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Today F. Scott Fitzgerald is better known for his novels, but in his own time, his fame rested squarely on his prolific achievement as one of America's most gifted writers of stories and novellas Now, a half-century after the author's death, the premier Fitzgerald scholar and biographer, Matthew J. Bruccoli, has assembled in one volume the full scope of Fitzgerald's best short fiction: forty-three sparkling masterpieces, ranging from such classic novellas as "The Rich Boy," "May Day," and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" to his commercial work for the Saturday Evening Post and its sister "slicks."

For the reader, these stories will underscore the depth and extraordinary range of Fitzgerald's literary talents. Furthermore, Professor Bruccoli's illuminating preface and introductory headnotes establish the literary and biographical settings in which these stories now shine anew with brighter luster than ever..
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The exemplary novel of the Jazz Age, F. Scott Fitzgeralds' third book, The Great Gatsby (1925), stands as the supreme achievement of his career. T. S. Eliot read it three times and saw it as the "first step" American fiction had taken since Henry James; H. L. Mencken praised "the charm and beauty of the writing," as well as Fitzgerald's sharp social sense; and Thomas Wolfe hailed it as Fitzgerald's "best work" thus far. The story of the fabulously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, of lavish parties on Long Island at a time when, The New York Times remarked, "gin was the national drink and sex the national obsession," it is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s that resonates with the power of myth. A novel of lyrical beauty yet brutal realism, of magic, romance, and mysticism, The Great Gatsby is one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.

This is the definitive, textually accurate edition of The Great Gatsby, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli and authorized by the estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The first edition of The Great Gatsby contained many errors resulting from Fitzgerald's extensive revisions and a rushed production schedule, and subsequent editions introduced further departures from the author's intentions. This critical edition draws on the manuscript and surviving proofs of the novel, along with Fitzgerald's later revisions and corrections, to restore the text to its original form. It is The Great Gatsby as Fitzgerald intended it..
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Written between 1920 and 1937, when F. Scott Fitzgerald was at the height of his creative powers, these ten lyric tales represent some of the author's finest fiction In them, Fitzgerald creates vivid, timeless characters -- a dissatisfied southern belle seeking adventure in the north; the tragic hero of the title story who lost more than money in the stock market; giddy and dissipated young men and women of the interwar period. From the lazy town of Tarleton, Georgia, to the glittering cosmopolitan centers of New York and Paris, Fitzgerald brings the society of the "Lost Generation" to life in these masterfully crafted gems, showcasing the many gifts of one of our most popular writers..
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John le Carré (b. 1931) is the pen name of David Cornwell. Under that pseudonym he has become the leading writer of contemporary spy thrillers. Tremendously popular and deeply influential, his novels feature a level of psychological depth and narrative complexity that makes them as rewarding as the most highly-touted literary fiction.

Weaving incisive political commentary, razor-sharp satire, and suspense, his work reflects upon and dissects both Cold War anxieties and the complications of social relationships. Several of his novels-including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Russia House, and The Tailor of Panama-have been adapted into award-winning movies.

In Conversations with John le Carré, the acclaimed writer talks about his craft, the nature of language, the literature that he loves, and the ways in which his own life influences the creation of, and characters within, his novels. He worked for the British Foreign Office in the 1960s, and although his works are dazzlingly informed about global politics, le Carré's voice is distinctively British.

His love of language, particularly the ways in which it can reveal or conceal thought and action, is evident in every piece here. In interviews with George Plimpton, Melvyn Bragg, and others, le Carré proves himself to be quick witted, engaging, and deeply passionate. Though often self-deprecating in his humor, le Carré reveals his commitment to the spy thriller and tells us why he thinks it is just as capable of exploring human consciousness as any other literary genre.

Matthew J. Bruccoli is Jefferies Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. He has written or edited thirty volumes on F. Scott Fitzgerald, including the standard biography, Some Sort of Epic Grandeur.

Judith S. Baughman works in the department of English at the University of South Carolina. With Bruccoli she is co-editor of Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (University Press of Mississippi)..
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First published in 1928, This Man's Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets is a gripping collection of narrative verse that represents the beginning and end of the promising literary career of John Allan Wyeth, a Princeton-educated French interpreter in the American Expeditionary Force's Thirty-third Division. Though it received strong reviews and enough sales to warrant a trade edition in 1929, the volume faced the insurmountable adversary of the Great Depression, and its author soon vanished from the literary scene. This new edition of This Man's Army restores to print a lost vantage point on the American experience in the Great War as valuable for its high literary merits as for its historical accuracy. The new introduction by Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, chronicles the life of the elusive author and maps the book's critical reception and place in World War I poetry, while new annotations by military historian B. J. Omanson establish the historical context of individual poems.

Wyeth (1894-1981), the son of a prominent New York medical family, had just completed a master's degree in French at Princeton when the United States entered World War I in 1917 and he was motivated into service. His fluency in French garnered him a position in the Interpreters Corps as a second lieutenant in the Thirty-third Division deployed to France and Belgium, and he served in this capacity until his discharge in October 1919. This Man's Army is an autobiographical account of Wyeth's service years, detailing his duties as interpreter, messenger, and occasionally sentry while traveling town by town toward the German Hindenburg line. With an unwavering eye for singular details, Wyeth recounts the devastating effects of modern warfare, the cultural interactions of American and French forces, and the lighthearted camaraderie of soldiers on leave. Although he is keenly aware of the brutality of combat, Wyeth's narrator never doubts the eventual American victory.

The term fifty-odd in the subtitle describes the sonnets both quantitatively--in that there are fifty-five in total--and qualitatively--as Wyeth stretched the traditional form through incorporation of American and British military jargon and Jazz Age slang as well as a new rhyme scheme unprecedented in the seven-century history of the form.

The republication of This Man's Army restores to American historical literature an authentically detailed and imaginatively idiosyncratic vision of the Great War from a remarkable soldier-poet who shares universal truths about warfare as relevant and provocative today as when they were written.

Years before the publication of Catch-22 ("A monumental artifact of contemporary literature" -- The New York Times; "An apocalyptic masterpiece" -- The Chicago Sun-Times; "One of the most bitterly funny works in the language" -- The New Republic), Joseph Heller began sharpening his skills as a writer, searching for the voice that would best express his own peculiarly wry view of the world.

In Catch As Catch Can, editors Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker have for the first time collected the short stories Heller published prior to that first novel, along with all the other short pieces of fiction and nonfiction that were published during his lifetime. Also included are five previously unpublished short stories, most reflecting the influence on Heller of urban naturalist writers such as Irwin Shaw and Nelson Algren.

The result is an important and significant addition to our understanding and appreciation of Joseph Heller, showing his evolution as a writer and artist. For those unfamiliar with his work, it will serve as an excellent introduction; for everyone else, Catch As Catch Can is a chance to explore a new aspect of Heller's remarkable career..
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