Product Description

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy...to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad...to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels. Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12100 in Books
• Published on: 1992-01-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 1088 pages

About the Author
Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved spectacular and enduring success. Through her novels and nonfiction writings, which express her unique philosophy, Objectivism, Rand maintains a lasting influence on popular thought.

Customer Reviews

Interesting, but better to wait for the movie.
Atlas Shrugged is a 1100 page(small print!) novel in which 4 or 5 people stride about like nationalistic heroes building railroads, inventing things, and being proud of it; while the rest of the world mooches off them and complain that the industrialists have too much money.

Even though I'm a liberal, I have to admit this book was interesting. It's like a dystopian novel for capitalists (God knows how many there are for socialists). The ideas are challenging and thought-provoking whoever you are, and the writing is pretty nice, Rand obviously put a lot of energy into the book.

But it's pretty clunky, the plot goes on so many boring tangents, the love scenes are ridiculous, the characters are uninteresting, and most of all it's too repetitive. A quarter of the way through the book I was already familiar with all aspects of Rand's philosophy, and I could tell precisely where the book was going, so reading it felt like a bit of a chore, especially since I never skim pages.

If you're an anti-union, hardcore capitalist then buy the book and revel in it, but if you're not, then wait for the expected movie, with Angelina Jolie coming out in 2008.

I gave this a 4 because the people who would like this would love it, and it's quite a novelty to read a writer who isn't a liberal/socialist/hedonist/romantic/bum.

you haven't lived if you haven't read this book
movie-schmovie. Read Atlas Shrugged when you're in college, when you're starting your first firm, when you're escaping the corporate world later in life... you'll get a very different experience each time. But read it you must.. sure it's long and, at times, very heavy handed. Many of the characters seem to be charachtiures to me, 30 years since my first exposure. But you haven't lived, or exercised your brain in sufficient dimenions, unless you've read Atlas Shrugged. THEN hate it or love it or simply respect it--great compelling reading, interesting philosophy and ultimately as bedrock classic 20th century literature as it comes.

Good, but a bit lopsided
Ayn Rand does make you think and she definately makes some points worth reading. There are lessons to be drawn about the importance of individual achievement and the potential of waste and stagnation arising from an overpowering state. But the philosophy is too simplistic to be life changing (wasn't america founded on looters stealing the land from the native population, remember Enron anyone?).
This is not what I'd call great literature either, there are moments of powerful prose and the plot is a grabber. However the speaches get repetative and long winded and the characters are a bit one dimensional.

In summary worth ploughing through, thought provoking, but try and keep a sense of perspective, neither pure right or left has been proven to work effectively.