashvilles longest-running recording studio. I decided I wanted to work there years before when I learned that one of my all-time favorite albums was recorded there: Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Plant, of course, fronted Led Zeppelin, and Krauss is a country darling with a voice of goldso you might think theyd make a bizarre duo.

Not so. In my opinion, its the closest audible thing to magic. Plants pipes have aged like expensive whiskey, and Krausss singing is angelic. The pedal steel guitar of Greg Leisz shimmers and floats between these two stars on Killing the Blues and Through the Morning, Through the Night, and Dennis Crouchs upright bass sounds rusticand gigantic. Thats in part because the entire A-list cast was captured on analog tape through some of the best recording equipment ever made. Beware, however; whereas most of the album is rather beneficent, the deathly pessimism of Nothin might just put you in Dominique Francons statue-smashing frame of mind.

The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive.2 Ayn Rand

The music that most reminds me of these words is the Pat Metheny Groups appropriately titled masterpiece The Way Up. (Let me know in the comments below what music brings to your mind Rands description of Halleys Fifth.) The albums main theme, introduced in the first minutes of Part One (which is track two) and reinvented in various ways throughout this nearly seventy-minute composition, captures a heros battleand triumph.

If you gift this album, please pass along that it absolutely must not be listened to as background music or on laptop speakers. Truly hearing it will require all of ones attention. And in justice, it should be heard on speakers large enough to replicate the magnitude of what it conveysor decent headphones, which advantageously put one inside its spatial richness and complexity.

For more of an upbeat undercurrent, something to fuel a road trip or a productive work session, try the second of William Tylers guitar-centric instrumental albums, Modern Country. Despite its title, this album has nothing to do with twangy Telecasters, pickup trucks, or Corona-infused beach parties (disappointing, I know).

In fact, Tyler apparently has a thing for misleading names; the opener, Highway Anxiety, sounds like pure peace of mind, twice distilled. And theres not a song on the album that, in my experience, doesnt help soothe the worst road rage or calm the mind after a difficult workday. So if you want a friend to feel greater serenity, give the gift of William Tyler.

Also, his latest release, Goes West, shares many of the same qualities, and his Impossible Truth is quite beautiful as well.

If such serenity were a beverage, it would be buttermint tea. Twiningss blend of vanilla and peppermint is smooth, refreshing, and calming. It helps me release tension and reset my mind, giving me the relaxed focus I need either to work through problemsor to set them aside when the days work is done.

Whether you want to help the ambitious people in your life work smarter or enjoy some well-deserved rest, buttermint tea is a great option. Pair it with anything else on this list for increased pleasure.

How could I not recommend gifting tickets to the most life-enhancing conference of the year? As Franklin said, An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. And heres what TOS-Con attendees say:

TOS-Con 2018 and 2019 have been two of the most important events in my life to date.

The most tangible result of these conferences in my life has been the creation of my own business. I was able to start the business as a direct result of the energy, self-esteem, and will that I gained largely from your conference in 2018.

TOS-Con is an event filled with breathtaking intellectual and aesthetic revelations that is attended by a group of rational, benevolent, and energetic people who love to share their optimism and positivity. It is a place for construction and for creativity. It is a place where everyone looks to find the best within themselves and within each other, and to celebrate that. As a result of this, I leave each conference feeling supercharged with energy and ideas which I am able to implement in my own life to make it consistently better.

Thanks to TOS-Con I also have a new network of friends from around the country. The price paid to attend this conference is the single best investment I have ever made in myself, and one I will continue to make year after year.

Thank you sincerely for having the strength of purpose to create this conference. Steven

This conference has changed the way I think about the world around me. This is my first conference and will go down as one of my life-changing experiences. Lauren

Traveling home, I couldnt stop thinking about all of the ideas I heard and people I met . . . Speaking with so many passionate individuals and listening to so many different talks really inspired me to reflect on how I live my life and how I want to live it, and to put more work into my aspirations. Im so grateful for the experience. Thank you! Kenna

I hope to see you at the most life-enhancing conference of the yearand I hope that these gift ideas enrich your holidays, your relationships, and your life. Merry Christmas!

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More Gift Ideas for Fans of Ayn Rand - The Objective Standard

In the Ayn Rand Institutes 2019 annual report, Onkar Ghate explains how ARI is uniquely positioned to succeed in the worldwide battle for individual freedom. Alone among pro-freedom institutions, Ghate observes, ARI understands that philosophy determines long-term trends in any culture. Thats why the Institutes activities, including New Ideal, are aimed at making a difference in the long game, by injecting the right philosophic ideals reason, individualism, capitalism into our civilizations lifeblood. Join us. You can support our work by becoming an ARI Member.

When the Ayn Rand Institute was established in 1985, its founders understood they were playing the long game. ARIs founding documents quote Rand herself: The present state of the world is not the proof of philosophys impotence, but the proof of philosophys power. It is philosophy that has brought men to this state [of cultural bankruptcy] it is only philosophy that can lead them out. (For the New Intellectual, 1961)

ARI is the only institution fighting for freedom in the world today that understands this fundamental truth.

To the extent the world has moved forward since the 18th century, it has done so by implementing, however imperfectly, the ideals of the Enlightenment: reason, science, individualism and a government limited by the principle of individual rights. To the extent the world has stagnated or retrogressed, it has done so because of the ascendency of opposite philosophic ideas: mysticism, dialectical logic and other pseudo-scientific approaches, collectivism/tribalism, and unlimited government given the power to sacrifice the property and lives of individuals, when doing so is said to be in the public interest.

Rand viewed her new philosophy, Objectivism, as putting the Enlightenments ideals for the first time on a fully rational, fully defensible foundation.

Rand viewed her new philosophy, Objectivism, as putting the Enlightenments ideals for the first time on a fully rational, fully defensible foundation.

ARI exists to inject that philosophy into the lifeblood of civilization. The Institutes progress, accordingly, is not measured in days, but in decades. Perhaps the clearest sign of progress is that Rands ideas are following a trajectory similar to what J.B.S. Haldane outlined for the acceptance of radical ideas: first the idea is dismissed as worthless nonsense; then it is regarded as an interesting but perverse point of view; then it is regarded as true but unimportant; then it is said to have been everyones viewpoint all along. Arguably, we have moved into the second stage, as evidenced by the growing worldwide interest in Rands ideas, by how often her ideas are mentioned in the media and in ideological discussions, and by the growing difficulty of simply dismissing her ideas as nonsense.

This change over the last thirty-plus years is in large part due to ARIs activities: our essay contests, books to teachers program, educational talks, conferences and courses, media appearances, and published essays and books. We are trying to change peoples fundamental convictions and to normalize discussion of Rands radical ideas.

Our focus on the long-range dissemination of philosophic ideas does not mean there are no shorter-term successes. But it does mean that these successes are created through the impact we have on other individuals and organizations. For instance, one of ARIs long-standing, vital activities is educating individuals about Rands ideas and their application. Many of these individuals go on to do impactful work. We have helped train individuals who are now teaching and publishing at universities, are involved with legal think tanks like the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Institute for Justice, and the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, and have founded organizations like the Center for Industrial Progress and Higher Ground Education. We need thousands more individuals like these who are knowledgeable about Rands ideas and are working to apply them to forge a new culture.

Its an exciting journey, in which I hope you join us. If you already have, thank you for your support.

Become a member of the Ayn Rand Institute, starting at $10 per month, by December 31, and receive an invitation to an exclusive online Q&A session with New Ideal writers.

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Fuel the Fight for Reason, Individualism and Freedom - New Ideal

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- One reason I love books is that there are some arguments and ideas that simply cannot be presented in a couple of thousand words, to say nothing of being squeezed into social media posts. The year 2019 was a particularly good one for books that made me think. No, I dont read every book the industry has to offer, but I do peruse hundreds each year. Below are my 15 favorites from the twelve months just past, all of them serious efforts.(1)I by no means agree with every point made by every author, but each work on this list fully engaged me, and, in some way, caused me to see the world a little differently.

To avoid the tyranny of the alphabet, the first 14 are listed in random order. At the end is my pick for best nonfiction book of the year.

Steven Strogatz, Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe An argument that we underestimate the extent to which the modern world is built on mathematics in general, and calculus in particular. Delightfully written, with only a handful of difficult concepts. (And youll also learn how to calculate the speed of light while sitting at home ... by using cheese.) Orlando Patterson, The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament Everybody wonders what makes Jamaica so different. The prominent Harvard sociologist dares to ask. Dares to answer, too. (Bonus: A meditation on the transubstantive value of cricket.) Tyler Cowen, Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero My fellow Bloomberg Opinion columnist makes the list for a second year in a row because for a second year in a row he has made me think hard about an issue where I would have expected to be on the other side. (Im not anti-capitalist; I just tend to celebrate small business.) Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language The lifelong, unrepentant Grammar Curmudgeon in me keeps lamenting the state of the language. Best to know where the changes are coming from. McCulloch diligently, if tragically, traces the evolution from Old Internet (say, the OK Boomer crowd) to New Internet. Particularly good on how social media has made informal rather than formal writing the cultural norm. Dan Moller, Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism From the stunningly lucid first line to the homey examples (restaurants, sand castles), this is the best book on libertarian philosophy in years. Moller manages to walk the thin line of favoring self-reliance (and neighborliness) without going Ayn Rand on us. Akiko Busch, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency An engaging guide to both the philosophy and methodology of what the author calls slipping out of the picture. Busch combines history, science, and her own joy in nature as she argues for resisting the lure of crowds and fame but even of awareness of self. (Never have the thirty seconds before medical sedation kicks in been made to seem quite so vividly attractive.) Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South It turns out that white women on the plantation were not helpless, passive spectators in the slaveocracy. They were active participants in the oppression, and in many cases they behaved more cruelly than the men toward the human beings they owned. Harold Bloom, Possessed by Memory: The Inward Light of Criticism The famed literary critic, who died this past October, wrote more books than most people in middle age have had birthdays. Here he leads us on a fascinating journey through the great poetry and prose to which he devoted his many decades of brilliance, using everything from Shakespeare to the Bible to May Swenson to reflect on his life and to teach us home truths about ours. Antonin Scalia, On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer Whatever your views on the late justices jurisprudence, there is much to be learned from this collection of writings by him and about him. He was a fine prose stylist, and is quite strong and sharp on such issues as why its important to resist the urge to try to model government on the Bible. Tyler Kepner, K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches Ive been a fan and amateur historian of the game since I was young, but I somehow never realized how absorbing baseballs history would look if viewed as a series of changes over time in the way the ball is thrown to the batter. Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration The title says it all. I devoted a column earlier this year to this excellent book, an extended argument in the form of a graphic novel. Dont expect to be persuaded; do expect to be forced to rethink. Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the WorldThe historian argues that even as the West grows more avowedly secular, our ethical positions, right up to #MeToo, are deeply imbued with a Christian view of the moral world. Robert MacFarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey Its a clich but still true: The story grabs you and never lets go. MacFarlane, an inveterate chronicler of geography, leads us through the caverns and depths beneath the surface of the globe and also through the caverns and depths of literature, of our own souls, and perhaps of our future as well. Never have I thought so deeply about what lies far below our feet. Tom Nicholas, VC: An American History Whatever your view of venture capitalists, its worth studying where they came from. I had a vague familiarity with the role of U.S. postwar policy in the creation of the species, but I learned a lot more from Nicholas. And Id never thought about their precursors in the old whaling industry!

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Finally, my choice for best nonfiction of the year:

Jane Brox, Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives I have a confession to make. Until I picked up this volume, it had never occurred to me that silence had a history. But it does, both as concept and as practice. Brox makes use principally of two examples: the monastery and the penitentiary. We see how the rule of silence helped build the scholarly and reflective aspects of the monastic life but became a tool of oppression to the imprisoned. Also, a nice bit on how todays constant sense of the passage of time is ruinous to the need for quiet.

Thats this years list. As always, happy reading.

(1) I would likely have included Anthony Kronmans controversial book, The Assault on American Excellence, but for my reluctance to list volumes by those who are close friends.

To contact the author of this story: Stephen L. Carter at scarter01@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of law at Yale University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. His novels include The Emperor of Ocean Park, and his latest nonfiction book is Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster.

