Atlas Shrugged | 
| Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: Signet
Category: Book
List Price: $8.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1512 reviews
Sales Rank: 6344
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 35 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1088
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.6
ISBN: 0451191145
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780451191144
ASIN: 0451191145
Publication Date: September 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
Download Description
Who is John Galt?This famous rhetorical question rings through Ayn Rand's best-selling novel as the people's anthem of despair in depressed economic times. Set in the future, the novel follows capitalist magnates as they battle looters, strikers, and the impending ruin of the United States' economy. The romantic and intellectual relationship between Dagny Taggart, the heroine, and John Galt, whose identity as the leader of the strike is eventually revealed, carries the novel to its climax. This novel, controversial when it first appeared in 1957, purports Rand's objectivist philosophy that the individual is free to pursue his or her own happiness without bowing to God or society. Objectivism in action upholds full laissez-faire capitalism as the only philosophy that can protect humankind's freedom to think, to be inventive, and to live productively.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1507 more reviews...
 great book July 24, 2008
My husband won't stop talking about how great this book is. Anyone with a business background can appreciate it.
Atlas Shrugged July 18, 2008
I thought the beginning started out a little slow, but then I was able to really get into the story. I was bored at times with all the philosopical speeches, but the rest of the story is good. This book really made me think. For people that think a lot about the what ifs of life they will really like it.
 As usual, message fiction sacrifices plot for theme, and suffers. July 18, 2008
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Signet, 1957)
I knew a great deal about Ayn Rand's philosophy long before I first experienced Atlas Shrugged. I read a good deal of her nonfiction in college, and a shorter novel, as well as endless articles about Rand and objectivism. I'm an objectivist myself, in the main, so it seems to me that if there's anyone Atlas Shrugged should appeal to, I'm it. Target audience, full steam ahead. Add to this that after a lot of reflection (and when you're in the middle of Atlas Shrugged, one of the ten longest professionally-published novels native to the English language, believe me, you have a great deal of time for reflection) I understood why Rand chose to keep her characters two-dimensional; paradoxically, it helped me remember who was who. But just because I appreciate something doesn't mean I have to like it.
I think anyone who's experienced Atlas Shrugged, even its most ardent defenders, is likely to have remarked at some point that a good editor would've don the book wonders. It could have easily been trimmed to five hundred pages (from its current 1,187) with very little trouble. But length alone is not enough to condemn a book; Stephen King's logorrhea garners sales in the millions, and the books are a great deal of fun to read.
Lack of subtlety in one's message is a reason to condemn a book, even when one agrees with the message in question. And yes, I do understand that John Galt's infamous sixty-page speech is a powerful piece of writing. What it is not, however, is something that has any place in a novel. It's as much fun to read, in its context, as the interminable, useless two hundred pages during which the action stops in Moby Dick so Melville can treat us to a treatise on how to kill, skin, and eat a whale. "But," the defenders cry, "it's all about theme!" Yes. That's my point. It's a novel. If you stop the action and address the reader with two hundred (or, in this case, sixty) pages of theme, you're no longer writing a novel, you're dolling up the editorial page and attaching your characters to it. And Galt's speech is, of course, only the culmination of many times-- dozens, at least-- Rand stopped the action, ignored the plot, and allowed her characters free rein to have endless discussions about the finer points of objectivism. All well and good, if you're writing a treatise on objectivism. But this is supposed to be a novel-- with well-drawn characters, a gripping plot, that sort of thing. Atlas Shrugged is not. It's the similarly execrable La Bas for a more enlightened crowd. It doesn't matter how much I agree with Rand's philosophy, or how much I enjoy her novels when they clock in at under half a million words. This is a book that almost demands you to read an abridged version. **
She's got a bone to pick and a chip on her shoulder July 12, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I started out wanting to read this book as a novel, not as a political treatise. I told myself: just because I don't like libertarianism doesn't mean Ayn Rand sucks. I told myself I'd be open-minded.
Well, the verdict is that the story is a nice enough story for about two thirds of the book, what with the collapse of the economy and the failing train system and the melodramatic hair-pulling of Dagny Taggart. There are two things that divide 'Atlas Shrugged' from good literature: the first is that the story is basically a wind-up for Galt's long monologue near the end. It (the story) contains no deeper meaning such as we look for in a text, besides Rand's repetitive Objectivist blithering. The characters, as many other reviewers note, are merely the figureheads of the two mighty ships of ideology whose clash constitutes the plot of the book, and despite the pretty paint that's on 'em they're about as interesting characters as a wooden figurehead is. Plus, it's painfully obvious where she's going with the plot. I had guessed the Big Secret of who John Galt is by page 300.
The second problem is that Rand's writing, though oozing with melodrama, is not great at all. In this age of spell-checkers and text messaging, when most impressionable youngsters will be wowed merely by Rand's ability to string grammatical sentences together with a minimum of outright infelicities, the number of positive reviews here raving about Rand's writing can hardly be surprising (though it is a bit saddening). We old-fashioned people with a healthier respect for excellent prose of depth, however, will have to look elsewhere for literary enjoyment.
 FantasyLand July 2, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a book of science fiction. The good guys have almost magical powers of accomplishing things because they are the good guys and the plot requires it. The bad guys are totally evil. etc. Typical space opera stuff in a sociological context. Not a problem for me.
My problem is that this is an awfully badly written book (like a lot of other SF cult favorites). Booooring. And mean-spirited. When I first read it as an adolescent I was surprised by the intensity of my dislike of its meanness. I tried to reread about 40 years later. Same reaction. Mean and boring.
My recollection of Rand herself on TV shows is of a certain dominatrix type charm(this is said positively, I remember her on Carson). She seemed likable but hardly to be taken all that seriously.
As for this philosophy stuff (Objectivism). Get real. It is not "a philosophy", or philosophy, or intellectually respectable. It may be a good mechanism by which a bunch of intellectually lazy poseurs can pretend to be "intellectuals". That is their business.
One star. Two or three were it not for the meanness factor. But I can see how space opera fans might love it.
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