Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand

Penguin,  January 1957

Ayn Rand's epochal novel, first published in 1957, has been a bestseller for more than four decades as well as an intellectual landmark. It is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world -- and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies but against those who needed him most -- and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world's motor -- and the motive power of every man?

Tremendous in its scope, 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 composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph . . . to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad . . . to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil,  Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's masterpiece. It is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.