Washington, D.C., February 23, 2009–Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold. –  Ayn Rand Institute for Individual Rights
 
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – Amazon Rank #202 in Books
 
As an Amazon seller, I can tell you that a book with a 202 rank will sell within 24 hrs of being posted, but their price drops rapidly to the famous Amazon "penny book".  The cheapest copy of Atlas Shrugged on Amazon is $9 (including shipping) so it is an exception and holding its value.  Interesting that people are finding a 50 year old philosophical and political treatise thinly disguised as fiction to be relevant again.  To be honest, most of the people who buy it either won’t read it or won’t finish it – it’s not an easy read, a quick read or a mindless read.  So, for those that won’t, a few quotes:
 
If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase to make money. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity- to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.
 

“If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down on his shoulders—what would you tell him to do?”
" To Shrug."

Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted. 

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