• Atlas Shrugged

  • By: Ayn Rand
  • Narrated by: Scott Brick
  • Length: 62 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (18,470 ratings)

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Atlas Shrugged  By  cover art

Atlas Shrugged

By: Ayn Rand
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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Publisher's summary

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991.

In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts?

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did. In defense of those greatest of human qualities that have made civilization possible, he sets out to show what would happen to the world if all the heroes of innovation and industry went on strike. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battle not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves? The answers will be revealed once you discover the reason behind the baffling events that wreak havoc on the lives of the amazing men and women in this remarkable book.

Tremendous in scope and breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus, which launched an ideology and a movement. With the publication of this work in 1957, Rand gained an instant following and became a phenomenon. Atlas Shrugged emerged as a premier moral apologia for capitalism, a defense that had an electrifying effect on millions of readers (and now listeners) who had never heard capitalism defended in other than technical terms.

©1985 Eugene Winick, Paul Gitlin and Leonard Peikoff (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about Atlas Shrugged

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    4 out of 5 stars

Good challenge for mature Christians only

As a strong Christian, and graduate studies educated intellect, I found Atlas Shrugged to be an amazing tale of the virtues of Americas lost values. As a veteran, I found that the liberals in the story to reflect the ugliness and shortsightedness that America, and much of the world, has fallen into in the 21st-century. As an inventor and entrepreneur, it makes me sick to see so vividly the depravity that is our body politic and our social entitlements. But there is hope in the story, and while John Gault did not appreciate those with hope in their heart and morality based on heavenly motivation, I am better for having struggled through this great novel.

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Best novel I've heard in Audible

The philosophy of Ayn Rand is relevant even in 2023. It is a must read for everyone that want to keep their mind intact and not give in to the blank darkness of non-thinking brain.

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Amazing

One of the greatest audiables I have listened to! Hands down listen and tour perspective of the world will change.

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Great ideas

Great ideas but upon rereading I cannot help but find the writing to be cheesy. Regardless, it’s still a great book, and should be read without a critical eye toward the writing itself.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Everyone should read this book

This book should be required reading. If it was this world would be a more prosperous place.

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Wow just wow

It’s was a fantastic book. Very scary the similar events of what’s happening in the book unfolding in todays events

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Jarring peek into a modern reality

As a person of ability and talent, this book hits close to the chest. It's said that Rand's philosophy is for young boys, but reading her as a grown man with a family, a successful business, and the graying hairs to show my commitment to the experience I've gained, I find no rashness to her position. There is no denying the radical nature of her thought process, but by the same metrics that show her radical, those of us who live in such realities as her protagonists deal with the same internal paradoxes and wrestle the same answers.

This is not a book for the man with weak convictions, which is probably the cause of radicalization of younger men who read it; it is rather a book that merely illuminates the existence of a next step for the man who has confidently and purposfully walked but found himself before an invisible wall.

If you can stomach reading your struggles as the protagonist, and at the same time that the enemy, and the cause of your struggle is you, and only you; this is a book for you.

-We the men of the mind.

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Eye opening

This books has countless parallels to current day including the contrast of the mindset of the everyday People and those of the mind who think logically

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Long but super interesting

Sadly I heard things written in this book 60 years ago that are still being tried by some people today. This book should be a must read for today’s youth. They need to understand the corruption that can happen within politics to know how to stop it.

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An important work

Overly flowery, but a crucial work that everyone should read, no matter your political persuasions. Thought provoking.

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