In a brand-new Plume hardcover edition, here is the story of an intransigent young architect, Howard Roark, of his violent battle against a mindless status quo, and of his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who worships him yet struggles to defeat him. In order to build his kind of buildings according to his own standards, Roark must fight against every variant of human corruption, including an unprincipled, parasitic rival; a powerful publisher of yellow journalism; and, worst of all, the country's leading humanitarian and power-luster ("Everything that can't be ruled, must go"). Epochal, impassioned, and hugely controversial, The Fountainhead - with more than six million copies in print - has become the classic American statement of individualism. Rand shows why every great innovator was hated and denounced, and why man's ego is the fountainhead of human greatness. Brilliantly written and daringly original, here - as resonant today as it was sixty years ago - is a novel about a hero.