Atlas Shrugged by {author}: summary and why it matters

What it argues

The story is set in a United States sliding toward collectivism, where railroads fail, industries are controlled and the productive are blamed for the troubles. Dagny Taggart, who runs a railroad, and Hank Rearden, a steel magnate, struggle against bureaucrats and parasites while a mysterious figure, John Galt, persuades the ablest minds, the inventors, industrialists and artists, to withdraw from society.

Rand's thesis is that the mind is the source of wealth and that a society which penalizes ability and rewards need will collapse. The book celebrates the producer and condemns the moral code, in her view, of altruism, which makes self-sacrifice a duty. Galt's long radio speech sets out her philosophy of Objectivism, which holds that reason is man's only means of knowledge and rational self-interest is the proper moral purpose.

It is a long novel, over a thousand pages, and critics have faulted its characters as types and its speeches as tedious.

Why it matters

The book has sold in vast numbers and inspired generations of free-market and libertarian readers, including figures in politics. Conservatives are divided about it, since Rand's atheism and rejection of altruism conflict with religious traditions, as Whittaker Chambers argued in a famous review.

About the author

Ayn Rand (1905-1982) was born Alisa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and emigrated to the United States in 1926. She was the author of The Fountainhead (1943) and the founder of Objectivism. Atlas Shrugged took her about twelve years to complete. Whittaker Chambers reviewed it harshly in National Review in 1957.

Who should read it

Readers who want to understand a cultural force on the right, and who have time.