Recommended by
- Peter Thiel: "When I first read them in the late 80s, it still felt pretty crazy, and then the last decade, it's it's in many ways felt much more correct." source ↗
Summary
Ayn Rand's novel, a sprawling dystopian epic about a society where the productive are destroyed by the redistributionist ethic of the welfare state. Its hero, John Galt, leads a strike of the creative and productive who refuse to be exploited. A foundational text of American libertarianism.
For founders
For founders, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical argument for the moral worth of the productive and creative act. Peter Thiel has cited it as a formative influence — a window into the libertarian worldview that shaped Silicon Valley's contrarian streak.