Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC)
- 1,113
- Pages
- about 20 h
- Reading time
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Our view
Rand’s novel is an argument in the shape of a thriller, with heroes and villains drawn larger than life to carry her philosophy. Readers who share its ideals admire it intensely; others find it joyless and short on empathy. Either way, 1,113 pages of conviction demand patience, and the book rewards mainly those curious about the ideas themselves.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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. Who is John Galt? When he says that he will stop the motor of the world, is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battles not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the amazing men and women in this book. You will discover why a productive genius becomes a worthless playboy...why a great steel industrialist is working for his own destruction...why a composer gives up his career on the night of his triumph...why a beautiful woman who runs a transcontinental railroad falls in love with the man she has sworn to kill. Atlas Shrugged, a modern classic and Rand’s most extensive statement of Objectivism—her groundbreaking philosophy—offers the reader the spectacle of human greatness, depicted with all the poetry and power of one of the twentieth century’s leading artists.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.4 across 819 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 85% of the weight and the score stays at 6.6 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 6.6 | 116 | 14% |
| Hardcover | 6.4 | 703 | 86% |
Frequently asked
How long is Atlas Shrugged (Centennial Ed. HC)?
It has 1,113 pages — longer than 99% of the ranked books in Classics.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 7.0 and 7.1, closest to this book.
