- Mass Market Paperback: 1096 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; 50th Anniversary Edition edition (30 Jan 1992)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0451191145
- ISBN-13: 978-0451191144
- Product Dimensions: 17.5 x 10.4 x 4.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (125 customer reviews)
-
Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
21,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #76 in Books > Fiction > Science Fiction > Classics
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's greatest achievement and last work of fiction. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy...to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad...to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels. Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.
About the Author
Ayn Rand's first novel, We the Living, was published in 1936. With the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, she achieved spectacular and enduring success. Through her novels and nonfiction writings, which express her unique philosophy, Objectivism, Rand maintains a lasting influence on popular thought.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
"Who is John Galt?" Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
"Who is John Galt?" Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
62 of 70 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This novel hardly needs a review to encourage someone to buy it, when you consider one point alone: It is over 50 years old and people still read it and enjoy it. It is a classic and nothing I can say can detract from that.
But it is also a product of its time, espousing a philosophy that is only internally consistent if one makes rather more assumptions than the author admits to. The characters all speak with Ayn Rand's voice, in a manner that might be familiar to readers of Galileo perhaps, but not so much with readers of a good modern novel. The characters feel unreal. The whole setting is preposterously unreal, and here is a novel that would have been better set in an alternate universe of a science fiction writer, in the manner - say - of Philip Dick's "The Man in the High Castle". Perhaps that was her intent in fact, but she gives us no anchor into the world she is describing and the action of the novel dances across an empty stage.
For anyone seeking rich characterizations, realistic interactions, or a sense of place in the narrative, you will be disappointed in this novel. The novel is merely the platform for Rand's polemic, and jumps from unbelievable to the preposterous without apology.
This being said, it was still a jolly good read. The conflict in the novel is engrossing and draws you in quickly. The first time someone defeats a "looter government", you want to applaud. When Dagny (the protaganist) completes a railway line against all the odds you can feel her exhilieration - even if you wonder how she managed it! The concept of the plot is refreshingly original, and readers will want to finish the novel.
Given its length though, finishing can be tricky - especially where it comes to a 90 page speech espousing Rand's epistemology. Some aspects of the plot were also tiring, and one wonders whether the book could have achieved its purpose whilst being edited a little. Ok, the 90 page speech was probably why she wrote the book - but perhaps Rand forgets the maxim here: "show don't tell"
Ultimately though, the book's philosophy suffers for being the product of an age that does not exist any longer. Marxism is a target of Rand's polemic, but also social programmes that have clearly worked and brought tremendous benefit to the world (including the US), such as the Marshal plan. At the same time, she defends a world of producer industrialists that largely no longer exist now, and rather misses the point that invention in our modern world is hardly the preserve of big business (even if only businesses have the resources to patent their inventions). I could say more on this, but this is a review - not a critique, so I will stop!
I give the book 4 stars despite all this criticism, because I do not regret having read it. I enjoyed it, I thought about it, I disagree with a good deal of it, but I do not regret it. Neither will you.
But it is also a product of its time, espousing a philosophy that is only internally consistent if one makes rather more assumptions than the author admits to. The characters all speak with Ayn Rand's voice, in a manner that might be familiar to readers of Galileo perhaps, but not so much with readers of a good modern novel. The characters feel unreal. The whole setting is preposterously unreal, and here is a novel that would have been better set in an alternate universe of a science fiction writer, in the manner - say - of Philip Dick's "The Man in the High Castle". Perhaps that was her intent in fact, but she gives us no anchor into the world she is describing and the action of the novel dances across an empty stage.
For anyone seeking rich characterizations, realistic interactions, or a sense of place in the narrative, you will be disappointed in this novel. The novel is merely the platform for Rand's polemic, and jumps from unbelievable to the preposterous without apology.
This being said, it was still a jolly good read. The conflict in the novel is engrossing and draws you in quickly. The first time someone defeats a "looter government", you want to applaud. When Dagny (the protaganist) completes a railway line against all the odds you can feel her exhilieration - even if you wonder how she managed it! The concept of the plot is refreshingly original, and readers will want to finish the novel.
