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Atlas Shrugged Kindle Edition
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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSignet
- Publication dateApril 21, 2005
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size2690 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
[A] vibrant and powerful novel of ideas.
-- "New York Herald Tribune"Countless individuals working to secure liberty have found inspiration in the works of Ayn Rand. With her unique ability to depict heroism, idealism, and romance behind the creativity of the individual, Rand inspires readers to come to the defense of free minds and free markets.
-- "Chip Mellor, Institute for Justice"Narrator Scott Brick takes listeners on a journey so extraordinary they'll hardly notice the book's length. While his performance offers little in the way of theatrics, Brick is capable of garnering sympathy and, perhaps most importantly, devout attention for Rand's plot and characters. On the surface, Brick's voice is a cool, unrelenting force determined to capture every facet of Rand's complex story. But amid his calm and collected delivery, he taps into a more colorful emotional palette that will keep listeners involved. Brick's subtle delivery holds far more than meets the ear.
-- "AudioFile"Atlas Shrugged is not merely a novel. It is also--or may I say: first of all--a cogent analysis of the evils that plague our society.
-- "Ludwig von Mises, economist and historian"Ayn Rand is destined to rank in history as the outstanding novelist and most profound philosopher of the twentieth century.
-- "New York Daily Mirror"About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B003V8B5XO
- Publisher : Signet; Centennial edition (April 21, 2005)
- Publication date : April 21, 2005
- Language : English
- File size : 2690 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 1188 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #15,031 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #14 in Political Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #31 in Classic American Fiction
- #34 in Classic Literary Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
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One of my favorite books - see the size of book and font
Chris Hughes
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Atlas Shrugged
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About the author
Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936, followed by Anthem. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved spectacular and enduring success. Rand's unique philosophy, Objectivism, has gained a worldwide audience and maintains a lasting influence on popular thought. The fundamentals of her philosophy are set forth in such books as Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal, and The Romantic Manifesto. Ayn Rand died in 1982.
(Image reproduced courtesy of The Ayn Rand® Institute)
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Her characters talk things to death, but she dramatizes ideas many readers, then or now, have never heard. She shows our protagonists’ pursuit of work and excellence to the exclusion of most other elements in life.
She defends how they live and shows how critical they are to a society which meanwhile disparages them for selfishness and fails to acknowledge the significance of what they contribute - and at the end of the day regulates them to death, seizes their wealth or both.
Characters like Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden make no excuse for being “selfish” in pursuit of work and productivity. They do it to make money for themselves and stockholders, and make no bones about that: it’s reason enough. But they also do it because it’s beautiful, in their minds, the highest personal endeavor. They’re the ones that keep society running and provide its necessities, although society can’t admit it.
There are many, many long, long, LONG conversations as Rand seeks to turn prevailing modern assumptions on their head: That we’re here primarily to help others. That allowing people to control their own property is selfish. That the government does a better job of running society and the economy.
At a more personal level, Rand does her best to inject different ideas into the mix. Her protagonists despise dependence upon others as well as any sense that you live for others. Dagny, in her burgeoning affair with the married Hank, regards him as owing her nothing. Her independence is refreshing. She’s not independent in a postmodern, feminist sense of rebelling resentfully against the men closest to her. She’s independent in that she can fend for herself, expects others to do the same, and doesn’t want a man to cling to her, either.
Our protagonists decry society’s looters and moochers – those who punitively tax the productive and those who whine to be helped.
Rand uses the great length to portray inside business and political dealings, less melodramatic but more complex than what’s usually portrayed elsewhere. It takes her a while to get around to it, but you finally see where she’s going: the government injects itself more and more into the process. Every owner here must answer to officials who look more and more like commissars. Every owner tries to get by using Washington fixers to keep the government off his back, but in the long run fails. The government starts dictating who gets what raw materials, how much they can produce and who to ship it to. Producers produce less and less, their industries start to fall apart, and thus so does society.
Rand’s prolixity is put to good use in descriptive passages finding the beauty of industry - of blast furnaces, of gleaming rail stretching across plains and hills, of fabulous new bridges and skyscrapers. These are the things people build, beautiful in themselves and in what they represent: ideas proved right, energy, will, intelligence, investment, hard work, science, technology. These industrial artifacts are usually portrayed as ugly from a postmodern or environmental perspective by the ‘we’re raping Mother Earth’ school.
What was gained by such industry – steel, transportation, habitats and offices – and what was gained by all those – more places to live one’s life and seek one’s dreams, and a larger world to do it in – is often ignored and forgotten. And you can’t forget that. Those who want you to give it up, and will institute regulation or revolution to force you to, never seem to say how they’d substitute for it. And when given the chance to – Communist countries with complete and dictatorial control – they invariably fail. Your typical revolutionary couldn’t run a candy store, let alone a railroad.
There was a film called “Koyaanisqatsi” back in the 1980s, an American Indian word that meant “world out of balance”. It consisted entirely of video, much of it time-lapse, of human construction upon the planet. We were supposed to perceive it all as ugly. But the bands of light, say, streaming from thousands of cars moving in mesmerizing lines at night along urban highways was actually beautiful, which is why anyone watched the movie until the end. It disproved its own point.
The book has numerous flaws, more than a classic normally should, but it is so unique, it’s worthwhile despite it. There are too many endless conversations and interior monologues. Rand disparages feelings, as opposed to thought, but much of the book consists of her characters emoting. Well, OK, they’re thinking, the protagonists anyway (the bad guys, particularly near the end, are shown panicking, in ways they can’t verbalize, thought having succumbed to emotion) but it’s a very fine line. This book would be better at half or a third of the length. I have read that Rand used benzedrine, a stimulant, for three decades; if so, this book bears evidence of it. It would explain why so many of her passages go on for so long, far longer than it takes to actually explicate the thoughts in question, and counterproductive to the causes of holding readers or communicating, which I imagine she’d in normal circumstances have held dear.
John Galt’s legendary speech – said in the book to take three hours, but I imagine this would take even longer to actually read aloud; it’s 60 pages in one hardcover version – is in its own category. Rand lays out her philosophy the way philosophers do. It will cross the eyes of anyone else, those not greatly concerned with whether, say, existence can prove its own existence. But I’m willing to stipulate that political philosophies at some point and for some fraction of people must be proven in this way.
Rand at times writes like a girl; I say this affectionately. Dagny Taggart generally beats the guys (save for a few who are her equals, like Francisco D’Anconia and Hank Reardon) at their own game. She’s tough, competent, decisive and hard-working. But there is a tremendous amount of melodrama attached, not only to her, but to all of them. She’s always appearing at some important scene straight from some party in her formal evening wear, her strapless gown blowing in the wind, a striking, mesmerizing figure. (‘I Dreamed I Smashed The Collectivist Looter State in My Maidenform Bra.’)
And all the key men in the book are in love with her! And she has to choose! Oh, what to do, what to do?! It’s so awful! It’s so wonderful! Oh, TAKE ME!
It’s a lot of fun, actually, because it’s part of a book that actually says something.
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.
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Reviewed in India on May 8, 2024
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.