Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand, 1957
Contemporary fiction Literary fictionScience fictionMystery, thriller & crime
A railroad executive fights to keep a collapsing America moving while the nation’s most capable people vanish one by one. A vast, earnest story moving between railroad offices and a vanishing nation, driven by conviction, argument and a steady pulse of defiance.
Feels like awe, defiance and dread. About ambition, freedom and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy long, idea-driven fiction with forceful speeches and a heroic view of work and ambition. Be prepared for its length and for stretches where characters explain Rand's philosophy at length rather than advancing the plot.
Why read it
It offers a stark, propulsive look at work, responsibility and freedom, and gives you plenty to argue with long after the last page.
A page from the book
What fear actually is, once action has been taken away.
He saw for the first time that he had never known fear because, against any disaster, he had held the omnipotent cure of being able to act. No, he thought, not an assurance of victory—who can ever have that?—only the chance to act, which is all one needs. Now he was contemplating, impersonally and for the first time, the real heart of terror: being delivered to destruction with one’s hands tied behind one’s back. Ayn Rand.Rand's working title for Atlas Shrugged was 'The Strike'; she began it in 1946 and published it in 1957.
Books that feel like this
More by Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand, 1943
An architect who will not build anything he doesn't believe in, against a city that rewards charm. The novel that made selfishness an argument.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Atlas Shrugged for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy long, idea-driven fiction with forceful speeches and a heroic view of work and ambition. Be prepared for its length and for stretches where characters explain Rand's philosophy at length rather than advancing the plot.
- What is Atlas Shrugged like?
- A vast, earnest story moving between railroad offices and a vanishing nation, driven by conviction, argument and a steady pulse of defiance. Feels like awe, defiance and dread. About ambition, freedom and power.
- What should I read after Atlas Shrugged?
- If you liked Atlas Shrugged, try The Fifth Season (N.K. Jemisin), Atmosphere (Taylor Jenkins Reid) and Dune (Frank Herbert).
A taste of the feed
She doesn't hate him for being powerful. She hates him for being honest.
This is why she hates Alabaster: not because he is more powerful, not even because he is crazy, but because he refuses to allow her any of the polite fictions and unspoken truths that have kept her comfortable, and safe, for years.
The Fifth Season · N.K. Jemisin
What the vacuum of space would do to a human body, precisely.
The flight deck and the mid-deck—where the astronauts live and work on the shuttle—are pressurized to mimic the atmosphere on Earth’s surface. But the payload bay—where the satellites are held until they are deployed—is not. It is exposed to the vacuum of space. Which means if Ford and Griff were to enter it without their space suits, all of the oxygen would be sucked out of their lungs and bloodstream instantly, causing them to pass out within fifteen seconds and be dead within two minutes.
Atmosphere · Taylor Jenkins Reid
What to say to yourself when fear arrives and will not leave.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Dune · Frank Herbert
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