NEW ATLAS SHRUGGED AYN RAND 10 Audio CD Edward Herrman

Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan, architect of the endless free credit of the 2000s, was famously an acolyte in Rand's "Objectivist" inner circle. He and George W. Bush were all for lighter regulations and oversight of an already-wild Wall Street.

Now, of course, everything has come crashing down. Corporations of all sorts beg the government to socialize their losses. The SEC was, in retrospect, incompetent. De-regulation (of say credit default swaps) and under-regulation (of say Fannie Mae) helped bring on the crash. Free market mechanisms like credit ratings and elaborate risk-hedging failed.

And yet Atlas Shrugged , the worst sort of libertarian porn, went to an average monthly Amazon ranking of 127 from 542, spiking recently to around rank 30, according to the Economist.

It's hard to tell which is more sad: That bailed-out financiers are successfully agitating the masses against bailed-out poors via tools like CNBC's Rick Santelli, or that Atlas Shrugged is still the go-to polemic for people pissed at the government. Surely someone can write a superior manifesto, and make it popular? It stands to reason someone will. But then counting on people to behave "rationally," as Rand might put it, hasn't panned out very well lately.

"Who is John Galt?" is the immortal question posed at the beginning of Ayn Rand's masterpiece. The answer is the astonishing story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world—and did. As passionate as it is profound, Atlas Shrugged is one of the most influential novels of our time. In it, Rand dramatizes the main tenets of Objectivism, her philosophy of rational selfishness. She explores the ramifications of her radical thinking in a world that penalizes human intelligence and integrity. Part mystery, part thriller, part philosophical inquiry, part volatile love affair, Atlas Shrugged is the book that confirmed Ayn Rand as one of the most popular novelist and most respected thinkers of the 20th century.

With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?", Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form to express her vision of existence. Atlas Shrugged made Rand not only one of the most popular novelists of the century, but one of its most influential thinkers.

Atlas Shrugged is the astounding story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world--and did. Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged stretches the boundaries further than any book you have ever read. It is a mystery, not about the murder of a man's body, but about the murder--and rebirth--of man's spirit.

* Atlas Shrugged is the "second most influential book for Americans today" after the Bible, according to a joint survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club