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  • Atlas Shrugged

  • Written by: Ayn Rand
  • Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
  • Length: 52 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (317 ratings)

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Atlas Shrugged

Written by: Ayn Rand
Narrated by: Christopher Hurt
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Publisher's Summary

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

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he fight his hardest battle not against his enemies, but against the woman he loves? 

Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus and 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.

©1957 Ayn Rand, 1985 renewed Eugene Winick, Paul Gitlin, and Leonard Peikoff, Introduction 1992 Leonard Peikoff (P)1991 Blackstone Audio Inc.

What listeners say about Atlas Shrugged

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

brilliantly written, so brilliantly misguided.

she try so hard to write an ironclad argument in favor of an unsupportable View. had she turned to either history or to a modicum of anthropology she would have seen where her error fell. it's not to say there aren't many worthy ideas to be found under the Avalanche of narrative, it's just that the very fate of our planet and it's imminent destruction through climate change Etc was brought about buy the one factor she ignores, greed. she glorifies it and yet it's real world impact is undeniable. I'm glad I read this book, but I will not be reading it ever again. it is passionately delusional while trying to be rigorously realistic. buy her own claims, this is the essence of folly.

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5 people found this helpful

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very relevant

This classic is very appropriate for the time we are living in. It's the best dystopic novel because it plants the seed of hope.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Strange Audio

This is one of my favourite stories. This version has some weird audio clips happening throughout.

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4 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

I promised a friend I’d read it

I was criticizing Rand’s work without having read it. A friend encouraged me to at least read it. I have now read it and can criticize Rand’s work after having read it. :)
Ok, it wasn’t as bad as I expected but it was so much worse than what I had hoped. This work is so characterized it’s laughable in most circumstances ( although there’s more than one moment in this book that is downright chilling).
About half way through reading Atlas, it occurred to me that if Rand were writing today, it would likely be for the Babylon Bee.
Was it all bad, no but there are far more effective and efficient ways to get a lesson on personal accountability and work ethic.

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don't appreciate the narrator

really should have paid more attention to the narrator. this is a fantastic story, but I can't focus with this narrators voice.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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audio issues midway through

the story is eerily prescient, you will find the similarities with today, written in 1957 being spoken aloud.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Runaway Train

I didn't know what to expect from the book. The beginning is slow, but as you continue to read and follow the characters your swept away as your beliefs and doctrine are challenged over every mile of track. A must read for the youth of today, a glimpse into a world that could very well come to life!

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2 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

A enjoyable novel but with some deep low points.

Firstly, this is an enormously long novel. The print copy is 1168 pages (usually put into 3 volumes), and this audiobook is 52 hours long. It is almost comical to say that I mostly enjoyed the first 40-some hours. 52 hours is like 6 seasons of television and most tv series are in obvious decline by the 6th season, so what are the chances that any person would write such an immense novel that doesn't wane in parts? Let's have reasonable expectations and accept some natural human variance, nobody can keep up a pace for this long.

Atlas Shrugged is an interesting 1957 period piece and American dystopian novel in which Ayn Rand paints a picture of American declinism from her own laissez-faire, classic liberalist, objectivist perspective. I don't think a reader needs to sympathize too much with Rand's beliefs to enjoy this exploration, but late in the story Rand sets down a soap box and goes on a speel takes the relatable themes that had been established over so many chapters and distills them all into a narrow, yet convoluted and strawmanning diatribe that lasts 2 hours. I found the novel to be a cheesy slog from the climax onward, it's like the story's facade fell away, leaving bare the thin caricatures Rand wrote as characters to populate a laborious and drawn out conclusion.

I wouldn't say that Rand totally spoiled her novel by launching into her sermon on rational and ethical egoism at a critical narrative moment but it is a low point, but the last leg of the marathon that is Atlas Shrugged is by far the weakest part of the novel. Where she could have used her cleverness and aptitude, Rand undermined her novel with self indulgent philosophical preachiness, static characters, and tacky action sequences.

Still, it is quite a story. Rand writes from an interesting angle, she supplies a compelling protagonist (a young and prodigiously industrius woman), a healthy amount of mystery, and well captured settings. The romance is not quite salacious but there is an emphasis on sexuality and desire that some readers may rather do without.

I would say that I am glad to have read, or rather listened, to Atlas Shrugged; it was a thought provoking and mostly enjoyable read ... until the end. Like many books, I will enjoy having read it more than I enjoyed actually reading it.

The narrator does an excellent job, and plays the characters rather distinct from one another.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Pivotal Read for Me!

This book was one of the catalysts that helped me understand the world we are living in much better. It left me feeling much less confused as to why everything has unfolded the way that it had recently.

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1 person found this helpful

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Essential reading

What an amazing piece of fiction.
A real adventure, somewhere between Indian Jones and 1984. I like this title due to its backbone of industrial dialogue and diagrams. Inventors and hero’s, who’s unmatched energetic prowess shape /change landscape and culture all while being arbitrarily marginalized by the marginal.
A must read for anyone wondering where socialist ideology terminates.

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