Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand
The capitalist fever dream that won’t die.
For you if
you want to understand the book that convinced generations of powerful people that selfishness is a virtue
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$26 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
The monster’s manifesto. Rand’s sprawling epic of capitalist sainthood reads like scripture for the cult of the self — a world where empathy is weakness and greed is divine. It’s an essential cautionary text: a fever dream of “rational” ego that became gospel for generations of power-hungry policymakers. Read it not to believe, but to understand how belief became weaponized.
Where This Book Lives
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
American Factory(2019)
dir. Steven Bognar & Julia Reichert
No villain speech. Just what actually happens.
A Chinese-owned auto-glass plant reopens a shuttered Ohio GM factory, and cultural and labor tensions surface as American and Chinese workers try to build something together.
Why it’s here: Refuses the easy version of this story — nobody here is simply the hero or the problem, Chinese management included. The first film the Obamas' production company ever released, and it earns that distinction by trusting the footage over a thesis.
Blackfish(2013)
dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite
What a captive orca's violence was telling us.
The story of Tilikum, a captive orca involved in multiple trainer deaths, used to examine the sea-park industry's treatment of highly intelligent, social animals.
Why it’s here: Uses one whale's death to ask a harder question than whether it was an accident — what decades alone in a tank does to any intelligent, social animal kept there for a marine park's bottom line.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
Cory Doctorow
Why your favorite app got worse on purpose.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
The end of the world, engineered.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Affluenza
John de Graaf, David Wann & Thomas Naylor
Consumerism is a disease. Here are the symptoms.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
George Saunders
Theme park. Corporate memos. People getting destroyed. Very funny.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST