The Great Gatsby [Hardcover]

A true classic of twentieth-century literature—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’sThe Great American Read.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time whenThe New York Timesnoted “gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession,” it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.CHAPTER I

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave

me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever

since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me,

“just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had

the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually

communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he

meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m

inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up

many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of

not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect

and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal

person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly

accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret

griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were

unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or

a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that

an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the

intimate revelations of lóå