Outside the Beltway

Outside the Beltway

Obama Administration Leads To Record Sales Of Atlas Shrugged

Doug Mataconis
3

This is pretty amusing:

When people started talking about President Obama and the return of reading, they probably didn’t mean Ayn Rand. But the Obama presidency has been a boon to Rand’s publishers. Buried in George Will’s upcoming column is the nugget that sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled since Obama took office. From 2000 through 2008, the 50-year-old 1,088-page tome sold about 166,000 copies a year. Since Obama was sworn in, more than 600,000 copies have been sold. That’s 530,000 more than it sold in its first year of publication, when it was reviewed by more than 100 literary outlets.

While I have no doubt about what Rand would think of Obama were she alive, I think she’d get a kick out of this.

H/T: Hit & Run

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3 responses to “Obama Administration Leads To Record Sales Of Atlas Shrugged”

  1. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    That’s sad for America. Not because I disagree with objectivism (I do), but because Rand’s prose and style is atrocious. As an English Lit major, this statistic horrifies me.

    When can we elect a President who will cause a nation to start buying Sometimes a Great Notion?

  2. Mindaugas Avatar
    Mindaugas

    Correlation doesn’t equal Causation.
    Bioshock probably had more to do with those sales than anything else (Chicago Sun-Times):
    “I never once thought anyone would be able to create an engaging and entertaining video game around the fiction and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but that is essentially what 2K Games has done … the rare, mature video game that succeeds in making you think while you play.“

  3. ej Avatar
    ej

    there was actually an interesting graph from an article a year ago (forget where it was) that showed atlas shrugged sales by the week overlayed with various time events. Every time there was an event like the TARP, the auto bailout, the stimulus bill, etc, sales spiked upwards.. Sales really havent really spikes starting with Obama… they have spiked since government exploded with the recent crisis and continue through Obama.

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