- School & Library Binding: 1079 pages
- Publisher: Turtleback Books (Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0613357663
- ISBN-13: 978-0613357661
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 11.1 x 4.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (123 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,378,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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First Sentence
"Who is John Galt?" The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
"Who is John Galt?" The light was ebbing, and Eddie Willers could not distinguish the bum's face. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
52 of 60 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, Thought Provoking but Overlong,
By
This review is from: Atlas Shrugged (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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
How *not* to write your own novel,
By Misterb0z (England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
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 to the reading experience, as well as a naive dependence on similes as if Rand had a copy of 'How To Write Your First Novel' by her side.
To be fair, the philosophy is interesting to a 'neutral' observer, but the book lacks in its descriptions of character the sense of parody and humour that exists in its left-wing equivalent 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'. The book has helped me to try and understand the mind of a libertarian or other proponent of laissez-faire economics, but I'll have to read something a little more refined, I'm afraid, or else be left with the impression that such minds are diseased.
90 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, but better to wait for the movie.,
By P.Vineaux (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics) (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.
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