As an engineer, I have always been fascinated by how things work.  You can boil down most engineering to "Problem Solving".  Problem solving is a skillset.  The most popular problem solver in popular culture when I was growing up was MacGyver.  Lock the man in a room with some spare parts and a knife and he'd make an airplane.  The people that make the world work are real-life MacGyvers. 

In our world, there are not a whole lot of people that fall into this category.  Atlas Shrugged is a book that asks the question, what if the people that make things work suddenly stop and disappear?

This book is absolutely despised by 'progressives' because it torches socialism like the dungheap it is.  It's maligned by the left because it torches their sacred cows and it is maligned by social conservatives because Ayn Rand wasn't too fond of religion either.  

The big concepts are great.  The romance in the book is cheesy at best.  There is a cool bro-mance thing going on too.  And there is a tendency to monologue, at least by John Galt.

If you've never read it and only heard it's evil or some 'progressive' snowflake melted over it, it's worth your while to educate yourself.  Enough people out there that make the world work, feel as the characters do in this book.

Who is John Galt?