For generations of enthralled readers, the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby has come to embody all the glamour and decadence of the Roaring Twenties. To F. Scott Fitzgerald’s bemused narrator, Nick Carraway, Gatsby appears to have emerged out of nowhere, evading questions about his murky past and throwing dazzling parties at his luxurious mansion. Nick finds something both appalling and appealing in the intensity of his new neighbor’s ambition, and his fascination grows when he discovers that Gatsby is obsessed by a long-lost love, Daisy Buchanan. But Daisy and her wealthy husband are cynical and careless people, and as Gatsby’s dream collides with reality, Nick is witness to the violence and tragedy that result. The Great Gatsby's remarkable staying power is owed to the lyrical freshness of its storytelling and to the way it illuminates the hollow core of the glittering American dream. With a new introduction by John Grisham.
Stanley Appelbaum Book order






- 2024
- 2010
The Vagabond
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
"One of the first and best feminist novels ever written." — Erica Jong. This vivid portrait of Parisian music hall life was drawn from the personal experiences of the author of Gigi. Colette's 1910 novel reflects her adventures as an itinerant dancer as well as her struggles balancing respectability and artistic freedom.
- 2009
Over 27 million people visited the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. Countless more experienced the fair through the wondrous images of C. D. Arnold, the era's foremost architectural photographer. Through his luminous pictures, Arnold became the event's leading historian, publicist, and visual philosopher. This gallery of Arnold's photographs, painstakingly retouched to achieve a new radiance, presents a magnificent tribute to the "White City" of shining Beaux-Arts buildings.In addition to its visual tour of the Exposition's extensive buildings and grounds, this lavish book also celebrates a city that treasures its architecture. The classical Greek and Roman design expressed by the Chicago World's Fair defined the course of American monumental building for decades to come, and the text accompanying these historic photographs provides fascinating interpretations of the Exposition's influence on American building styles and tastes. From conception to closing day and beyond, Spectacle in the White City offers glimpses of past splendor that will be treasured by Chicagoans, history buffs, and lovers of fine art and photography.
- 2004
“An exquisite book, rich, shimmering, and truly incomparable.” —The New Yorker This lyric portrait of a boy’s companionship with his little donkey, Platero, is the masterpiece of Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Spanish poet awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature. Poetic, elegiac, it reveals the simple pleasures of life in a in a remote Andalusian village and is a classic work of literature, beloved by adults and children alike.
- 2004
"Could it be possible? This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!" The ancient Persian prophet Zarathustra descends from a life of solitude on the mountain to announce to the world that God has been supplanted by the "Superman", the divine in human form. In one of the most radical and influential works of modern philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche lays out the new standards of morality after the "death of God". Frequently misrepresented (and hijacked to dangerous purpose by Nazi intellectuals), Thus Spake Zarathustra is a work of profound brilliance and poetic mastery which still provides meaning in today's complex and changing world
- 1996
English romantic poetry : an anthology
- 240 pages
- 9 hours of reading
Encompassing a broad range of subjects, styles and moods, English poetry of the late 18th and early 19th centuries is generally classified under the term "Romantic," suggesting an emphasis on imagination and individual experiance, as well as a preoccupation with such themes as nature, death and the supernatural.This volume contains a rich selection of poems by England's six greatest Romantic poets: William Blake (24 poems, including "The Tyger" and "Auguries of Innocence"), William Wordsworth (27 poems, including "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" and "I wandered lonely as a cloud"), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (10 poems, including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "Kubla Khan"), Lord Byron (16 poems, including "The Prisoner of Chillon" and selections from Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage), Percy Bysshe Shelley (24 poems, including "Ode to the West Wind" and "Adonais") and John Keats (22 poems, including all the great odes, "Isabelle" and "The Eve of St. Agnes"). For this edition, Stanley Appelbaum has provided a concise Introduction to the Romantic period and brief commentaries on the poets represented. The result is a carefully selected anthology that will be welcomed by lovers of poetry, students and teachers alike.
- 1979
Schubert's songs to texts by Goethe
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
