“As the fourth generation of Charleses (in our redundant family) involved in publishing this classic Jazz Age novel, I read every new book written about it. This one is quite simply the most original, entertaining and dramatic new window on the origins of Gatsby and the syncopated lives of Scott and Zelda in decades! It’s as brilliant as Fitzgerald’s ‘Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ and reads like a detective story illustrated by photos worthy of the cinema screen (no surprise it will soon be a documentary film). Refreshing, engaging, enlightening, and as fun as one of Gatsby’s parties, it is more than a beautiful book: it is a gift, indeed a treasure. Five stars plus a green light!”
CHARLES SCRIBNER III
“It is rare to find anything new in Fitzgerald scholarship- truly it is. Most of it is very familiar and very repetitive. Well, this is truly fresh.”
JAMES L.W. WEST III
Author The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005) and William Styron: A Life (1998). West is the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“Much of this lavish book consists of Webb’s evidence for replacing Great Neck with Westport, as the incubator of Fitzgerald’s imagination…Fitzgerald fanatics should find this information intriguing. Webb makes a genial, meandering case for Westport as Gatsbyville… Webb’s sketch of their saga is workmanlike and lucid.”
KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Well researched and documented book. This book is intense.”
INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION