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Study Guide

Introduction & Overview of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

This Study Guide consists of approximately 233 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Atlas Shrugged.
This section contains 277 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Purchase our Atlas Shrugged Study Guide

Atlas Shrugged Introduction

The final novel written by Russian-born American philosopher and author Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged is a controversial and widely popular work. According to a 1991 Library of Congress report, it is considered the second most influential book after the Bible in the lives of its readers. A complex combination of mystery, love story, social criticism, and philosophical concepts, the 1,100-page novel embodies the author's passionate celebration of individualism, free will, capitalism, logic, and reason.

Set in an imaginary America in a communist world, Atlas Shrugged is a sharp critique of a corrupt communist system and its damaging effects on areas as various as love, science, and industrial productivity. The novel's main protagonists, Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden, are capitalist-minded industrialists, "Atlases" who carry the collapsing national economy on their backs. Things change, however, when the mysterious John Galt begins a revolution against the existing order, believing that the parasitic...
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This section contains 277 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Purchase our Atlas Shrugged Study Guide
Copyrights
Atlas Shrugged from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.
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