Atlas Shrugged Kindle Edition

Non-libertarian here.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.

This is one of them most intriguing works I've read in years and it can provoke vigorous reaction on a variety of levels. There's easily enough meat here to justify considering this one of the most important writing in Western Civilization, but unfortunately, it's weighed down by more than enough baggage to prevent many from seeing it in that light. Even so, the ideas are so powerful, I'll give it five stars and point out flaws only to help you recognize and avoid being distracted by them.For starters, this book is a disaster if viewed purely in novelistic terms. I cannot recall having ever seen more stilted characters nor can I recall having seen worse dialogue. I understand what Rand was going for when she sought to present her objectivist philosophy in the context of a novel, but I wish she wouldn't have tried to do that. A philosophical tract is a philosophical tract, and a novel is a novel. Perhaps it is possible to join the two, but I don't think it was done effectively here.I also think Rand's philosophy itself took an unfortunate turn as she settled into life as a U.S. celebrity and became more prone toward playing to her crowd. If you take the core plot elements of "Atlas Shrugged" and set them against the backdrop of Rand's formative years (in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik revolution and on the wrong side, so to speak) and the subsequent history of planned economies, you'd see that Rand has much to say that is extremely relevant to us. Had she stuck to being a pure novelist, as she seemed to be with "We the Living," the message might have gotten through quite well. Unfortunately, as she pushed the philosophy further and further, perhaps based on the need to play to her core audience, I think she took it to places where it didn't really need to go and which detracted from her core ideas. Example: John Galt, the hero of "Atlas Shrugged," is being pressed by government leaders to become Economic Dictator and fix the mess into which society has plunged. Were this to happen, one of the things Galt says he'd do is to abolish all taxes. Among readers, that clearly resonates with political extremists on the right, and objectivists do like to argue for this sort of thing. But there's a problem. In the book, it comes completely from out in left field. There is nothing in the story to suggest John Galt, Hank Reardon, Francisco D'Anconia or any other vanishing industrialist was oppressed by taxes or even the sort of government regulations we deal with today. Nothing in the book suggests they'd have a problem with the EPA, with OSHA, with the FTC, with providing health insurance for their employees, etc. A bad line like that probably did much to play to the Rand groupies but it cheapens the fiction because when we shake our heads at its absurdity, we focus away from the substantial kinds of oppression the industrialists did face in the novel.As you read the boom, it really is vital that you develop a knack for filtering out the junk that's been put in there to please the groupies many of who, by the way, seem just-plain crazy. I'm still perplexed at the absurdity of an interview with a Rand-follower in connection with the recent Atlas Shrugged movie who ranted hysterically about how taxes and regulation had destroyed our ability to innovate. Interestingly, though, the diatribe was delivered through Yahoo! Finance on-demand streaming video easily accessible via tablet or even pocket-sized smart phone. Tell me again about the lack of innovation!To appreciate "Atlas Shrugged," you really have to edit the philosophy to adjust for stupidity thrown in by Rand to please the whackos, whether or not she eventually believed in the nonsense herself.Perhaps the best way to appreciate the bona fide substance of this novel is to use one of the reading strategies taught today to kids in elementary and middle school: look for text-to-life associations. Right from the earliest chapters, I found countless situations, attitudes, etc. that were EXACTLY like those I encountered many times in the corporate world, where ideas of thinkers are routinely "looted" not by government officials seeking social re-distribution but by legions of high-salaried PowerPoint jockeys devoid of talent or ideas but highly adept at perpetuating their positions. As James Taggart spoke, I constantly heard it as the voice of a business development person at my former company. As Wesley Mouch did his thing and as the Unification Boards strutted, I constantly saw in my mind the legions of what my company referred to as "business owners" (vapid twenty- and thirty-something kids who were put in charge of things they didn't care about or understand causing many a great idea to wither). As to the strike, the withdrawal of the industrialists, I did something like that at my company when I walked away from a product I struggled to launch. I finally yielded it to the business owner (as a result of "Atlas Shrugged," I re-named her Orren Boyle since she was exactly like that character) by quitting the division. The product collapsed within a couple of months. Actually, Orren Boyle, a politically-connected by incompetent steelmaker was better than the lady with who I worked. He wanted to latch onto profits produced by dynamic innovative Reardon Steel (hence his advocacy for a unification scheme that would distributes all profits produced by all steelmakers based on the number of boilers owned regardless of whether the boilers are actually operational). But when Reardon refused to produce at a loss to feed profits to Boyle and instead proposed that the government simply seize his company and give it to Boyle, the latter had a fit; he knew he'd screw it up. The business owners at my former company had no such self-awareness. They were happy to doers exit, and if an idea subsequently collapsed, as often happened, they'd simply look to loot another one. There are countless more precious scenes like this, far too many to enumerate here.Forget the right-wing extreme propaganda. Forget the objectivist whackos. If you are able to filter that out and really make the text-to-life associations as taught to school kids, you will see, here, the penultimate novel of our modern corporate world, the battle between those who generate ideas and those who live to loot them. This is a novel that exalts individual thought, individual initiative, individual accomplishment, individual creativity, individual responsibility, etc. and exposes the legions of parasites, shirkers ("It's won't!"), whiners ("I don't know how it can be done; I just know you have to do it!"), looters, etc. for what they are. It's a novel we badly need not just in dealing with the public sector but in dealing with the private sector (perhaps more since we are, in fact, a capitalist economy) and maybe even in our personal lives (wait till you meet Hank Reardon's brothe; Does you family have one of those!).

Ótima edição, Ayn Rand a melhor no segmento. Vale a pena a compra.

Justo lo que quería y más. No dudes en comprarlo.

I forget what specifically prompted me to revisit Atlas Shrugged after 40 years - no doubt a post somewhere. Ayn Rand's message and philosophy resonates as strongly as ever, and is more important than ever as our world comes dangerously close to sinking into a realm of woke insanity and chaos. Even she could not have envisaged our situation in writing her dystopic tale of the collapse and resurrection of western capitalism and individual rights.Stylistically, the work has aged pretty well, a bit 1940's/50's "Marlow" noir in flavor, although some sections come across as overly melodramatic, especially the romantic interactions. There are a number of brilliant set pieces, but also sections where you really wish for a bit more editing. And of course there is the famous grand philosophical monologue towards the end that takes a few sittings to get through!These are nit-picks in the grand scheme of things. In our society as it is, the message - especially to the young - of individual self-worth and achievement in the face of a society that damns it implicitly and explicitly is so important.The book remains a master-work, and as most know, is an exposition of her "Objectivist" school of philosophy. Is the world ultimately more complex? Sure - but this book takes a clean cut across the rubic cube of life providing a vital perspective to integrate into the whole.

What an amazing book. The author uses her own philosophy to to populate the narrative of the story. An amazing example of how and where man could go if the wrong people are in charge

The most chapter that captivate me was when John Galt spoke. He tells us that we are people on a mission. "Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death" "to exist is to be something" 🙏🏾