Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (2007, Unabridged, Compact Disc)

My husband has a very strong personality. He studied this book in college & I can see now where some of his strength comes from. I wish I had read it 15 years ago, I would have understood him more. This book is an insight into what would happen to the USA if we took up the doctrine of everything for the common good. It is a story of the people who have ability being punished by the government and the ones who "need" being rewarded. The country rapidly falls apart. Just as in communism, the playing field is leveled and it doesn't work. Why kill yourself so that the rewards of your labor are doled out to others? The "thinking" people withdraw from the society, and without the great minds, the economy falls apart. This is a great book & worth all 1200 pages or 42 CD's. I will listen to it again & again. I advise purchasing the unabridged version...I bought the short one first & found the long one gave you much more insight into the minds and logic of the characters. I'm hooked on Ayn Rand!

It has been years since I read the book, but technology now allows me to enjoy rewarding audiobooks instead of listening to broadcasts behind the wheel or handlebars. Christopher Hurt's enunciation is clear and professional, and every detail and turn of dialog or plot is vividly presented. Written by a Russian-American who escaped totalitarianism and immigrated to the U.S. in 1926--in time to witness the 1929 Crash and the Great Depression which followed--Atlas Shrugged is an intellectual reply to such bastions of collectivism as Edward Bellamy's "Equality" and Eisenstein's Russian movie "The Strike" (which was also the working title of the novel). This philosophical drama draws on American history to present a lucid defense of individual rights in the sort of industrial society those rights make possible, and expounds the moral standard necessary for claiming the rights of man. Atlas Shrugged also contains an economic explanation of financial panics which many economists still struggle to evade.
I am very pleased with the purchase and listen to it while riding my bike and driving. --portugueseinterpreter