Atlas Shrugged

So yesterday I started reading "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand at request of my grandmother. I'm only ~40 pages in but it's great so far. It depicts a world that is degrading into uselessness through excessive "left-leaning" thoughts, not just from politicians, but businessmen and the common folk. Drive is frowned upon, new ideas discouraged and the successful scorned. It portrays a few brilliant minds of business who are constantly being put down for their successes and...well that's all that's really going on so far but who knows what might happen?

(Okay, so I peeked a little at Wikipedia)

The main conflict of the book occurs as the "individuals of the mind" go on strike, refusing to contribute their inventions, art, business leadership, scientific research, or new ideas of any kind to the rest of the world. Society, they believe, hampers them by interfering with their work and underpays them by confiscating the profits and dignity they have rightfully earned. The peaceful cohesiveness of the world requires those individuals whose productive work comes from mental effort. But feeling they have no alternative, they eventually start disappearing from the communities of "looters" and "moochers" who bleed them dry. The strikers believe that they are crucial to a society that exploits them, and the near-total collapse of civilization triggered by their strike shows them to be correct.

Apparently it's one of the top self-pride/motivation, free thought, free market, etc novels. A HUGE book, probably the largest I've read- I won't be putting this one down for some time.

(Oh, and FWIW one of the main characters in this book is a woman by the name of Dagny- When I first read her name I immediately thought "female dwarf". That name does sound awfully Dwarven, doesn't it?)