| Atlas Shrugged |  | Author: Ayn Rand
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $34.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1521 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B000FDJ3D2
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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
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 1516 more reviews...
Great delivery from seller... August 19, 2008
Extremely prompt delivery from seller. As for the book, haven't read this 1200 page beast yet, but am looking forward to the exercise for the mind.
 Very, very disappointing. August 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Atlas Shrugged came highly recommended, and, as I had been impressed by Rand's earlier The Fountainhead, decided to try this longer book.
If you don't expect any characterization or plot, and don't mind a highly repetitive hammering of a particular philosophical stance, you might find it tolerable. In fact, had the same storyline been told in 150-200 pages, it might not have been as bad-but at 1100+ pages, it was seriously stretched.
ALL the "good guys" are exceptionally competent polymaths, and are uniformly handsome, striking, and healthy. ALL the "bad guys" are seriously incompetent and have substantial physical flaws. Just by the description of a character--often running more than a page--you can tell where they stand.
All the "good guys" speak the same; there is no way to identify who is speaking from their speech patterns, word choice, phrasing, punctuation, or anything else: they're essentially verbal clones of each other, and all of them are promoting the same philosophy.
The same applies to the "bad guys", though they espouse a couple of (minor) variations on their philosophy, and one of them--a fairly minor one--could actually be identified by his speech patterns. The rest, again, were verbal and philosophical clones.
None of the major characters developed in any meaningful way. Some of them learned some facts, but none of them achieved any real growth. In fact, the only people who changed in any substantial fashion were minor characters, and many of them only did so immediately before dying.
One of the characters makes a speech in the later part of the book. That speech, which we were told was highly effective to the listeners, was not well phrased, well organized, nor fashioned in such a way as to keep any audience from falling asleep. That speech alone took 60 pages, with no interruptions or commentary from any other character; I had to take a break partway through, and ended up skimming the last 20-odd pages, as it was highly repetitious, both to itself, and everything else in the novel. The author could more effectively have elided it, and had a few characters talk about it in 2-3 pages; instead, the readers were treated to yet another repetition what had been repeated many times before.
From a philosophical standpoint, if Atlas Shrugged were shorter, from a novella to a very short novel, I could honestly suggest it to someone interested in the viewpoint Rand was pushing. At 1100 pages, I cannot.
It may be the worst novel I've ever bothered to finish; I kept hoping there would be something worthwhile in upcoming pages--a key character flaw the author argued against, in fact: hope based on a lack of acceptance of historical facts. It had no plot, no characterization, no character development or growth, poor dialog, and the most blatant hammering of a philosophical stance I've ever seen, spread out over substantially too many pages.
(For the record, I'm almost entirely in agreement with the position promoted by the protagonists. I don't disapprove of the message, merely the delivery--repeating the same thing a few hundred times doesn't make it any more convincing.)
Utter crap August 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book, although slightly entertaining, is utter crap philosophically speaking. Many people who make money are often greedy and manipulative, free will does not exist, and capitalism is garbage. Read any other philosopher, even Descartes, over this garbage.
 This book changed the way I viewed the world. August 8, 2008
Although this book is rather long (which is one of many's main complaints), and it took me about a month and a half to read, it was well worth it. I was so enthralled by the character of John Galt and the concept of selfishness not being a bad thing. I left with a much higher self esteem.
Rand Fan July 31, 2008
This book is a classic - a (very) long novel that puts forth a cohesive presentation of her conservative point of view. Now, fifty (50) years later we can see the reality of her brilliance with the crumbling of our government and society.
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