"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand frequently asks the question, "Who is John Galt?" and trust me, reading the 1,000-plus pages to find out the answer to that and many other themes is worth it.

I started reading "Atlas Shrugged" because I heard about the annual essay scholarship sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute. Information about that scholarship and her philosophy of objectivism can be found on aynrand.org.

While reading the first part of the book, I was a bit skeptical about where the book was going to go and how Rand was going to do it. Development of characters and the moral ideals of those characters are all that really happens of importance. But that, I learned, was very crucial to the full impact of the realizations which come with reading the book.

As the book goes along, I was swept away in the lives of the Industrialists who are honestly trying to help out the world and work themselves to death trying to make the world better whilst everyone else in the world is using everything without contributing anything back to the Industrialists or the world around them. Basically, the Industrialists in the beginning are working for everyone else as well as themselves while everyone else is only working for themselves and no one else.

But when the Industrialists finally realize their work is all for naught when trying to support everyone around them, they decide to disappear. If the populace doesn’t realize what they are doing for them now, they certainly do when the Industrialists start disappearing one by one. Workers may strike but the Industrialists are in full rebellion.
Will the world prosper when they leave or will they crumble?

I know the answer to that question, and I’m glad I do. This book is amazing in the fact that it is relatable to our economy now and that if this happened now we most certainly would crumble. But what I loved most about this book is that as everything goes along and different characters are narrating I had a sense that I understood what they should be doing and what I am doing like them or unlike them and how everything relates in my life through their life events and thoughts.

And just when I thought I had everything figured out without the words to put those thoughts into, they appear on the page with an "oh yeah!” screaming inside my head. Because very few books seem to do that these days, I suggest you experience that feeling yourself by reading this book.

If you do take my advice be sure to check out that scholarship. This year's first prize was worth $10,000. You have a year to read it and write about it and possibly be ten-grand richer. And that would make for one happy college student.