The first time I read it was in college for a class. I was young, wet-behind-the-ears and inexperienced in the ways of the world. I read it but didn't really understand it. "Who is John Galt" was a popular saying but it didn't register with me.
Then I read it again in the Air Force and the light came on. I understood what Ayn Rand was saying. Not big on her objectivism but everything else.
The next time was the summer before the 2012 election when Obama won his second term. I couldn't believe how closely the novel matched what was actually happening in our country at the time. Ayn Rand was very prescient when she wrote this timeless tome back in the 1950s. She seem to foretell by decades what was going to happen with the looters in charge.
I'm getting tired of murder mysteries and historical non-fiction books I read all the time now. So I'm getting ready to read her novel again.
My favorite chapter is on the 20th Century Motor Works and how the spoiled, liberal kids of the deceased owner, run the company into the ground using their socialist ideas. Reminds my of AO-C and how her Green New Deal would do the same.
Atlas Shrugged is a long and windy book but she makes the argument for free enterprise and small government.
Another fiction book that sealed my conservative mind was Unintended Consequences. I was always comfortable around firearms, but the history and facts woven into this book support for need the Second Amendment.