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Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 for Contrarians and the Curious - Yahoo Finance

We have our winner. Nowhere does the objective take on the subjective with greater fear or envy than at any of these annual sports star awards, only nowhere did they agree with more success than when deciding on the super global sports star of 2019.

Not everyone can throw a punch like Katie Taylor or hole putts like Shane Lowry. But everyone can run, or at least think they can, and medals or times, places or records, personal bests or age-group barriers, no man or woman, team or country, had a year in history to rival the now properly global running shoe phenomenon known as the Nike Vaporfly.

Its always been hard trying to distinguish what counts or matters most within one chosen sport, the sort of conversation and debate Ayn Rand could have written another very long book about, but in distance running, that old art of putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible and for as long as possible, most people will go for time.

Take a look over any of the times that counted in 2019 from the big city marathon to the local parkrun and chances are the Nike Vaporfly are right there on the ground beneath their feet.

This is the running shoe first officially introduced by Nike for their Breaking-2 project, in Monza in 2017, where they overtly flaunted every possible legal aid to help Eliud Kipchoge run a first sub two-hour marathon the final frontier of distance running while also flouting many of the rules that define such frontiers.

In the end Kipchoge clocked 2:00:25, and for all the debate around the fairness of that run his feet seemed to be talking the loudest, or rather the Vaporfly were.

The shoe was promptly marketed for general sale, first as the Zoom Vaporfly 4% for the no-discount price of 250, before earlier this year being replaced by the ZoomX VaporflyNext%, which sells for a tidy 275.

Meanwhile Kipchoge and plenty others have been going where no marathon runners have gone before. Last year in Berlin, the Kenyan took the world marathon record down to 2:01:39, first official sub-2:02 and the biggest improvement on a mens marathon world record in 51 years.

No prizes for guessing what happened next.

Nike gently tweaked the shoe again, and wearing what was dubbed the ZoomX AlphaFLY, Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in another flaunting/flouting marathon in Vienna in October, and the rest is distance running history.

Despite some objections to the legality of that time (mine included), Kipchoge, it seems, has already made that record his own, and Ridley Scott is reportedly finishing off a film to help make sure of it.

Last month, Kipchoge was also named World Athletics male athlete of the year, the first back-to-back winner since Usain Bolt in 2012-13, despite the fact he only raced twice in 2019: in Vienna, and in the London Marathon back in April, when wearing the Vaporfly Next% for the first time he won in a new course record time of 2:02:37. Two races, two wins, one not even official: they may as well have given that award to the Vaporfly too.

Also in the running for female athlete of the year was Kenyas Brigid Kosgei, who in the Chicago Marathon in October, broke Paula Radcliffes 16-year-old world record with her 2:14:04 (and thats not a misprint).

Its not that long since a lot of top male distance runners would have been delighted with a 2:14 marathon, and in bettering Radcliffes old record by nearly a minute and a half, Kosgei was also running in the VaporflyNext%.

Thats been the story behind every big city marathon this year, from Dublin to Beijing, from New York to Honolulu.

Just last Sunday at the 47th running of the Honolulu Marathon on Oahu, another Kenyan Titus Ekiru ran a course record of 2:07:59, where given the heat, humidity and killer hills of that race (I know that because Ive run it) thats probably close to another sub-two.

Who ever thought wed see times like this here? said Honolulu Marathon president Jim Barahal, in charge of this race since the days when Hunter Thompson would come to town. Has Barahal not heard of the VaporflyNext%?

Same story behind the Valencia Marathon earlier this month, where Paul Pollock ran five minutes faster than his previous best when clocking 2:10:25, earning his qualification for next years Tokyo Marathon in the process, also running in the VaporflyNext%.

Only John Treacy, with his 2:09:15 from 1988, has gone faster in the history of Irish distance running, although that line between past and present times is being increasingly blurred. In Valencia, for example, 174 finishers broke 2:30, compared to 99 in 2018, and 77 in 2017.

Same story too behind Stephen Scullion and his second-place finish in the Dublin Marathon, running 2:12:01, the then fastest by any Irish man in 17 years (before Pollock went faster again).

And same story behind Sinead Diver, who via Mayo, Limerick and now Melbourne, and who just four months shy of turning 43, finished fifth best woman overall in the New York Marathon in November, having already improved her best to 2:24:11 in London last April to finish seventh best overall.

The New York Times ran a feature on Friday under the headline: Nikes Fastest Shoes May Give Runners an Even Bigger Advantage Than We Thought. Their latest data, based on race results from over one million marathons/half marathons in dozens of countries from April 2014 to December 2019, showed that runners in the Vaporfly 4% or Vaporfly Next% ran four to five per cent faster than a runner wearing an average running shoe.

All of which begs the question: is this fair? World Athletics, the governing body of this sport, are traditionally a stickler for rules: step half a foot inside the track in a 10,000m race and youre likely to get yourself disqualified; take anything that offers a proper advantage over your opposition and youre likely to get yourself banned for four fours.

Theyve set up a working group, including former athletes and experts across sports science, ethics and biomechanics, to look into the Nike Vaporfly, the essential advantage, unfair or otherwise, seemingly the thick foam of its midsole, built on a curved carbon-fibre plate, creating not so much a spring as a levering effect.

Their current rule states any type of shoe used must be reasonably available to all in the spirit of the universality of athletics, and there is least evidence of that too at the race start line, and in the race results. Theres no going back on 2019, just a decision to make in 2020, the only problem being time is already running away.

Link:

The super global sports star of 2019: the Nike Vaporfly - The Irish Times

The books that stay with you are weird. I (Vox book critic Constance Grady) have read countless books in my life, and some of them were great books and some of them were terrible, but do I remember, say, The Sun Also Rises in as much detail as I remember the third volume in the Baby-Sitters Club series, The Truth About Stacey, where the truth is that she has diabetes? I do not.

The books that are most important to you personally are books that hit you at just the right moment, that manage to change your mind about something, that get you through a hard time, that give you something you can use to help you make your way through the world. (For instance, The Truth about Stacey taught me all about diabetes, which, no offense Ernest, but Hemingway has never done anything nearly that useful for me.)

