Non-libertarian here.

Wow. This book took me 3 years (and one re-start 1/4 way in) to read.

But it was worth it!

I enjoy the forcefulness and certainty of Rand's writing, and the sheer scale of this book with its many characters and big ideas.

Yes, this book does have many shallow 2-dimensional characters -- they're typically more "caricatures" than "characters," particularly the characters who stand for the type of people Rand clearly hated with almost vicious cynicism in the real world. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the decisiveness and conviction of the leads. It's refreshing, in fact, to have a book so hell-bent on its ideas and narrative without a hint of shades of gray, without any patience for human weakness or intellectual murkiness, and with endless joy and celebration of the drive and decisiveness that make some people so admirable. Rearden, Francisco, [kinda-obvious-but-still-a-spoiler character], and especially Dagny were people you could root for... assuming you're not one of the "looters" Rand has so much hate for. If you're a selfish, sneaky, dishonest, needy person, well, this book will be like a 1000-page whipping for you.

That hatred of weak human beings is probably what I liked least about the book. Man, the hatred, it drips from the pages like a poison. The villains of this book aren't just dumb or misguided... They're portrayed as utterly hopeless and irredeemable in every way, useless lumps of flesh that are best destroyed under the wheels of their iron-willed betters. And in the real world, while the traits Rand hated exist in abundance and I understand and often share her dislike, people are not all such simple caricatures who should be discarded without any consideration for the qualities they DO have, or at least the potential they have. Rand seems to consciously ignore the idea that the world does "take all kinds" to function, and in doing so, misses out on some opportunities for her characters to find other ways to realize and express their intellectual and material values. You'll notice that nobody in this book has cancer. There are no children whom parents have to sacrifice for and love for no reason other than that the children are their own. There are no old men or women who are dying. The only children are Dagny and her friends who think like little adults, the only injuries are not terminal (i.e., minor injuries after airplane crash) and easily overcome with willpower and force of mind. Grappling with some of these things (like, I don't know, Dagny having leukemia) wouldn't necessarily have undermined Rand's philosophy (maybe); they could have made for some nuance to the way her characters' intellects and willpowers are exerted. People DO have a debt to others around them, whether it be someone stricken with a deadly disease being helped by their friends, or a toddler who needs protection and unpaid service from a parent. Again, these don't undermine Rand's philosophy necessarily, but she leaves a big gap for others to poke holes in her grand vision by not addressing such real-world issues. With a mind like hers, her narrative could have showed us how to make these things fit into her vision and philosophy, gave us some hint at an answer for how to deal with these things in a responsible way. She offers solutions to many things and maybe you can extrapolate some more... But for me, I don't see an answer to who will care for Dagny when she is old and feeble but still wants to be useful rather than shuttered, or who will clean toilets when everyone is trying to be a a fountain of intellect and creativity, or how the retarded and the simply dumb will find use for themselves in a world where everyone else is too busy pouring steel and being productive to notice. I wanted the book to provide some sense of these nuances, or at least express awareness that such nuance exists in real life, rather than just being a rally call to an absolute philosophy.

Regardless, this is a grand book filled with things worth thinking about, whether you come to Rand's conclusions or not. I am not a libertarian or a conservative at all (and definitely didn't walk away thinking anything crazy like, "down with government! let the capitalists govern indirectly through their brilliance! Taxes are evil!"). Yet I still found much to admire and emulate in her characters, much to celebrate about the drive and power of people doing the things they are good at with conscious and determined effort. Many of us could learn a lot about how to work hard to best use our personal talents for our own good, and in so doing benefit everyone; many of us could learn a lot about the joy of working hard and being responsible for our own destinies. Don't read this book as a libertarian bible (a terrible misreading, I think), but instead...... Take it as a rally call for each of us to demand as little of one another as possible and instead demand as much from ourselves as possible, and have love for your own ability to do both of those things consciously. It's a powerful novel and I enjoyed even the parts that I consciously knew were attacks on societal systems I support in the real world.

Come with an open mind and see the world from an absolute and infinitely self-assured perspective. I think you'll learn some good values even if Atlas Shrugged doesn't change your view of how to implement those values in your own life or society.

This is one of them most intriguing works I've read in years and it can provoke vigorous reaction on a variety of levels. There's easily enough meat here to justify considering this one of the most important writing in Western Civilization, but unfortunately, it's weighed down by more than enough baggage to prevent many from seeing it in that light. Even so, the ideas are so powerful, I'll give it five stars and point out flaws only to help you recognize and avoid being distracted by them.

For starters, this book is a disaster if viewed purely in novelistic terms. I cannot recall having ever seen more stilted characters nor can I recall having seen worse dialogue. I understand what Rand was going for when she sought to present her objectivist philosophy in the context of a novel, but I wish she wouldn't have tried to do that. A philosophical tract is a philosophical tract, and a novel is a novel. Perhaps it is possible to join the two, but I don't think it was done effectively here.

I also think Rand's philosophy itself took an unfortunate turn as she settled into life as a U.S. celebrity and became more prone toward playing to her crowd. If you take the core plot elements of "Atlas Shrugged" and set them against the backdrop of Rand's formative years (in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution and on the wrong side, so to speak) and the subsequent history of planned economies, you'd see that Rand has much to say that is extremely relevant to us. Had she stuck to being a pure novelist, as she seemed to be with "We the Living," the message might have gotten through quite well. Unfortunately, as she pushed the philosophy further and further, perhaps based on the need to play to her core audience, I think she took it to places where it didn't really need to go and which detracted from her core ideas. Example: John Galt, the hero of "Atlas Shrugged," is being pressed by government leaders to become Economic Dictator and fix the mess into which society has plunged. Were this to happen, one of the things Galt says he'd do is to abolish all taxes. Among readers, that clearly resonates with political extremists on the right, and objectivists do like to argue for this sort of thing. But there's a problem. In the book, it comes completely from out in left field. There is nothing in the story to suggest John Galt, Hank Reardon, Francisco D'Anconia or any other vanishing industrialist was oppressed by taxes or even the sort of government regulations we deal with today. Nothing in the book suggests they'd have a problem with the EPA, with OSHA, with the FTC, with providing health insurance for their employees, etc. A bad line like that probably did much to play to the Rand groupies but it cheapens the fiction because when we shake our heads at its absurdity, we focus away from the substantial kinds of oppression the industrialists did face in the novel.

As you read the boom, it really is vital that you develop a knack for filtering out the junk that's been put in there to please the groupies many of who, by the way, seem just-plain crazy. I'm still perplexed at the absurdity of an interview with a Rand-follower in connection with the recent Atlas Shrugged movie who ranted hysterically about how taxes and regulation had destroyed our ability to innovate. Interestingly, though, the diatribe was delivered through Yahoo! Finance on-demand streaming video easily accessible via tablet or even pocket-sized smart phone. Tell me again about the lack of innovation!

To appreciate "Atlas Shrugged," you really have to edit the philosophy to adjust for stupidity thrown in by Rand to please the whackos, whether or not she eventually believed in the nonsense herself.

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the bona fide substance of this novel is to use one of the reading strategies taught today to kids in elementary and middle school: look for text-to-life associations. Right from the earliest chapters, I found countless situations, attitudes, etc. that were EXACTLY like those I encountered many times in the corporate world, where ideas of thinkers are routinely "looted" not by government officials seeking social re-distribution but by legions of high-salaried PowerPoint jockeys devoid of talent or ideas but highly adept at perpetuating their positions. As James Taggart spoke, I constantly heard it as the voice of a business development person at my former company. As Wesley Mouch did his thing and as the Unification Boards strutted, I constantly saw in my mind the legions of what my company referred to as "business owners" (vapid twenty- and thirty-something kids who were put in charge of things they didn't care about or understand causing many a great idea to wither). As to the strike, the withdrawal of the industrialists, I did something like that at my company when I walked away from a product I struggled to launch. I finally yielded it to the business owner (as a result of "Atlas Shrugged," I re-named her Orren Boyle since she was exactly like that character) by quitting the division. The product collapsed within a couple of months. Actually, Orren Boyle, a politically-connected by incompetent steelmaker was better than the lady with who I worked. He wanted to latch onto profits produced by dynamic innovative Reardon Steel (hence his advocacy for a unification scheme that would distributes all profits produced by all steelmakers based on the number of boilers owned regardless of whether the boilers are actually operational). But when Reardon refused to produce at a loss to feed profits to Boyle and instead proposed that the government simply seize his company and give it to Boyle, the latter had a fit; he knew he'd screw it up. The business owners at my former company had no such self-awareness. They were happy to doers exit, and if an idea subsequently collapsed, as often happened, they'd simply look to loot another one. There are countless more precious scenes like this, far too many to enumerate here.

Forget the right-wing extreme propaganda. Forget the objectivist whackos. If you are able to filter that out and really make the text-to-life associations as taught to school kids, you will see, here, the penultimate novel of our modern corporate world, the battle between those who generate ideas and those who live to loot them. This is a novel that exalts individual thought, individual initiative, individual accomplishment, individual creativity, individual responsibility, etc. and exposes the legions of parasites, shirkers ("It's won't!"), whiners ("I don't know how it can be done; I just know you have to do it!"), looters, etc. for what they are. It's a novel we badly need not just in dealing with the public sector but in dealing with the private sector (perhaps more since we are, in fact, a capitalist economy) and maybe even in our personal lives (wait till you meet Hank Reardon's brothe; Does you family have one of those!).

The Objectivists may dislike my review because it criticizes philosophical elements of the novel and progressives may dislike my review because it praises the book as a work of fiction. So go ahead and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time

I tried to read Atlas Shrugged with a sympathetic eye, which as I understood it put me at a considerable disadvantage. It was worth the effort. This is an outstanding novel. In my mind it is only effective as such, and not as a manifesto.

