Atlas Shrugged

1200 pages and 47 days! That's the longest it has taken me to complete a book yet. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is a fictional story set in the United States of America where the government has been captured by crony capitalists who lobby to pass laws that restrict innovation and competition to safeguard their fiefs.

Hard working and conscientious businessmen who are hit by these regulations start vanishing; leaving their businesses imploding. Dagny Taggart, a scion of Taggart Transcontinental Rails and a ruthless businesswoman who loves competition and free enterprise is caught in the cross fires of these regulations. She is torn between protecting her life's ambition of running an efficient rail company and feeding the looters who have put regulatory restrictions in her tracks.

While Ayn Rand's writing style is beautiful; the book would've been better with crisper editing. The repetition and the length just dampen the premise of the book much like the regulations dull the spirit of the businessmen in the novel. The book reads like propaganda for Capitalism. Not sure how Ayn Rand would've reacted to the levels of inequality in society today caused by the crony capitalism globally.