"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:"

" The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Read more here, in RationalWiki

Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind the Utøya Massacre, has been influenced by Ayn Rand, who wrote "Atlas Shrugged"

Dec. 15th: adding more links:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/106154/who-ayn-rand-brief-guide-objectivism

http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/wealthcare-0

http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/03/where-ayn-rand-went-wrong-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html

Consider what she wrote in her essay "The Ethics of Emergency": "The proper method of judging when or whether one should help another person is by reference to one's own rational self-interest and one's own hierarchy of values: The time, money or effort one gives or the risk one takes should be proportionate to the value of the person in one's own happiness." This statement certainly doesn't preclude helping others so long as they are important to us. But it doesn't tell us whether we should make them important to us in the first place.