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised at how engaging and satisfying it was. Anyone who wishes to understand American politics in a nutshell and libertarian or fiscal conservative cyphers like ‘job creators’, ‘business friendly’, ’hand-outs’, ‘47%’, ‘entitlements’ and ‘the American dream’ owes it to themselves to read this book. I would also recommend it to anyone who would like an engaging read with business, biology , philosophy and sociological themes. Her diction in her intrapersonal ruminations is praise-worthy.

First I must define sociopathy in how I use it. To me sociopathy is the lack of sympathy for the intrinsic value of other people. Not only that but it is even the inability to understand other people as anything other than physical tools of obstruction or enrichment.

In a nutshell Atlas Shrugged is a preachy objectivist manifesto couched in a stunningly entertaining narrative. It posits that not only is sociopathy the only moral framework by which men are to govern their lives but the only framework by which anything of value can be produced in the economy or the personal sphere. That’s kind of the long and the short of it. If you want more detail, read on.

The books main characters (in my opinion):

Dagny Taggart-A steel minded, ambitious, passionate industrialist with a strong command of herself and her direction in life. She has no concept of anyone’s value except as they relate to her own personal benefit. Highly successful and a model businesswoman in many respects. A loner. It’s very easy to admire and respect her drive and commitment to excellence.

Francisco D’Anconio-A man who comes from money but “lives up to it” genuinely by being the best in all his endeavors. Strongly morally motivated like Dagny and Hank. Extremely skilled.

Jimmy Taggart-Dagny’s hand wringing ‘socially conscious’ brother who is president of the Taggart railroad. Utterly incompetent, idiotic, corrupt, lazy and possesses the reasoning skills of a drunk

Hank Rearden-Owner of Rearden steel. Almost a male mirror of Dagny. He finds his family worthless and his society’s social contract disgusting. He has a great deal of admiration for Dagny but is in danger of capitulating to the destructive collectivist ideology hammered into him by his family over the years

John Gault- Who is this guy? One of the least fleshed out characters. He is more sure of himself than Hank.

SPOILERS BELOW: (Though not much more than what’s contained in novel’s summary)

The Randian world is populated solely by superior creators and inferior leaches who contribute nothing. The plot consists of one of the “prime movers” and “creators” of the world putting a stop to the ‘motor of the world’. The railroad enterprise (especially Taggart Rail) is used as a proxy for enterprise in general and the novel consists of the perceived effects of what would happen when the minority competent retreat to an area where every man is an island and no moochers can benefit from their excellence, except themselves. It is a vilification of evolutionary cooperation and an exaltation of competition alone as the desired engine of human society both implicitly and explicitly stated throughout.

The plot is exciting and I do it little justice in saying that essentially Taggart Transcontinental is trying to build a superior railroad. The leaches a.k.a. ‘the public’ and ‘the government’ try to bring it down through various corrupt obstructionary tactics because they fear the excellence of others. Our objectivist heroes take their ball and go home and society collapses because only superior sociopaths can make society function. The idiotic leachers (consisting the only other segment of the population) are left to breathe through their mouths and behold how wrong and silly they are. John Gault appears and gives a 61 page speech which was done more succinctly in Wall Street’s Gordon Gecko ‘greed is good’ speech.

Atlas Shrugged is initially a world that rewards stupidity and collectivism and punishes achievers. The achievers of the novel vaguely hope that a mysterious Uebermensch will one day appear and turn the world upside down. That man is John Gault. Throughout the novel “Who is John Gault?” is used as a retort to an unanswerable question similar to “What is the Matrix?”. You’ll have to be patient to see him as he doesn’t show up until the 3rd section of the novel. Personally I liked the suspense of that.

Although Rand’s stated objective is to write a novel, not an ideological screed, this book is clearly a vehicle for expounding her Objectivist philosophy. Her characters and dialogue are extremist straw men and not reflective of the dynamics of the real world. That having been said it is a thoroughly entertaining novel with excellent prose especially when describing intra-personal feelings and objects. In the arena of the interpersonal her characterizations fall flat and seem to be describing an alien ersatz world. If you want to have an intimate view of the inner world of a textbook sociopath I imagine this novel is more useful than all the characters printed in the DSM-5. In this specific case I say that without contempt, as it is illuminating and interesting to understand her thinking style. One characterization I had of sociopaths is that they are luddites in terms of intrapersonal contemplation but Rand’s novel and her characters strongly rebut my prior belief.

Rand divides people into a false dichotomy of individualists/capitalists and collectivists/socialists. She ascribes to the former with only positive character traits (according to her world view) and the latter with only negative character traits. She makes some age-old virtues (like altruism) into vices, and some vices (like anti-social behavior) into virtues with some impressive mental gymnastics. In crafting her characters she divides the world into intelligent, ambitious and competent sociopaths and incompetent, corrupt, uncompetitive, moocher, irrational wishy-washy collectivists. Atlas Shrugged is a vision of a world of perfect meritocracy where people who exhibit desirable character traits are finally rewarded and people who exhibit undesirable character traits are finally punished. Seeing as we have never seen such a society function as such, it is a little much to hope for, but if we take her work as merely a novel it becomes quite satisfying and fitting for fiction. You truly come to hate the collectivists because as she describes them, they truly are leaches and completely useless. As a German I loathe inefficiency and lack of ambition so Dagny’s brother went into my bad books from the moment he opened up his obstructionist cake-hole.