So looking back at the books that were most important to you during a certain period of time is like looking at a map of your own mental development: Heres where I went through my unfortunate Ayn Rand phase and used the word objectively a lot; heres where I was very depressed and read a lot of essays about food to try to comfort myself; heres where I needed something absolutely beautiful in my life and found the perfect book to provide it.

The 2010s were a decade in which the world fundamentally changed, in which America said goodbye to its first black president and brought Donald Trump into the White House, in which the climate change apocalypse began, in which pop culture became increasingly fragmented and also TV got really good. Most days, I felt I absolutely needed a book that would either make the world more understandable or at least make it easier to deal with.

So as the 2010s draw to a close, Ive asked members of Vox staff to name a single book that came out this decade that was the most important to them personally: one that changed their life or how they saw the world, or stuck with them in odd or unusual ways. Here, in chronological order by publication date, are the books from the past 10 years that were absolutely perfect for Vox staffers at the moment when we read them. We hope that they might be perfect for you, too, right now.

The single largest shift in my worldview over the past decade came when I started taking the scale and severity of animal suffering seriously. That process didnt begin for me with Melanie Joys Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, but her book is the one that helped me think through the awful question I was left with: Why did it take me so long to admit what I always knew was true? Why is it so easy to disconnect from our moral intuitions?

Joys book left me with more than a framework for thinking about how we treat animals. It left me with a framework for thinking about how dominant ideologies disguise, protect, and conserve themselves. And thats helped me see the world a lot more clearly, in contexts far beyond the animal suffering issues Joy is addressing.

Ezra Klein, editor at large

This book reframed my understanding of American history, particularly the United States in the 20th century, with some of the best storytelling I have ever read. As a work of narrative nonfiction, its a brilliant example, with detail-rich prose and three vibrant, deftly drawn characters. As a work of history, it shines a much-needed light on the courageous people who protested Jim Crow by leaving the South.

It wasnt until I read The Warmth of Other Suns that I thought of migration as a radical act, but now I wonder how I ever learned history without encountering the concept. Wilkersons portrayal of the Great Migration changed the way I think of all immigrants, whether from Europe or Central America or the Southern United States.

Jillian Weinberger, senior audio producer

I dont remember why I picked up John Jeremiah Sullivans 2011 essay collection Pulphead. Its an unassuming book, squat and squarish, and the title isnt particularly evocative. In 2011, Im not even sure I knew who Sullivan was.

But over the past decade its become the essay collection Ive most often recommended to others, and one of the works thats most influenced my own writing. Thats largely due to its opening essay, Upon This Rock, which first appeared in GQ in 2004. Sullivan writes cheekily of attending Creation, a major Christian musical festival. He arrives expecting to file an essay about how weird a Christian musical festival is, collect his check, and go home.

Instead, he meets a group of pot-smoking West Virginian Christians who take him under their wing. They end up reminding him of his own past as an earnest Christian teen, and he feels a wistful longing to return to a time when he found it possible to believe. Its a perfect essay, the best in the book, and as Ive taught it to college students and re-read it over the years Ive found it reminds me how to write about faith and doubt in a generous and hilarious way. All of Sullivans writing is wonderful, but Pulphead and Upon This Rock will always hold a beloved spot in my heart.

Alissa Wilkinson, film critic

Ive always been an introvert. But I didnt discover that until I read Quiet. Susan Cains book completely changed how I think about everything from my friendships to my learning style. I adjusted my work habits to align with what would make me more productive. I embraced my recharge strategies, like spending a night in or traveling solo.

Quiet uses anecdotes and scientific research to explore what drives extroverts and introverts. Cain explains why a mix of personalities is beneficial for everyone to have, and how most people will find themselves somewhere on a spectrum. But she also makes a case for the importance of valuing the softer voices in the room, pointing to famous introverts like Rosa Parks, Dr. Seuss, and Steve Wozniak as evidence.

You might find pieces of yourself in these stories about those who struggle to fit into a world that emphasizes extroversion. Or maybe youll recognize the tendencies of someone you know. Either way, Quiet will give you a language you didnt know you needed.

Lauren Katz, senior engagement manager

In Evicted, sociologist Matthew Desmond embeds himself into the lives of eight struggling Wisconsin families in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Some of the families live in a trailer park and others occupy small apartments in one of Milwaukees poorest neighborhoods, but they all exist on the cusp of eviction and are chronically indebted to their landlords. Some qualify for housing assistance or welfare, but with how much rent costs, its still not enough to live on.

At its heart, Evicted is a story of economic exploitation. Its also an incredibly empathetic and detailed case study fittingly published in 2016 a year of hyper-partisanship and heightening social and economic anxieties. It made me cry and feel incredibly helpless about the nature of American poverty; while the conditions that trap people in poverty are often painted in broad strokes, Desmond humanizes and brings dignity to their lives.

Terry Nguyen, reporter for The Goods

We Have No Idea is a cartoon-illustrated, pop-science book with a surprising number of jokes about ferrets. But I found its premise revelatory. The book is about unknowns: The basic aspects of the universe that humans barely understand, or dont understand at all. An example: We have no idea what 95 percent of the universe is made out of. Normal matter and energy everything we can see or interact with only makes up five percent. Whoa.

I loved We Have No Idea for its clear descriptions of physics that were neither watered down nor straining to prove how smart the books authors are. But moreover, it inspired me to think about the power of humility.

That concept has since infected my life, and my work. Intellectual humility is an essential tool for learning. When we face the grand chasm of our ignorance, we should be in fearsome awe of it. But, also, we should feel excited for humanitys potential to fill it in, one tiny frustrating bit at a time.

Brian Resnick, senior science reporter

I finished reading The End of the World and immediately went fossil panning, because the book is full of vivid descriptions of creatures that crawled across the planet millions of years ago. Like Opabinia, a lifeform with five eyes and an arm-like proboscis, or Hallucigenia, fittingly named because it looks like something out of a horrible fever dream. The End of the World makes you want to go out and see some of these creatures for yourself, even if theyre only traces left over in rocks.

But the book also details the dramatic climate change events that wiped out these creatures in the first place. It blends science and narrative so that you can picture acidifying oceans or volcanic eruptions, while understanding the role that greenhouse gases played in eliminating huge percentages of life-as-well-never-know-it.

Author Peter Brennan is careful to emphasize that we cant use past climate change events to make perfect predictions about our future. But he offers a firm understanding of whats happened before when the chemical balance of our atmosphere changed quickly. And its scary.

Byrd Pinkerton, podcast producer

When I was a kid, I read all the time. So many books! Most of them novels! Then I got to high school and required reading totally deflated me. The books were old, and largely written by dead men, and I didnt like them very much. College didnt help. It wasnt until I read Jennifer Egans A Visit From the Goon Squad, published the month after I graduated, that my love of fiction was reignited.

The book felt so fresh, with each of the 13 chapters offering a different intersecting story. They span time and place, sending the reader on a Kenyan safari in 1973, and to the New York suburbs of the 1990s, and through a near-future California desert famously rendered in Powerpoint.

A Visit From the Goon Squad completely exploded what a book could be to me, and firmly got me back into contemporary lit. I also loved that it was written by a woman in her 40s, who would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for her astonishing achievement. It even led to my second-most mind-expanding reading experience of the 2010s: Egans incredible 2012 short story Black Box, which was serialized on the New Yorkers Twitter account over the course of nine nights.

Julia Rubin, editor for The Goods

When I first read Gary Shteyngarts Super Sad True Love Story, it made me frankly, very mad. In the extremely near future, an expressly schlubby man named Lenny falls in love with the gorgeous Eunice, 15 years his junior, seemingly mostly because she wears effectively see-through jeans. Romance, so beautiful.

Id picked it up because love story was right there in the title Im a simple woman but nine years later its the near-future that sticks with me, because at the time, I didnt see how close it was. In the novel, everyone everywhere is glued to their pprt, a device just far enough removed from our 2010 iPhone that it took me years to see that there was effectively no daylight between them (again, Im simple). The US economy is in collapse (and the countrys international standing is trash), but the national pastime is shopping. Social media heavily favoring pictures over words controls our relative value in the world. At the beginning of the decade, this all still seemed a little ways away. A little ways was all it was.

I still wonder if there wasnt, say, a woman who wasnt physically perfect that might have been a nice match for Lenny, but Shteyngarts vision of our world dogs me; super sad and super true.

Meredith Haggerty, deputy editor for The Goods

No single creative work has more directly changed my life than Fifty Shades of Grey. I havent read its commercial publication under the Fifty Shades title, but I have read its original incarnation the Twilight fanfic known as Master of the Universe, which underwent only a few find-and-replace tweaks before Bella and Edward were unleashed on the masses in 2012 in their new, original forms doe-eyed corporate underling Anastasia and de-fanged Christian, a moody billionaire with a domination kink.

Fifty Shades of Grey became one of the best-selling books of all time, spawned a billion-dollar movie franchise, and inspired the creation of an entire new publishing subgenre: new adult, catering to Fifty Shades fans who craved more unapologetically scandalous fanfic-esque romances with emphasis on character over plot. And they got exactly what they wanted; in fact, Fifty Shades itself was part of an entire cottage industry of pull-to-publish Twilight fanfics.

Before Fifty Shades, most publishers didnt know fanfiction existed; after, publishers targeted fanfic fans directly in books like After and Fangirl. Before Fifty Shades, few people outside of fanfic culture took fandom seriously; after, interest was so high that just a few months after the books release, I landed a job reporting exclusively on fandom culture and I never had to justify my interest in fandom again.

Aja Romano, culture reporter

Im cheating a little bit here, because I already named my official Most Influential Book of the Decade. (Its The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., because no other book makes me aware of systemic misogyny quite as strongly as it does, except for the anthology titled my news push alerts circa the 2010s.) But as Voxs book critic, Im abusing my power to give myself a runner-up pick. And I like to think that Amy Dunne, the titular Girl who is Gone, would be proud of me for it.

Gone Girl changed the cultural vocabulary of the 2010s. It helped birth the dominance of the domestic thriller, dark and psychologically twisted novels about marriage and children and the home. It helped launch the rise of the antiheroine. It gave us the iconic Cool Girl speech and allowed us to put a name on a rising and insidiously creepy archetype.

But beyond all that, Gone Girl is also a genuinely good book. You could read it for the first time in 2012 and not know anything about the famous twist and be shocked; you can read it today in 2019 having been thoroughly spoiled, and you will still have a fantastic time. Seven years after its first publication, Gone Girls analysis of the power dynamics of gender and marriage is just as scathing and ferocious as ever and its also weirdly, darkly romantic.

Toward the end of the book, Amy is thinking about her marriage to the doltish Nick, and realizing that despite their unhappiness, they are perfect for each other. She thinks: I am a thornbush, bristling from the overattention of my parents, and he is a man of a million little fatherly stab wounds, and my thorns fit perfectly into them. Aww?

Constance Grady, book critic

I lent someone my copy of My Brilliant Friend, the first of Elena Ferrantes four-book series known as the Neapolitan novels. For the entire time the book was gone, its absence made me feel anxious.

The story of Lila and Len, two girls growing up in poverty in 1950s Naples, felt personal to me, not so much for the plot but of all the things it reminded me of as I read it. Everyone has had a best friend, but Ferrante admits all the messiness that goes into that friendship: not just the love, or the shared secrets, but the competitiveness, the envy, the urgency to impress.

And all the insecurities, which are amplified when you compare yourself to someone you both admire and trust. Len, who is the narrator, worries about her exams, and whether shes smart enough. She stares in the mirror and stresses over her zits. But Ferrante also doesnt avoid the moments when Len realizes that shes triumphed, is maybe luckier than Lila, and experiences a mix of regret and sadness and satisfaction. It was startling to see all this on Ferrantes pages, an entire novel that is a diary entry few would have the courage to write.

Ferrantes entire tetralogy felt like that to me, but it all starts with My Brilliant Friend. She creates such a precise world, and keeps you there, bound to her characters Lila and Len and everyone they encounter. Each of the four novels breaks this in some way, but all their force comes from what Ferrante builds in book one. Thats why it felt as if something was missing from my bookshelf, for as long as it was gone.

