Atlas Shrugged

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves?

You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill.

Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.

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Published Sep 1, 1996

1192 pages

Average rating: 7.16

81 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

jpubs
Feb 02, 2025
6/10 stars
Very conceptual and long, but worth the read.
Suzanne82
Aug 16, 2025
8/10 stars
I read this a year or so after high school, so the ideas and the philosophy were new and exciting to me. I can't say I am a Rand enthusiast as far as philosophy goes, but she can definitely draw up an enthralling plot that at least made me want to want to follow the philosophy. The biggest flaw was the John Galt radio broadcast, which cut into a perfectly exciting sequence of events with a 30-or-so page tirade and spelling out of the central philosophy. (See my comments for Ishmael.) I guess technically, I haven't read the WHOLE book, because I ended up skimming most of that superfluous section. But I really did enjoy reading this, very very much, aside from the section I skipped.
Alldog456
Mar 09, 2025
10/10 stars
Very philosophical and dystopian in an anarchist way
Roman Gorokhov
Jul 25, 2024
10/10 stars
the very best book I have ever read.
amontulli
May 31, 2024
10/10 stars
Probably my all-time favorite. This or the Fountainhead. Dagny might have the edge.

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