Corporations and individuals compete, but they also cooperate, in the former case in terms of price fixing and union busting etc so there’s a case to be made that individuals and corporations have a poor survival probability if they fail to compete *AND* cooperate. This is not possible in Atlas Shrugged universe because the ‘cooperators’ are not only useless but collude to destroy any kind of meaningful capital.

A deliciously ironic example of her dichotomization of character (onto 2 poles) is when Dagny is rebuked early in the novel for “missing the human element”. The irony being that the cipher for demonstrating it is itself a straw man in that she implies that those who consider the human element must be both also irrational in conceptualizing what that element is and also useless in producing anything of value. Anyone who lauds the benefits of compassion and cooperation is immediately dismissed in her novel as also possessing only negative character traits. Personally I believe Dagny is a stand in for Rand who must have been told countless times that she is “missing the human element” and her frustration from not understanding what that term meant resulted in part in this book.

The founder of the railroad in question also threw someone down a flight of stairs for offering a government (a.k.a evil) loan when the company was short on capital. While this could potentially happen it seems very odd behavior for a believable character and almost made me laugh out loud. When the flip side of the individualist coin, “the moochers/collectivists” ever express any concern for social ramifications of their business decisions their navel gazing is always portrayed to be wildly ludicrous and incompetent suggesting that those concerned with the public good are also all idiots of the highest order. While yes, I may disagree with this philosophically I would have liked to see Ayn Rand to make her points with these characters in a more believable way. She certainly has a point that government often (maybe always?) fails to solve our problems but the grade-school straw men she paints are so facile that it takes away from the enjoyment of the novel. She could still have made a strong case with richer more complex characters even if those characters are metaphorical representations of ideological purism.

There are also instances in which characters self-contradict, which lends credibility to the believability of the characters. For instance when Dagny and Hank are speaking about the future of both of their businesses they initially speak as if they mean to outcompete each other and try to kill each other’s businesses. They do so with pleasure as they both love competition and respect each other’s drive. However later in this same exchange Hank (intentionally or not) gives Dagny valuable information by which she would be able to save her business by switching to airlines, giving her an informational advantage that might reduce Hank’s revenue in train steel. And the notorious anti-looters of the book contradict themselves like when Dagny steals liquor from an employee or when they do favors for each other. That’s the kind of thing I like to see in a good novel but I’m not sure Rand intended it as such because such a move would either show incompetence (whereas individualists are 100% competent) or cooperation (which individualists loathe).

The sociopath is not willfully ignorant of what the human element means but is unable to comprehend it at all. As such her portrayal of it is badly formed and then having been malformed, rightly destroyed. Her objection that love should only be given to people who can render one a personal service is again a hallmark of sociopathy. Not only is this implied but explicitly stated when Hank Rearden is criticized for being anti-social and the book later rationalizes love away as a condition of the weak and of the leechers. Naturally someone incapable of feelings of love would exasperatedly claim it is irrational since it makes no sense to them. To those of us who are able to feel it, much like those who can’t we find post-hoc rationalizations to explain why we feel it or not.

In her about the author she states “I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written—and published—is my proof that they do”. The little fact that Hank Rearden was a chemist, chemical engineer, civil engineer, procurement specialist, CEO, CTO, head of operations of a tremendously successful national corporation and Rand was only an author never having ran even a small business seems to have escaped her. Her reductionism and straw man representation of people expressing social concerns are the books biggest weaknesses. She states she accomplished everything by herself which is a ‘cool story bro’ considering she went to a state funded university and collected social security. It’s also delightful that the Ayn Rand institute was looking for volunteers and the Atlas Shrugged movie enterprise went to kickstarter to beg for handouts, but I digress.

Objectivism may be attractive to those who believe the economy is a meritocracy and make the assumption that poor people are poor simply because they are not trying. In such a world I too would be an objectivist. At my age after all I’ve seen and done I don’t believe that a true meritocracy exists anywhere on earth. Force, deception and inefficient markets will always exist. Perhaps publically funded academic institutions can be meritocracies but even then some people will simply be unable to compete due to disabilities or lesser abilities. Furthermore I only need to look at my personal life to disprove that the world is a perfect meritocracy. I used to earn $2.50/hr delivering newspapers in the rain, sleet, snow and tornadoes. A few years ago I earned $120k plus bonus potential for essentially hitting a button at 6pm every day. Such is life.

Her work makes perfect sense when viewed through her lenses. Rand I believe after reading her works was a sociopath with origins in Russia. In my opinion she had an inability (not willful rejection) of compassion. Furthermore those who proclaimed collectivism in her country of origin implemented a system rife with injustice, so it comes as no surprise that her economic pendulum swung so heavily towards the hyper-capitalist extreme. It concerns me somewhat that this flawed and juvenile manifesto informs contemporary leaders but I’m also disappointed that more people don’t give this book a chance. Yes it’s long but it’s also informative politically, psychology and wonderfully entertaining.

I respect Rand for writing a very strong and praiseworthy female character fully in charge of her mind and body. She is also to be lauded for steamy erotic scenes that are downright scintillating with heat without the unbuttoning of a blouse taking place. I nearly got a chubber on the train and then how would I explain that situation while holding Atlas Shrugged?

There’s a reason this book has such staying power and I think it is because it is well written and presents a just-world motivation to strive for excellence and to reject mediocrity. I get her point. We should all be ambitious about being the best and not be moochers. I think we can all agree on that. To over or underestimate this work is doing yourself a disservice in my humble opinion

This is one of the most profound books I've read. It lays out for you everything you always knew, but didn't know how to put into words. It explains the basic idea that you can't have something for nothing, and when you take from the productive and give to the unproductive, everyone loses.

If you ever felt the world was headed for destruction with unsustainable, high tax rates and debt, this book addresses it. Yes, it's a work of fiction, but at the same time it's so very true. We're seeing it play out right now.

Just look at Venezuela. As I write this, the great leaky eyed fool Chavez was just granted, by his lame duck congress, the power to rule by decree for 18 months. Directive 10-289 is roughly the same thing. You can see the very vision Ayn Rand laid out come to fruition in Venezuela today, where the ultimate end for socialism, wealth redistribution, and the tyranny of the left, is destruction. It can only be destruction. Why? Because it's never enough for them. There will always be a bum to save, or a bunny to save, or a made up global crisis (global warming anyone).

Global warming is a perfect example of the left's thinking. They have a made up, completely unprovable, yet impossible to disprove through anything but time, theory. The temperature of the Earth goes up? Global warming is the cause. The temperature of the Earth goes down? Global warming is the cause. That's literally what they are saying today. Never mind the sun. Never mind physics. Never mind that their models, which are the basis for the theory, are completely wrong. If your models don't account for cooling, then they never worked in the first place, which means their theory is completely broken.

Why am I going on about this? Last month at the UN's climate change meeting, all of the poor, socialist, communist, tyrannical countries met in Cancun, where the topic of discussion was how they were going to redistribute wealth from the productive parts of the world, to the unproductive. IE, take money from the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, and give it to the disgusting fools in Venezuela, Africa, and every other cesspool, where their socialism or other form of tyranny has left them flat broke, out of money, and with nobody left to tax. This is precisely the world Ayn Rand built with Atlas Shrugged.

If you want to see nearly every social and economic problem we face laid out, the cause, the effect, and the reason why we have money and the looters at the UN's climate conference don't, read Atlas Shrugged. You'll get it then. If you want to see why America is in such a precarious spot because of Obama's insane spending and wealth redistribution programs, read this book. If you want to understand why people are fighting so hard against Obamacare, tax increases, and the evil public sector unions, read this book.

When we want to discourage a behavior, we tax it. Smoking is a good example. The taxes on cigarettes are through the roof. Why? Because politicians want to discourage smoking. The left is able to grasp that taxing something is punitive and harms the subject with that issue, yet when it comes to our wealth generators, our job creators, and the very engine of our prosperity, our corporations and small businesses, they seem to think they can just reach in and grab the loot, without doing damage. We sit at 10% unemployment BECAUSE the corporate tax rate is insanely high in this country. We sit at anemic 1% average growth in America BECAUSE of high taxation and punitive social programs that have the twisted morality of saying the productive, wealth and job creators are the evil in the world, and sponging slew reaching their hand into the pockets of the wealth creators are the good. That's messed up.

Nobody does more for America than the job creators. Nobody. The politicians have no power, and no money to dole out without them. No wealth to redistribute. No money to hand food out. It all comes from business. From good, quality people, who create wealth, jobs, and the American way. You would think that in the most prosperous land the world has ever seen, these would be obvious facts. Of course we're wealthy because we've honored people of great ideas who put them into motion and create great businesses. Of course we're wealthy because we've honored individual freedom. Of course we're wealthy because we've limited what our government can do. This is Atlas Shrugged.

If anything I've said speaks to you, Atlas Shrug will be an eye opening, soup for the soul read. It's one of the best pieces of fiction I've ever read.

It is easy to review this book negatively. I cannot think of another novel that employs a similar format--it devotes far too much time to what turn out to be minor characters, it is overtly didactic in the extreme, the plot devices and revelations are extremely easy to foresee, and secrets are often needlessly kept from the reader. The narrative is divided somewhat arbitrarily into what I came to think of as two parts, which seemed to have little to do with each other. The book itself is as much an exposition of a philosophy as a novel, and the novel aspect suffers accordingly. The philosophical posturing can at times be burdensome and repetitive. It takes too long at the beginning to involve the reader in the central conflict or in what turn out to be the main characters.

Then is it a terrible book or a good one? Certainly the philosophy alone couldn't be good enough to overcome the book's many storytelling faux pas, could it? Again, Rand's central philosophy (later termed Objectivism, of which this book is the defining manifesto) has its flaws, which are indeed numerous.

So why the 5-star rating? It may sound trite, but this book is the best example I could offer of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes, the characters can in many ways be considered two-dimensional, but they do change in subtle ways. Their struggles are wholly believable; their triumphs are real ones. And the world, society itself, is raised almost to a level of "character-hood" by the way the story unfolds. And this character undergoes a profound transformation indeed.

Yes, the philosophy is rammed down your throat a bit ham-handedly. But the author has made no effort to disguise it; it is not as if, quietly and by degrees, one is made to believe something abhorrent simply by reading; as you read, you learn what she believes and why, and you either take it or leave it. Either way, it is a singular accomplishment. There are many philosophies that are simple, original, or profound. Rand's is all three. I offer specifically Francisco's "money" speech, or Jeff Allen's description of the decline and fall of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.

I found myself caught up in this book far more than perhaps I would have thought it deserved, had I merely had it described to me. It swallowed me whole for two weeks. I knew the philosophy was being presented with all the subtlety of a firehose; I let it wash over me. In points, I agreed with it completely; in others, I found it repulsive. But I could not ignore it. The book has something to say about love, sex, politics, economics, history, human nature, happiness, greed, shame, courage, selfishness, art, and exceptionalism. Every idea presented may or may not be true, but each is worthy of consideration.

Perhaps most importantly, the book is timely beyond almost anyone's ability to predict. I read it while traveling, and hearing the occasional newscast in an airport left me thinking "haven't they read Ayn Rand?" I have thought this many times since. Reading the book in the 80's or 90's might have left a reader feeling like the author set up a straw man and then let Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden (among others) knock him down. Today we see that, as deeply contradictory and dishonest as the antagonists' credo seemed, it holds an incredible amount of sway over our own world. But only after reading Atlas Shrugged do I fully recognize it.

As a novel, this book does in fact overcome its flaws in above average fashion. As a philosophical treatise, it is interesting and well worth reading. As a warning, it is nothing short of fascinating, frightening, and motivating. In a word: indispensable.

Granted this is a lengthy book. For those that find reading it a chore, then I would highly recommend the audio unabridged version read by Scott Brick produced by Blackstone Audio. The audio reader does such a good job at making the story flow in a beautiful rhythm, almost poetic. He does an amazing job revealing Ms. Rand's vivid descriptions of how her characters feel and what they see allowing the listener live the story not just listen to it.

Those that criticize her philosophy and feel she does not qualify in the psychology she presents may not realize her thinking draws heavily on the ancient Greek philosophers of Aristotle and Plato, who are universally recognized as valued and studied by philosophers and scientists alike the world over for many past generations. I don't think it is realized by those that criticize her that additionally many prominent people commend her works politically or religiously. Prominent Rand proponents include House Budged Committee chair Paul Ryan, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, Nobel-Laureate Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore, baseball's "Iron Man" Cal Ripken and commendations by Art Lindsley, Ph.D. the Vice President of Theological Initiatives at the Institute for Faith, Work and Economics as well as a fascinating article by David S. Kotter who by the way, serves as Affiliate Faculty for Economics for Indiana Wesleyan University.

Those interested in a wonderful critique from a Bible perspective would find the article by David S. Kotter through the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics very enlightening. There in lists the remarkable parallels with the Bible as well as it's variances. I present a quote from the author that best reflects this anomaly..."While Ayn Rand's atheism is antithetical to the biblical worldview, there are remarkable areas of overlap, and her projection of an ideal man bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ."

These facts hardly reflect a dry, boring, uneducated biased singular view. Those that do not realize that our society is truly based on a fairly straightforward black and white reality should re-look their world view and the history of what brought past great societies down to the dust and ruin.

Just a scant few of many quotes from Ayn Rand herself:..."Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, he vision unborrowed, and the response they received---hatred. The great creators---the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors---stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. The unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won."

"When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter: if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit..."

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see..."

"The smallest minority of earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities..."

So in closing, Ms. Rand has at the very least opened a vast area for discussion from the politically "left" or "Right" and everything in between. It is so hard to encapsulate a brief synopsis of Ayn Rand writings as one can see by the pros and cons of her works.. An incomparable work that deserves to be read and contemplated by anyone who is concerned where this great country is going, where it has been and why.

This book needs to be evaluated from two points of view. From the literary point of view, as a novel, and from the political/philosophical one as an expression of the author's personal philosophy, Objectivism in the case of Ms Ayn Rand.

Written in the early 1950's, the plot deals with the takeover of the US and most other country's governments by a communist-type bureaucracy that imposes a system of government quite similar to the one extant in Russia at that period of time. The plot navigates through the lives of a set of highly successful industrialists whose common trait is a superior intelligence, unmatched ability to produce the best products and boundless energy focused on creating, producing, competing and leading.

One of the industrial leaders is a very special lady, Dagny Taggart, who in addition to the common traits of the group, brings the feminine touch to that unique profile. The author does an excellent job by making her femininity add strength to her persona. The plot is engaging and Dagny Taggart is its central figure; through her the reader can experience at first the highs of leading critical projects where high risk decisions must be taken at heart-stopping speeds and later the hard task of fighting an absurd government bureaucracy obsessed with control at any cost. It is easy to fly through the pages of the book through its action-packed evolution.