Jen Kirby, foreign and national security reporter

Americanah is a love story. Its a meditation on racism in America. And its a reflection on the balancing act immigrants face, as they seek to reconcile different aspects of their identities.

Since I first picked it up more than five years ago, Americanah remains one of the most electrifying works Ive ever read because of its ability to capture how all of these things are inextricably linked. Through biting, gorgeous prose, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie deftly illustrates the complexity of Americas relationship with race, and how it informs every moment and interaction.

Adichie does this both within the narrative itself and how the narrative is framed. Ifemulu, the Nigerian-born protagonist of Americanah, describes her perspective as an academic fellow who moves to the United States eager for a new experience and homesick for her old life, and intersperses this telling with posts about race that she publishes on a blog.

Across both mediums, Adichie masterfully cuts to the root of existing inequities, and the euphemisms we use when we talk about race and gender. In one passage, she describes fraught discussions of racism between people of color and their white partners and friends:

We dont want them to say, Look how far weve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what were thinking when they say that? Were thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway?

Li Zhou, Capitol Hill reporter

For me, Elena Ferrantes Neapolitan Quartet was an electrifying, consuming experience unlike any other fiction I encountered this decade. The four-book series tells the story of Elena Len Greco and Lina Lila Cerullo of Naples, and their complicated friendship, with the scope of an epic gripping plotting, vivid personalities, and ruthlessly intelligent explorations of class, gender, family, and violence.

But years later, the installment I think about the most is the least characteristic of the four: volume 3, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. As far as the larger plot goes, it seems at first like a transitional book, characterized mainly by the separation of the central pair of characters as Len moves away from her dysfunctional Naples neighborhood, for married life and a career as a writer.

Yet its that separation that allows for both the stunning condensed sequence on Lilas life-or-death struggle to reform the factory where she works, and for Lens isolation and dissatisfaction with married life and motherhood, to truly creep in. Ferrantes grand design finally becomes clear when Len returns to her neighborhood for a supremely uncomfortable dinner, and realizes that everythings changed. Shell spend the rest of the series trying haphazardly to go home again, but she cant, not really.

Andrew Prokop, senior politics correspondent

I love a midlife crisis book. You could say I have a type: I love stories about groups of friends in their thirties and forties living in cities and trying to sort out what they want out of their marriages, their careers, and their lives (see also: The Emperors Children, Fleishman Is In Trouble, The Interestings). So when I read Emma Straubs Modern Lovers in 2016, I could tell from the first few pages that it would stay with me for a long time.

The book follows two families living in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn: Elizabeth and Andrew and their teenage son Harry, and Zoe and Jane and their teenage daughter Ruby. Elizabeth, Andrew, and Zoe have been friends since college, and now theyre all married with kids, living near each other in the same Brooklyn neighborhood and hanging out all the time what should be the perfect life, except all of them are unsatisfied in different ways. Zoe and Jane run a celebrated, quintessential Brooklyn farm-to-table restaurant, but theyre miserable in their marriage. Elizabeth is creatively stifled by her job as a realtor, while Andrew is aimless, living off of family money with no real career and no sense of what he wants to do.

Modern Lovers reminds you that being a grown-up doesnt mean you have all the answers, and that everyone is just trying to figure it out. The books four adults make lots of mistakes, and sometimes it seems like the two teenage kids are the ones who have it together the most. Ive re-read it twice since it first came out, and its been a delight every time.

Nisha Chittal, engagement editor

Exit West was published in 2017, the same year President Trump signed the Muslim ban, Brexit was being fiercely debated, and I had lost track of how much time had passed since I read anything that wasnt about current events or policy.

It was the perfect book to gradually move me out of my fiction funk. Exit West uses a love story and magical realism to depict the global refugee crisis of our era. It is the story of two young adults who fall in love during simpler times in an unnamed, picturesque city that is home to both tradition and modernity.

The couples lives are grossly interrupted when the city that serves as the backdrop to their romance descends into chaos and conflict. As the couples relationship grows more intimate during desperate times, author Mohsin Hamid paints a vivid picture of a citys transformation from home to a place that is better off left behind. Through the young couples evolving relationship and descriptions of magical gates that transport people to other corners of the world, Hamid allows his reader to engage with the emotional experience of becoming a refugee.

Haleema Shah, producer for Today, Explained

Among the many things I shed post-college, good and bad, were novels. Years of studying English and reading dozens of books a year left me feeling shamefully burned out, a feeling that was amplified by a job that involved reading and writing. I collected books I wouldnt read, and I knew I wouldnt read them.

Thats when I turned to graphic novels. The shorter, stylish, gripping works of illustrated fiction lent themselves to easy reading with the same lasting impact of many picture-free works. The ones that resonated most were personal works by marginalized authors, the same kind I was drawn to in the traditional fiction category; the characters journeys of self-discovery were typically mirrored by evocative artwork that did some of the heavy-lifting for me, filling in the visuals that prose required me to render in my mind.

Perhaps no graphic novel solidified the mediums importance to me as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, an English translation of a Japanese series of webcomics that were later printed and bound. Author-illustrator Kabi Nagata tells a vulnerable, autobiographical tale of the period of depression she suffered in her late 20s, accompanied by a sexual awakening that only complicated matters.

Centered on a repressive element of Japanese society, the book can be at times heart-wrenching and difficult. Nagata holds nothing back in discussing the mental health struggles that left her penniless and home-bound for months on end. But having the beautifully written and illustrated finished product in my hands gave me comfort to know that Nagata eventually found some drive, even if she hadnt quite beaten her depression. Its the kind of fiction that I find empowering, bolstered by a unique cartoon style that is only possible in a visual medium. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness has the same punch as the harshest memoirs, tempered by a digestible form I couldnt stop consuming.

Allegra Frank, associate culture editor

For much of my childhood, reading was my greatest pleasure. I devoured books, great heaps of them. But the further I got into adulthood, the less I read. I couldnt focus.

The books I was able to stick with deeply considered the balance between gender as a social construct and gender as something innate, lurking somewhere in our brains. Enter Naomi Aldermans The Power, in which women the world over are suddenly gifted with a stark and literally shocking ability that lets them send great jolts of electricity into attackers. The long-accepted power imbalance men have more raw physical strength, and women must learn to navigate that truth is upended overnight. But despite the books provocative premise, it isnt a work of rah-rah pop feminism. Its a story about how difficult it is to possess any amount of power and not end up abusing it.

