Paul Ryan said that he required his campaign staffers to read the book, while Glenn Beck has announced grandiose plans to build his own real-life 'Galt's Gulch,' the hidden refuge where the book's capitalist heroes go to watch civilization collapse without them. Alan Greenspan was a member of Rand's inner circle, and opposed regulation of financial markets because he believed her dictum that the greed of businessmen was always the public's best protection. Together, they battle against evil government bureaucrats and parasitic socialists to hold civilization together, while all the while powerful industrialists are mysteriously disappearing, leaving behind only the cryptic phrase 'Who is John Galt?'Ītlas Shrugged is a work of fiction, but as far as many prominent conservatives are concerned, it's sacred scripture. Rand's protagonists are Dagny Taggart, heir to a transcontinental railroad empire, and Hank Rearden, the head of a steel company who's invented a revolutionary new alloy which he's modestly named Rearden Metal.

If you're not familiar with the novel, it depicts a world where corporate CEOs and one-percenters are the selfless heroes upon which our society depends, and basically everyone else - journalists, legislators, government employees, the poor - are the villains trying to drag the rich down out of spite, when we should be kissing their rings in gratitude that they allow us to exist. Over the past year, I've been reading and reviewing Ayn Rand's massive paean to capitalism, Atlas Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand