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Article: Howard Roark in New Delhi: the surprising popularity of a libertarian hero in India.(In Other Words)(Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged")
- Article from:
- Foreign Policy
- Article date:
- November 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Foreign Policy. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Consumer spending in the United States may be down, but an interest in Ayn Rand certainly is not. Sales of Rand's last novel, the vigorously pro-capitalism fable Atlas Shrugged, have seen a huge leap in 2009, briefly outperforming even President Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope on Amazon's best-seller list. Few 1,000-page, half-century-old tomes can claim so much.
At tea parties and town halls nationwide, amid outrage over government bailouts of Wall Street banks and Detroit carmakers and the supposed socialization of health care, protesters speak of "going Gait," refusing to work in what they see as a socialist economy, just as Rand's hero John Gait did. Even ...