I read The Power in late January 2018, around two months before I realized there was a very good reason I was so drawn to stories like it. I spent most of the book wondering what happened to trans women in its world, which isnt addressed. (One character, assigned female at birth, is definitely trans-adjacent, but Alderman doesnt attempt to pin them down with any specificity.) In retrospect, its a little embarrassing that I spent so much time thinking about this particular question without realizing why. I also spent a lot of time thinking about how much more likely I would be to transition if it meant gaining societal power.

Now, 13 months into hormone replacement therapy, doors are heavier, grocery bags take more effort to manage, and men sometimes yell crude things at me on the train. But Im also happier and better and more myself. Im reading again. Power doesnt always mean raw strength. Sometimes, power means finding the place you call home.

Emily VanDerWerff, critic at large

The protagonist of Halle Butlers The New Me is a single 30-year-old temp worker who goes home to watch Forensic Files every night, and from the first page onward you are basically allowed to hate her.

Millie is the sort of millennial mess whose misery is mostly her own fault: She finds the women in her nondescript Chicago office and the rest of humanity worthy of disgust, even the people she chooses to befriend. She drinks too much and possibly also smells bad, all the while telling herself that tomorrow will be different.

When I read The New Me this summer, having just turned the corner into my late 20s, I realized that Millie was the amalgam of a series of looming fears Id held onto for the entire decade: A lonely, embittered woman, Millie is what happens to women who rely on alcohol and junk food to feel their feelings and spend the rest of their time dissociating in a kind of static emotional winter to avoid the horrors of modern urban life. The worst part about her, though, is that shes relatable. Because in the late 2010s, whos really all that happy anyway?

Rebecca Jennings, culture reporter for The Goods

The only thing we can say for sure about the 2020s is that (a) if they do not roar as much as the 1920s did, thats on us and we have only ourselves to blame, and (b) the world will keep changing and getting ever weirder and more confusing, and we will need books to help us make our way through it. The titles weve listed here can help get you started as we embark on the next 10 years, and in the meantime, well begin looking for the next books well need to make sense of the decade ahead.

Read more:

Best books of the decade: 19 books from the 2010s that mattered to us - Vox.com

Paul Walter Hauser (center) as Richard Jewell. Photo: Claire Folger/Warner Bros.

On July 7, 1996, while Atlanta was hosting the Summer Olympic Games, a security guard named Richard Jewell spotted an unattended backpack beneath a bench during a concert at the citys Centennial Park. Jewell quickly notified authorities and was in the process of pushing the crowd back when a pipe bomb filled with nails (intended to cause maximum casualties) went off. One woman died of her injuries, a man suffered a fatal heart attack, and scores of people were severely wounded. Despite the casualties, theres little doubt that Jewells vigilance saved many lives. The story might have ended there for Jewell with honors, TV interviews, and the good kind of celebrity had FBI agents, with few suspects, not gotten hung up on the idea that the socially awkward, overweight male who lived with his mother and had botched several attempts to become a full-fledged police officer had planted the bomb himself so that he could discover it and become a hero. A version of that scenario had in fact gone down two years earlier in Los Angeles, and Jewell fit the FBI bomber profile (something to remember while watching the heroes of the TV series Mindhunter develop their so-called science). After the FBI leaked their suspicions to an Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, Jewell (along with his mother) spent three months under siege by the media, his guilt widely presumed despite the FBIs lack of evidence to charge him. The FBI didnt make too big a deal when he was cleared. Most people would remember the accusations, not the outcome.

This enraging episode is the basis for the new Clint Eastwood drama, Richard Jewell, which puts a distinctive spin on the story. The actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, a right-wing, anti-abortion homophobe whose killing spree would continue, is named only once, in passing, and his likely ties to Christian militias and white supremacists go unmentioned. (Rudolph, in prison for life, remains a hero in those circles.) That omission could be justified on the grounds that Rudolphs story is largely unrelated to Jewells although most filmmakers would assume their audiences desire to know who had committed the act of terrorism theyd just witnessed, not to mention the reasons. Not Eastwood. He has been drawn to narratives in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions, and even more to stories in which ordinary people make heroic, split-second decisions and come under threat from zealous government agencies and the press. In Sully, Eastwood turned the worlds least controversial outfit the National Transit Safety Board, tasked with determining the cause of terrible accidents in hopes of preventing further ones into parasites intent on ruining the pilot who had saved every soul on his plane. Eastwoods mind is marinated in the paranoia and grandiosity of Ayn Rand, for whom extraordinary individuals were reliably under fire by unimaginative government regulators in collusion with the press. He takes this stuff real seriously. During a successful run for mayor of Carmel, California, in the 80s, Eastwood compared enforcement of zoning laws to Hitler pounding on innocent peoples doors. He got the zoning laws changed before the pogroms could commence.

To tell Jewells story his way, Eastwood needs a new enemy of the people, and this turns out to be a Journal Constitution reporter named Kathy Scruggs, played by Olivia Wilde. By all accounts, Scruggs (who can no longer sue for libel, being deceased) was a flamboyant, sharp-elbowed investigative journalist who loved the job and the lifestyle. The script by Bill Ray shows her going the extra mile, pressing herself in a bar against Tom Shaw (Jon Hamm), one of the lead FBI agents, and putting her hand on his crotch. Give me a name, she says, and you can have me. It would be easy to attack the actress, who plays Scruggs as borderline insane, sashaying around with her tongue half out of her mouth, but thats not my inclination: Wilde landed a juicy role under a director whose actors win Oscars and she went for it perhaps trusting Eastwood would pull her back if the portrait of Scruggs became too degrading. Vain hope. In reality, the FBI had no problem leaking Jewells name and confirming it to the media, likely out of desperation and sheer incompetence. It wasnt the result of an unscrupulous woman reporter stroking a drunken agents cock, both people fancying themselves destined for greater things and eager to advance by any means necessary. In the media scrum, Scruggs takes the persecution to the next level, asking, If hes innocent then why is the FBI here?

