by Ayn Rand
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Book Description
At last, Ayn Rand's masterpiece is available to her millions of loyal readers in trade paperback.
With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers.
Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.
* Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 FantasyLand, 2008-07-02
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 the story, 2008-07-01
I love this story. I understand that it is really about objective capitalism but I don't care. I'm a sucker for a long and detailed story about people, about life. The characters are expertly rendered. The fashion is used in a truly inspirational way. It brings a whole new layer the characters, especially Dagny.
Rand makes you think about your life and how you react when faced with a challenge or decision. It makes you question charity and welfare. It makes you wonder why some people are in destitute when there are always jobs to do, even if they are less than desirable
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A real mixed bag, 2008-06-25
Like many other people here I'm not going to bother covering the plot because 1.) It's been pretty well covered; and 2.) There's almost no way to sum up this goliath of a book.
Which brings me to the first major problem I have with this epic: IT'S TOO DAMN LONG! As other reviewers have stated you can cut 50 pages out when John Galt recaps the last 900 some odd pages you just read. This book could have been written in a much more manageable way that didn't attempt to run so many story arcs at once while beating you over the head with the book's central theme. Even if I had a greater affection for this book, its sheer girth would prevent me from ever trying to read it again.
My next problem was the unrealistic characters. It was impossible to empathize with any of them because they were such heavy handed, single dimensional; archetypes that you want to slap the day lights out of all of them. The protagonists and antagonists are all so over or under flawed that it makes it hard for the reader to attribute real human feelings to them.
One of the positive things I took away from this book is a better understanding of self-determination and how useless "life's not fair" thinking is. As an example, if you're not good at a particular sport you can't just change the rules of the sport to fit you better, or get rid of the score board so there's no loser. Life is a bloody, rough and tumble, full contact affair that doesn't care about your feelings; get over it.
Another interesting facet of the story if the author's imagery of a stagnate, paralyzed future that may not be that far off if what I see on the news, in the papers, and on the internet is any indicator. Socialism or not, general laziness and ignorance in the average Joe is the greatest danger to the future of all humanity. Another good version of this sad future can be seen in the movie Idiocracy by Mike Judge.
Pros:
Well thought out and requires the reader to pay attention.
It is a wonderful example of post World War 2 anti-socialism, anti-fascism literature that was very common, especially from European writers, during this time.
The weak, whinny, "bad guys" are really pathetic and make you cringe when you hear them say things you've heard yourself say. They make you think twice about dwelling on fairness.
Cons:
TOO BLOODY LONG! The central theme of this story could have been discovered and explained in a narrative half the length.
The "good guys" make you want to punch them in the face for just being "too much." Despite capitalist rhetoric, business men and women are just as flawed as everyone else; they aren't supermen/women and most certainly aren't people you should look to for ethical guidance.
I'm versed in economics enough to know that using gold as the only currency is a stupid idea. Gold is a limited resource that can be manipulated like any thing else to change in value. Also, gold doesn't really have an intrinsic value; we just think it does because it's pretty to look at.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Brilliant, 2008-06-19
Extremely well written, this is the sort of book I wish I could construct and write myself.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Good non-narcotic sleep aid, 2008-06-18
At the end of my copy of Atlas is a brief autobiography by the author; the arrogance and smugness apparent therein - no philosopher ever influenced her thinking other than Aristotle! (and he was mostly wrong anyway!) - wasn't too surprising after forcing myself to finish the book, which became increasingly difficult after page 150 or so. By that time, the constant repetition of the same dialogue, slightly modified, and the characters that turned back into cardboard just when you thought Rand might instill some life into them, became increasingly frustrating. It is amazing that anyone could describe this as a great work of literature.
(Well, maybe if your other reading material consists of L. Ron Hubbard, novelizations of Star Trek, and Marvel comics...but I'm slandering Marvel.)
But of course this is really a philosophical tract masquerading as a novel. I can't say I find Rand either an original or cogent thinker. Her principle failing is establishing two extreme polarities of "all good" and "totally evil". An interesting flaw in someone who cites Aristotle, considering the classic Greek philosophical maxims "aim for the middle" and "nothing in excess". But of course what Rand admires in Aristotle is the logical syllogism: a good intellectual tool, but often misused to prove dubious propositions through questionable chains of logical hocus-pocus. And human nature and human interactions may be too complex to make "either-or" thinking of much use or relevance.
Rand fails to see her vision of an essentially government-less capitalism is as much a fairy tale as Marx's vision of a stateless Communist society, and its mirror image.
Rand's lone-gunslinger, Captain America industrialist ideal is the naive creation of a mind stuck in childhood rather than, as she seemed to believe, the conception of a mature adult. In so emphasizing driven individual will, Rand fails to give sufficient credit to the social and governmental structures that allows entreponeurs to succeed.
We now know that altruism has been built into human nature by natural selection. In other words, altruist behavior does make us happy; so does success in business, so does the caress of a loved one...Rand's attempt to simplify human nature in her philosophy indicates a small and rather shallow intellect, rather than the great one her followers would attribute to her. And there's even an Ayn Rand Institute! Amazing! I'm starting the Krusty the Klown Institute....
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