One aspect that takes away from the excitement of the plot is the frequent appearance of lengthy reflections by the characters or about the characters or the situations. This is the author's way of introducing her philosophy but unfortunately it is done with a fractal approach where the same concept is repeated over and over with different words. The book would have gained with a more succinct presentation of the ideas.

Ms Rand lived through the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the subsequent implantation of the communist regime. This experience obviously left a profound mark and shaped her political/philosophical views that, in her own words, are: “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.”

At the time this book was written, what is known today as neoliberalism did not exist as a movement. One can say that the economic and political ideas proposed in this book are the core of such philosophy. The author presents money as the highest achievement of the productive individual; her view is that a model citizen, applying the best of his intellect and his productive ability, produces goods that meet the needs of a segment of society and in exchange for them gets money. This money therefore represents the best an individual can produce and he should be proud of owning it and he should strive to acquire more. What Ms Rand had in mind was an economic model that was prevalent in the 1950's in which people made money through productive investment. She was unable to project the extremes to which this philosophy could lead as we have seen in the early 21st century. Today money is loved and pursued, as she defended, but not through productive investment; it is made through speculation via the modern mechanisms of financial capitalism. Today many people love money as she proposed but they get it not by producing but through the manipulation of financial schemes that allow them to multiply their capital without ever having to produce anything. Her admiration of productive work is great but her elevation of money to the best goal for man has led to the mess we have today.

Ms Rand also presents a distorted view of the industrial world. Her model of a successful enterprise revolves around a heroic individual who knows it all, has boundless energy and skills and leads a mass of generic workers who follow his directives and produce the best. It is true that in her time the information age had not arrived, there was no Silicon Valley, Apple or Google, but even then there existed major enterprises that did not follow her model. General Electric was one of those and what made it great was an army of highly skilled engineers and technical people who worked together with capable administrators. Henry Ford came close to her model but he was displaced by General Motors that won precisely because it did not follow her model. Even today, leaders like Steve Jobs have demonstrated that her model does not reflect reality; Jobs changed the world with his vision yet Apple could not have succeeded without the myriad of technical and commercial staff that made his dream possible.

Ms Rand shows a profound disdain for workers. In her view if you remove the heroic elite, the world is left headless and will soon collapse. She would not conceive of economic models like decentralized worldwide enterprises, micro-enterprises in Dharavi, Mumbai or modern phenomena like crowd-sourcing or crowd-funding. In her mind creativity is the province of the creative elites and no one else. Reality has shown otherwise; if she were here today this would present a serious conflict given the prominence that reality plays in her objectivism.

In conclusion, a good book worth reading with a critical eye.

This year, in light of the current political climate, I took the challenge to read Atlas Shrugged. I had been meaning to read the novel since 2008, and finally decided to make the commitment to read it. For accessibility's sake, I downloaded it to my Kindle. I just love my Kindle's portability.

I must say, the book had me hooked at the beginning! It was very engaging and pardon the cliche, thought provoking.

It is not necessarily an easy read for most people. If you are craving a thrill packed adventure as the type of which movies with the flavor of the month actors are starring, this is not your book. If you are wanting a book that will challenge your political, economical, and ethical views, this is the book for you.

The first two thirds of the book were my favorite. Rand weaves an excellent mystery surrounding the enigmatic John Galt.

The last third of the book lost a little something for me, particularly with John Galt's manifesto.

Not wanting to spoil the book for those of you who have not read the book, I won't reveal the answer to the question, "Who is John Galt?"

Speaking in general terms, Galt as a character represents Rand's philosophy on many subjects, economics, government, and religion.

On the subject of government and economics, I am quite the admirer of Rand. On the topic of the existence of God, Rand having been an atheist, I must simply agree to disagree with her. I can't rely on man being the final arbiter of right and wrong. I hold to the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely, letting history provide evidence for that statement. Rand held the Constitution in high regard, but not agreeing with the Creator endowed rights of the document. She believed in the rights, but not the Creator. If man be the highest authority, then when man changes his mind that the Constitution is no longer relevant, then to whom is man accountable? In my estimation, man must look to a power higher than himself to have a solid foundation for morals and ethics. The framers of the Constitution obviously thought the same.

To Rand, man is inherently good. In my lifetime, brief though it has been to this point, history and modern times has shown me too much evidence to the contrary.

I look at and admire Rand, to some degree, as she looked at Aristotle, "I most emphatically disagree with a great many parts of his philosophy-but his definition of the laws and logic and of the means of human knowledge is so great an achievement that his errors are irrelevant by comparison".

Atlas Shrugged, for being half a century old, is prophetic on many levels. So many of the characters I could almost identify in the current news today. It is a timeless tale on the importance of the individual and the dangers of collectivism. A tale of mystery and reality. A solid defense of Capitalism, and a solid rebuke of Socialism. If you want to understand Capitalism and Socialism and why the philosophies are at enmity with one another, this book explains it.

I once heard a man say that two books changed his life, one being the Bible, the other being Atlas Shrugged. I now understand fully his statement and find myself in agreement.