Given its length though, finishing can be tricky - especially where it comes to a 90 page speech espousing Rand's epistemology. Some aspects of the plot were also tiring, and one wonders whether the book could have achieved its purpose whilst being edited a little. Ok, the 90 page speech was probably why she wrote the book - but perhaps Rand forgets the maxim here: "show don't tell"
Ultimately though, the book's philosophy suffers for being the product of an age that does not exist any longer. Marxism is a target of Rand's polemic, but also social programmes that have clearly worked and brought tremendous benefit to the world (including the US), such as the Marshal plan. At the same time, she defends a world of producer industrialists that largely no longer exist now, and rather misses the point that invention in our modern world is hardly the preserve of big business (even if only businesses have the resources to patent their inventions). I could say more on this, but this is a review - not a critique, so I will stop!
I give the book 4 stars despite all this criticism, because I do not regret having read it. I enjoyed it, I thought about it, I disagree with a good deal of it, but I do not regret it. Neither will you.
90 of 110 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Atlas Shrugged is a 1100 page(small print!) novel in which 4 or 5 people stride about like nationalistic heroes building railroads, inventing things, and being proud of it; while the rest of the world mooches off them and complain that the industrialists have too much money.
Even though I'm a liberal, I have to admit this book was interesting. It's like a dystopian novel for capitalists (God knows how many there are for socialists). The ideas are challenging and thought-provoking whoever you are, and the writing is pretty nice, Rand obviously put a lot of energy into the book.
But it's pretty clunky, the plot goes on so many boring tangents, the love scenes are ridiculous, the characters are uninteresting, and most of all it's too repetitive. A quarter of the way through the book I was already familiar with all aspects of Rand's philosophy, and I could tell precisely where the book was going, so reading it felt like a bit of a chore, especially since I never skim pages.
If you're an anti-union, hardcore capitalist then buy the book and revel in it, but if you're not, then wait for the expected movie, with Angelina Jolie coming out in 2008.
I gave this a 4 because the people who would like this would love it, and it's quite a novelty to read a writer who isn't a liberal/socialist/hedonist/romantic/bum.
Even though I'm a liberal, I have to admit this book was interesting. It's like a dystopian novel for capitalists (God knows how many there are for socialists). The ideas are challenging and thought-provoking whoever you are, and the writing is pretty nice, Rand obviously put a lot of energy into the book.
But it's pretty clunky, the plot goes on so many boring tangents, the love scenes are ridiculous, the characters are uninteresting, and most of all it's too repetitive. A quarter of the way through the book I was already familiar with all aspects of Rand's philosophy, and I could tell precisely where the book was going, so reading it felt like a bit of a chore, especially since I never skim pages.
If you're an anti-union, hardcore capitalist then buy the book and revel in it, but if you're not, then wait for the expected movie, with Angelina Jolie coming out in 2008.
I gave this a 4 because the people who would like this would love it, and it's quite a novelty to read a writer who isn't a liberal/socialist/hedonist/romantic/bum.
48 of 62 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I heard recently about something called Poe's Law. This states that the more extreme a piece of writing is the more it resembles a parody. Thus Atlas Shrugged. All attempts to satirize this book will simply be taken at face value by the Rand fans - a depressingly strident bunch.
I read the first 100 pages and encountered a whole new theology from Rand the atheist: the rebirth of divine power via the rich. In Rand it is the rich who can create everything, including themselves, from nothing. Thus Howard Reardon searching for an alloy that is infinitely cheap, infinitely powerful, and infinitely light (a capitalist wet dream if ever there was one). And he DOESN'T NEED ANYONE ELSE. Rand skips lightly over the little matter of furnaces, workmen, supervisors, builders, etc. She gives a passing mention to some scientists but makes sure that we see they were a useless bunch who needed Reardon's divine hand to guide them.
Another Randian trick: - the "point of magical re-entry". This is where the super-rich - even though they are super rich - nevertheless really started from nothing anyway. Thus Dagny Taggart has a strange feeling that she will one day become the leader of Taggart Transcontinental. Observant readers may note that she has the same name as the business. Yes - it turns out to be a family business. And Dagny's prophecy turns out to be more in the nature of a foregone conclusion.
But the real belter comes later when we meet Francisco D'Anconias. Here we have a wunderkind who reinvents calculus, masters a speed boat without instruction and sneaks away from the family mansion every day before dawn to do a gruelling job in a sweat shop - all before he gets to his teens. Later he makes a fortune casually juggling money on the stock market while writing an essay on Aristotle (no doubt while suppressing a yawn). He does all this while carrying on some sadomasochistic relationship straight out of those Fast Show Mediterranean soap opera sketches. At this point I could feel my brain seeping out of my nostrils and I had to quit.
But a few weeks later, masochist that I am, I had another go. This time I got as far as the bit where Reardon, his secretary, and one of his clients face the ULTIMATE HORROR.
