"With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement

"With the collapse of the nation and its rapacious government all but certain, Galt emerges to reconstruct a society that will celebrate individual achievement and enlightened self-interest, delivering a long speech (seventy pages in the first edition) serving to explain the novel's theme and Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, in the book's longest single chapter." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Plot_summary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged#Plot_summary