Best book I have ever read.

Fabulous Book However this copy font too small

Embora escrito há mais de 50 anos, o mundo não aprendeu nada. A leitura de 'Atlas Shrugged' é sensacional !

Dizem que Ayn Rand era feminista, mas acho que é só porque ela colocou como heroína da história uma mulher. Mas uma mulher bem feminina.

E isso é o de menos, diante da preocupação de todos de um mundo se corrompendo. Os muçulmanos uma vez disseram que iriam dominar o mundo e sem dar um tiro, porque achavam que o mundo ocidental iria se implodir. E o livro mostra os países americanos e europeus morrendo, o que estamos vendo hoje.

Tentei assistir ao filme, mas o livro de 10 a 0, nos seus detalhes sobre pensamentos e filosofias de vida, que são cortados do filme.

Ce roman est vraiment impressionnant, c'est un chef d’œuvre totalement inconnu en France. La France étant socialisme depuis plus de 100 ans, ce livre est vu comme le diable. Il permet d'apporter un autre point de vue à un français qui est gangrené par le socialisme/communisme depuis des décennies.

The author saw the Russian revolution of 1917 at first-hand. She experienced its economic effects directly when her father's business was nationalised by force.

The Russian revolution took place as a result of the country's military defeats during the First World War. It is interesting to note that there was also a revolution in 1905, after the national humiliation experienced in the Russo-Japanese war. It is open to speculation as to whether the autocratic Czar would have survived with a reformist government (Perestroika 1917?) if it has not rushed to the aid of Serbia in 1914 as part of its ill-fated pan-slavic foreign policy. However that debate is for another day.

Ayn Rand depicts a socialist takeover of the United States, one that is as drastic but not as dramatic as Russia's. She also shies away from actually using the word 'socialism' or 'communism' in her novel. To her this would be shorthand and what she wants to do is describe the effects of collectivism without resorting to labels. The descent into socialism is depicted as the non-violent triumph of ideas, where the political, media and some of the business elites gradually come to accept the principle of 'from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs' as a consequence of legally sanctioned industrial cartelisation, until it becomes national policy and full state control of the economy takes place, ostensibly to mitigate the effects of the cartels. Unlike Russia, this takes place in a democracy with an ostensibly free media so the changes that take place are gradual and more or less consensual amongst the majority. Somewhere along the way the US Constitution has been amended out of existence and the President is now known as the Head of the State. He works with a Politburo in all but name consisting of business cronies and power brokers. Rand maps the effect of the political and social changes throughout the novel in an intelligible fashion that people in a free country would understand and demonstrates how this socialism utterly depends on people to whom this concept is anathema.

As the novel opens the economic collapse is under way, but no-one understands why. Rand depicts in her story the theory that collectivist economies only survive by coercing the most productive to continue to produce while at the same time denying them the true rewards of their labours by redistributing all the value they create while providing subsistence. One man, John Galt, realises this and organises a strike of the mind, of the creative entrepreneurs who drive or sustain progress through their creativity, innovation and organisational and management skill. As the skilled and competent disappear (this is done by having them choose 'voluntary simplicity', working in low-paid, menial positions that require no thought, or retreating to a valley concealed by a cloaking device) their successors find themselves unable to maintain the technological civilisation and the country regresses into a new stone age as supplies of raw materials and food diminish.

The country also slides into dictatorship, as force replaces the price mechanism as the only way to drive the economy. State terror and the threat of unleashing WMDs on the populace are contemplated, but by then it is too late. The only people left to terrorise are simply not productive enough to sustain the economy.

The novel was published in 1957 and it is interesting to note that a 'strike of the ablest' was actually under way in East Germany, where the young and the skilled were making use of an open border in Berlin to escape to West Germany. It was in response to the impending economic collapse (the only people left in the country was rapidly becoming the old, infirm and very young) that the Berlin Wall was constructed.

Ayn Rand's motivation? Well she saw the rise of socialism in otherwise free countries like Britain and revolutionary movements in Cuba and South America. Soviet domination of Eastern Europe was a fact and perhaps she felt that a cautionary tale, in line with her developing philosophy, was necessary to prevent the growth of 'People's States' as she depicts taking over the world except the USA in her novel. She may have been worried that Free-Market Capitalism was in fact in decline.

There has been a lot of criticism of the writing style of the novel. It is not generally fast-paced or dramatic and a lot of space is given over to philosophic thinking and speeches, especially John Galt's speech, which runs to several pages.

However it has to be recognised that this is a book of ideas and these ideas are presented very well indeed. I have not read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital and nor do I intend to. I do however suspect that they do not project their ideas in such a concise and entertaining manner. This book defends and justifies free-market capitalism and gives commerce a soul. It has enhanced my understanding of the socio-economic environment I was brought up in and is arguably the only book I sincerely wish I had read in my teens.

Although the book rejects altruism and self-sacrifice, it is my strong opinion that if you know anyone with a mind who is 15-20, this is the best present you can get them as it will give them something that is life-improving and life-affirming. However this is a book that can by people of all ages as it does not target a specific age range.