Atlas Shrugged. by RAND, Ayn - 1957

New York: Random House,, 1957. Man as a heroic being Octavo. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt on black ground, monogram to front cover in gilt, top edge blue. With the dust jacket. A few instances of creasing, faint running dampstain at fore edge of pages around the centre of the book block, still a very good copy, in very good, bright jacket, price-clipped, light creasing and peripheral nicking, yet with much less wear than is often found for the bulky book. First edition, first printing, of Rand's fourth and final novel, offering her most extensive exposition of her Objectivist philosophical system: "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute" (from Rand's self-penned About the Author section). The novel was named by a 1991 Library of Congress survey as the most influential book in the US, behind only the Bible.