To those who object to my dwelling on the movies politics, I can only say that its Eastwood who has twisted the story to suit his ends. The sad thing is that he didnt need to he has plenty of good material, and his direction is fluid and unfussy. He and his screenwriter wisely suggest that the idea of Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) planting the bomb was not entirely absurd. Jewell has a touch of authoritarianism, a tendency to be extra attentive to the smallest infractions: He doesnt pick his battles to prevent unnecessary scenes. (I dont mean to impugn Jewell a hero but there is a connection between his mindset as portrayed here and people like Michael Drejka, who drove around parking lots checking cars in handicapped spots and wound up convicted for manslaughter after provoking an altercation.) Hauser gives an extraordinary, non-actorish performance, underscoring that Jewell wasnt an actor that his affect was flat and a bit know-it-all and didnt play well on TV. Kathy Bates, who can chew scenery with the best of em, expertly tunes her performance to Hausers: low-key, bitter, resentful that the world has not recognized their worth.

Ray has crafted wonderful scenes between Hauser and Sam Rockwell as his scrappy attorney, Watson Bryant, who blows his top whenever Jewell insists on showing off his knowledge of criminals and their motives to FBI agents strengthening their belief that they have the right guy. Rockwells edginess is a great comic foil for Hausers mulishness and vice versa and Nina Arianda as Bryants Russian secretary adds a touch of giddiness that keeps the film from being bogged down.

Say this about Eastwood: He evidently feels no obligation to reconcile disparate points of view a weakness in some of his movies, a source of true drama in others. In Richard Jewell, Confederate flags show up in FBI headquarters, and, depending on the viewer, they could be a reminder of either an unjust system of laws or a national governments willingness to trample states and individuals rights. Jewells arsenal of weapons (pistols to assault rifles) can be taken as a sign of his nuttiness or his loyalty to the Second Amendment, seen as aberrant only by liberal elites who also regard him as a Bubba.

Im inclined, though, to think that Eastwoods intended audience will respond enthusiastically to the jabs at the government and the elites, who are seen casually lumping the NRA in with fringe groups. It cant be an accident that Richard Jewell shows the enemies of truth and justice to be the FBI and the press, both of which have been targeted by the current administration, its Republican lackeys, and the sorts of people who rail at empty chairs. It cant be an accident that the true villain of this story the man who planted bombs to kill his political enemies and whose type is now ascendant is deemed irrelevant, a distraction. It cant be an accident that a postscript notes Jewells death in his early 40s, with the implication that he never fully recovered from this trauma, but doesnt mention Kathy Scruggs, who left her job, fell into a depression, and died of a drug overdose long before Jewells diabetes helped do him in. You could argue that she was as much a victim of the FBIs disgraceful behavior as he was, but I wouldnt at least not in certain parts of this country. I think Eastwoods audience is going to eat this movie up, and maybe even turn it into a rallying cry. The legacy of the bombing of Olympic Centennial Park might end up suiting the bomber just fine.

Go here to read the rest:

Clint Eastwoods Richard Jewell Is Full of Rage and Spin - Vulture

(Photo : Getty Images)

It's jargon for the American dream and all the consumerism and commoditization which comes with it, suggesting bright hope, dazzling greed, and rampant capitalism at once. Given its ubiquity, the dollar sign's roots remain far from simple, with competing theories regarding Bohemian coins, Hercules ' Pillars, and harried merchants.

If you had to find lurking letters in their shape, you could spy a'S ' overlay with a squeezed, bendless ' U ' that provides its vertical strokes. In fact, this is one of the most popular misconceptions about the origins of the sign: it is for the United States. But it's not.

That's what Ayn Rand, the famous libertarian writer and philosopher, believed. One character tells another about what the dollar sign stands for in a chapter in her novel of 1957, Atlas Shrugged. Rand seems to have been mistaken, not least because the US was known as the United Colonies of America before 1776 and there are reports that the dollar sign was in use before the birth of the United States.

The dollar's history is much shorter. In 1520, the Kingdom of Bohemia began to mint coins using silver from a Joachimsthal mine-which translates roughly as Joachim's valley from German to English. Logically, if unimaginatively, the Joachimsthaler was called the coin, which was then shortened to Thaler, the term that spread around the world.

It was the Dutch version, the Daler, which in the pockets and on the tongues of early immigrants made its way across the Atlantic, and the American-English pronunciation of the term dollar retains its echoes today.

Despite the relative youthfulness of the currency, however, there is no clear answer to the question of where the symbol of the dollar originated from. No one seems to have sat down to model it and its form often fluctuates-it sometimes has two lines through it, more and more just the one. Not that there are not enough theories to contend with. For example, by going back to the idea that in its form there is a U and an S hidden, it has been proposed that they stand for Silver Units.

One of the most esoteric stories of origin connects it back to the Bohemian Thaler featuring a serpent on a Christian cross. That itself was an allusion to Moses ' story winding around a pole a bronze snake to heal people who had been bitten. As it has been said, the dollar originated from that mark.

The interpretation is based on the Hercules Pillars, a term coined by the ancient Greeks to identify the promontories flanked by the entrance to the Gibraltar Strait. The columns are in the national coat of arms of Spain and appeared on the Spanish dollar in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Yet another version centres on the Pillars of Hercules, a phrase conjured up by the Ancient Greeks to describe the promontories that flank the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. The pillars feature in Spain's national coat of arms and, during the 18th and 19th Centuries, appeared on the Spanish dollar or "The Piece of Eight called the Peso. The columns have S-shaped banners twined around them, and it doesn't take a lot of squinting to see a dollar sign's similarity.

In fact, Spanish coinage is the most widely accepted theory. As historians tell us, it has often been shortened to the initial' P' with a 'S' hovering in superscript next to it. Gradually, due to the scrawl of time-pressed merchants and scribes,' P' fused with the 'S' and lost its curl, leaving the vertical line down the center of the 'S' like a pin.

A Spanish dollar was worth more or less a US dollar, so it's easy to see how the sign could have been modified from there.

RELATED: 3 Pieces of Financial Advice that Will Save You Thousands of Dollars to Learn

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Trivia: The Real History of How the Dollar Symbol Came to Being - University Herald