Atlas Shrugged
1957 novel by Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged is a 1957 novel by Ayn Rand. It is her longest novel, the fourth and final one published during her lifetime, and the one she considered her magnum opus in the realm of fiction writing. She described the theme of Atlas Shrugged as "the role of man's mind in existence" and it includes elements of science fiction, mystery, and romance. The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism, including reason, property rights, individualism, rational egoism, and laissez-faire capitalism and depicts what Rand saw as the evil of altruism and governmental coercion. Of Rand's works of fiction, it contains her most extensive statement of her philosophical system.
The book depicts a dystopian United States in which heavy industry companies suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations. Railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, struggle against "looters" who want to exploit their productivity. They discover that a mysterious figure called John Galt is persuading other business leaders to abandon their companies and disappear as a strike of productive individuals against the looters. The novel ends with the strikers planning to build a new capitalist society based on Galt's philosophy.
Atlas Shrugged received largely negative reviews, but achieved enduring popularity and ongoing sales in the following decades.
“Atlas Shrugged” enters the record as 1957 novel by Ayn Rand. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Atlas, Shrugged and novel can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q374098. VIAF identifies the subject as 194773875. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1957.
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This entry incorporates text from “Atlas Shrugged” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.