Atlas Shrugged Plot Summary

Atlas Shrugged Overview

Rand's final novel, 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 many 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 various areas of human existence, including 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. Galt believes that the parasitic society...
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