Cumbersome yet satisfying. Review on Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

What happens when the engine of the world stops?

What happens when need is allowed to outweigh rights?

What happens when entrepreneurs, who have for decades been demonized by those who feel exploited, use the same negotiating tool that labor has long used, the strike?

Atlas Shrugged explores these questions, and the ''exploited'' won't like the answers. In this epic novel, the positions of the left are extrapolated to their logical ends, with government codifying the slogan ''From each according to his ability; to each according to his need'' into law.

But in a society where success is punished and need rewarded, what incentive do the producers have to produce? None. The producers of the world, one by one, withhold their ability and retreat to a holographic Atlantis called ''Galt's Gulch.'' The final two holdouts, Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, fully engage in the strike just as society completes it's collapse.

It is their journey into acceptance that their work is their own, that merit as a slave to need is a reprehensible concept, that makes up the plot of the book, as much if not more so than the storyline of societal stagnation.

This book is not for summer reading at the beach; it's pretty heavy reading. The writing style is sometimes intentionally cumbersome. I wouldn't suggest this as someone's FIRST novel by this author. For that, I'd suggest The Fountainhead or, for younger readers, Anthem.

But once a reader's intellectual appetite is whetted by either of those books, diving into Atlas can be a thoroughly satisfying read that, if explored with an open mind, will challenge your assumptions about what society says makes a moral economic system.

In a society that rewards failure and punishes success, how can we expect any outcome OTHER than societal failure?