Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus. Published in 1957 after thirteen years of sometimes tortured, often amphetamine-fueled effort, the massive thousand-plus-page novel provoked polarized responses that illuminated the conflicts shaping the postwar political world.

Reviled by mainstream critics, adored by a reverential following and an expanding mass-reading public, the book became a touchstone that continues to shape political and popular culture into the present day. But during the years of its creation, Rand herself was an increasingly isolated figure on the fringes of intellectual life in the United States.

In 1930s and ’40s California and New York, Rand fell in with the relatively small minority of right-wing defenders of unregulated capitalism. She actively opposed the New Deal, especially via the Wendell Willkie campaign. She joined in antiunion activity in Hollywood and fanned the anticommunist fervor surrounding her testimony before HUAC. She expounded right-wing attacks on the emerging postwar political consensus in favor of a so-called mixed economy — capitalist enterprises constrained by government regulation, organized labor, and an expanding safety net of public support for the needy.