Atlas Shrugged, 2 volumes (Easton Press Collector's Edition)

RAND, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. Norwalk, Connecticut: The Easton Press, 2000. 2 vols.

Octavo. Full blue leather. Spines with four raised bands, 22-carat gilt accents. All edges gilt. Moiré silk endpapers. Satin ribbon page markers. 1,168 pp. in total across both volumes. Colour frontispieces and illustrations by Frank Mayo throughout both volumes. Two-volume Collector's Edition.

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) — born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, where she witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution — emigrated to the United States in 1926 and spent the rest of her life developing and promoting a philosophy she called Objectivism: a systematic defence of reason, individual rights, capitalism, and the moral legitimacy of self-interest, against what she regarded as the twin tyrannies of religion and collectivism. Atlas Shrugged, published by Random House in 1957, is the fullest fictional expression of that philosophy, and the work by which she is most widely known.

The novel is set in a near-future United States whose economy is collapsing under the weight of government regulation, taxation, and the resentful mediocrity of those who produce nothing but demand the fruits of what others produce. At its centre is Dagny Taggart, Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental, who fights to keep her railroad running against the combined opposition of politicians, looters, and her own brother. Alongside her is Hank Rearden, a steel manufacturer who has developed a new metal of revolutionary strength and who faces prosecution for using his own invention without the approval of a government committee. As the country's most productive minds disappear one by one, a single question haunts every character: Who is John Galt? The answer, when it comes, is the novel's philosophical climax.

Atlas Shrugged is a work that provokes strong responses in both directions and has done so since its publication. Rand's admirers consider it a masterwork of ideas; her critics consider those ideas dangerous. What is not in dispute is its cultural penetration: it was named the second most influential book for Americans — after the Bible — in a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, and it consistently tops readers' polls of the most important novels of the twentieth century.

Fine. Both volumes presenting as new throughout.

Please note: This item is a two-volume set and may require additional postage costs. If so, we will contact you after purchase.

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Catalogue Number: HH000488