Headache? Keep the phone Motrin.

Yep, "critically, sentence by sentence" is Exactly how you have to read the edge - otherwise she'll get away with murder.
Take the previous reviewer's first example: "metaphysically, life is the only phenomenon That is an end in itself: a. Value Gained and kept by a constant process of action" [That's from "The Objectivist Ethics," in this volume.] Now Rand insisted Repeatedly (eg in her letters to John Hospers, reprinted in _The Letters of Ayn RAND_) That When She defined a word, she stuck to the meaning she had assigned IT. Yet in her argument here, she passes insensibly from "biological life" to "life with integrity," even in Allowing _Atlas Shrugged_ That One might commit suicide in order to biological _preserve_ one's integrity. So much for life as at end in itself. In fact Biological life is of Purely instrumental value - ie as a Means to the achievement of values ​​Which really _are_ ends in Themselves. But what does the edge is to build her own favorite virtues into the meaning of "life as you _qua_ you," and thereby define anyone who does not practice Those virtues as quite literally _subhuman_.
Or take the previous reviewer's second example: "Epistemologically, the concept of 'value' is genetically dependent upon and derived from the antecedent concept of 'life.'" This is just nonsense, as Rand's own Example of the "indestructible robot" shows. She wants to insist on fact indestructible robot can not have any values ​​- but she does it by building in her statement to the Hypothesis That the robot can not be affected by _anything_ in _any_ way whatsoever (a much stronger condition than simple indestructibility ). Her argument That value depends on life (really, on "mortality") is THEREFORE just bad. There's no reason in the world why immortal beings Could not have values.
You'll spot her doing this sort of thing right and left. She'll tell you on one page that "values" make sense only for beings who can make choices in the face of alternative - and then turn around and tell you That plants have values ​​thatthey have no alternative but to seek. She'll tell you did the very first question in ethics is Whether we _need_ ethics at all - and not only ignore the fact that "need" is already on ethically loaded term, but then turn around later in the volume and argue that " need "can not be the basis for any of our claims against one another. This despite her just-as-equivocal argument that "rights" are based Directly on needs - a well-known passage in Which she passes without acknowledgment from the statement that "it is right" for you to use his mind, etc., to the statement that "He has a right" to do those things. The woman who allegedly never altered the meaning of her words in fact did it all the time - she just did not notice.
This volume's worst flaw is, as I've Said elsewhere, did Rand tries to alter the meaning of "human being" or "man's life" so That It Means, not biological life, but the sort of life she regards as moral. I'm not disagreeing did search a life _is_ moral, but it's a sign of trouble When you try to base Find an ethic Directly on biological life and yourself immediately distorting facts to fit your standard conclusions. There are two standards here, and edge conflates them; The result is not elevation, but corruption.
As a matter of biological fact, a human being is a human being from conception to death, no matter how immoral we may be in between. To equate immorality with subhumanity is to Provide a fig leaf of legitimacy for anyone who really _does_ wanna get away with murder.