Now what do you think the ULTIMATE HORROR would be? Hmmmm....well the Holocaust is the obvious historical example. Or on a more personal level - imagine you come home one day to find your entire family wiped out by a marauding psychopath. Well Rand has you beat. The ULTIMATE HORROR is a government regulation that restricts business!!!! Reardon, secretary and client are simultaneously aghast. Reardon later sits stunned in a darkened room trying to grasp the enormity of this soul freezing blasphemy. But he can't.
Brain starting to liquefy again.
NO MORE!!!!
I read the first 100 pages and encountered a whole new theology from Rand the atheist: the rebirth of divine power via the rich. In Rand it is the rich who can create everything, including themselves, from nothing. Thus Howard Reardon searching for an alloy that is infinitely cheap, infinitely powerful, and infinitely light (a capitalist wet dream if ever there was one). And he DOESN'T NEED ANYONE ELSE. Rand skips lightly over the little matter of furnaces, workmen, supervisors, builders, etc. She gives a passing mention to some scientists but makes sure that we see they were a useless bunch who needed Reardon's divine hand to guide them.
Another Randian trick: - the "point of magical re-entry". This is where the super-rich - even though they are super rich - nevertheless really started from nothing anyway. Thus Dagny Taggart has a strange feeling that she will one day become the leader of Taggart Transcontinental. Observant readers may note that she has the same name as the business. Yes - it turns out to be a family business. And Dagny's prophecy turns out to be more in the nature of a foregone conclusion.
But the real belter comes later when we meet Francisco D'Anconias. Here we have a wunderkind who reinvents calculus, masters a speed boat without instruction and sneaks away from the family mansion every day before dawn to do a gruelling job in a sweat shop - all before he gets to his teens. Later he makes a fortune casually juggling money on the stock market while writing an essay on Aristotle (no doubt while suppressing a yawn). He does all this while carrying on some sadomasochistic relationship straight out of those Fast Show Mediterranean soap opera sketches. At this point I could feel my brain seeping out of my nostrils and I had to quit.
But a few weeks later, masochist that I am, I had another go. This time I got as far as the bit where Reardon, his secretary, and one of his clients face the ULTIMATE HORROR.
Now what do you think the ULTIMATE HORROR would be? Hmmmm....well the Holocaust is the obvious historical example. Or on a more personal level - imagine you come home one day to find your entire family wiped out by a marauding psychopath. Well Rand has you beat. The ULTIMATE HORROR is a government regulation that restricts business!!!! Reardon, secretary and client are simultaneously aghast. Reardon later sits stunned in a darkened room trying to grasp the enormity of this soul freezing blasphemy. But he can't.
Brain starting to liquefy again.
NO MORE!!!!
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
The best fictional work of Ayn Rand
An extremely well written book. The characters bring to life the ideas of how those that try to innovate and take risks are being sidelined and 'bullied' by public sector's... Read more
Published 2 months ago by grkostakis
Dull
In essence, Atlas Shrugged is an excruciatingly long and boring story written by a pseudo-philosopher in an attempt to novelise her very own faux-theory of "objectivism". Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. Butcher
Great book
The book itself is obviously great. The condition of the book was somewhat worse than what I would expected for 'used-good' description
Published 3 months ago by Ian Kehoe
How *not* to write your own novel
Rand was certainly no natural author. The style of the prose in 'Atlas Shrugged' is laboured, the text overlain with masses of pointless, drawn-out descriptions that add nothing... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Misterb0z
Atlas Shrugged
Very long book - had to get together all my resolve to finish it. Had a message = philosophical stuff which was quit interesting - thought provoking. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Bodger
Atlas Shrugged
Human striving, human failure, successes, frailties and failings, the worst and the best of man's character played out on a modern stage; unromantic yet deeply romantic, cold as... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Geogelinas
On time, very good cond.
Very pleaed with book, lovely cond and came very quick too. Not had chance to read as yet, but happy with overall.
Published 6 months ago by leo
The Fact It Is Long Does Not Make it Good
Rand said that her novel The Fountainhead was `only an overture' to Atlas Shrugged, but although Atlas Shrugged is more ambitious than The Fountainhead and considerably longer, it... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Ragnar
read this
I enjoyed this book enormously, taking my time to read it and revelling in the world created by the author. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Mal
A waste of several months of my life
I read this book after having a discussion about capitalism, and what I thought were its failings with an Irish friend that lives in America he recommended this book. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Mike
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
