Now the subject of a major new film from director Baz Luhrmann (” Romeo+ Juliet”, ” Moulin Rouge!”), starring Leonardo Di Caprio & Carey Mulligan, ” The Great Gatsby” is F. Scott Fitzgerald`s brilliant fable of the hedonistic excess & tragic reality of 1920s America. This ” Penguin Classics” edition is edited with an introduction & notes by Tony Tanner. Young, handsome & fabulously rich, Jay Gatsby is the bright star of the Jazz Age, but as writer Nick Carraway is drawn into the decadent orbit of his Long Island mansion, where the party never seems to end, he finds himself faced by the mystery of Gatsby`s origins & desires. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life, Gatsby is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. & soon, this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel. In ” The Great Gatsby”, Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both the disillusionment of post-war America & the moral failure of a society obsessed with wealth & status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular time & place, for
- in chronicling Gatsby`s tragic pursuit of his dream
- Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion & reality. Like Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) has acquired a mythical status in American literary history, & his masterwork. ” The Great Gatsby” is considered by many to be the `great American novel`. In 1920 he married Zelda Sayre, dubbed `the first American Flapper`, & their traumatic marriage & Zelda`s gradual descent into insanity became the leading influence on his writing. As well as many short stories, Fitzgerald wrote five novels ” This Side of Paradise”, ” The Great Gatsby”, ” The Beautiful & the Damned”, ” Tender is the Night” &, incomplete at the time of his death, ” The Last Tycoon”. After his death ” The New York Times” said of him that `in fact & in the literary sense he created a ”generation”`. ”A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel”. (John Carey, ” Sunday Times” Books of the Century).

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Fitzgerald`s classic tale of jazz-era New York & the mysterious, party-throwing millionaire Jay Gatsby. It`s 1922 & New York is electric. A hotbed of jazz, glamour & scandal. The playground of the super-rich. & the new home of Nick Carraway, a Mid-Western man chasing his American dream. For eighty dollars a month, Carraway finds himself the unlikely neighbour of his beautiful cousin Daisy Buchannan & a mysterious millionaire
- Jay Gatsby. From the shadow of Gatsby`s mansion, Carraway is drawn into the glittering, captivating world of the wealthy
- their parties, their love affairs, & their lies. & as he watches his new friends, he writes their story. A tale of roaring excess, impossible love & the devastating, tragic consequences.

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** The twentieth-century masterpiece, the authoritative new edition** ` There was music from my neighbour`s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men & girls came & went like moths among the whisperings & the champagne & the stars.` Enigmatic, intriguing & fabulously wealthy, Jay Gatsby throws lavish parties at his West Egg mansion to impress Daisy Buchanan, the object of his obsession, now married to bullish Tom Buchanan. Over a Long Island summer, his neighbour Nick Carraway, a writer & a cousin to Daisy, looks on as Gatsby & Daisy`s affair deepens. Tragedy looms in F. Scott Fitzgerald`s masterpiece third novel, frequently named among the best novels of the twentieth century. Praise for The Great Gatsby: `A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel` Sunday Times ` More than an American classic; it`s become a defining document of the national psyche, a creation myth, the Rosetta Stone of the American dream` Guardian `F. Scott Fitzgerald was better than he knew, for in fact & in the literary sense he invented a generation` New York Times ` An unquiet masterpiece whose mystery never fails to exert its power` Robert Mc Crum, Observer, ` The 100 Best Novels in English` ...

When it came to loving… he knew which Daisy to pick! wild parties, exquisite cocktails, fabulous wealth, raging jealousy & spectacular deaths... Sorry old sport, but Gatsby has a bigger house than you, prettier friends than you & a Rolls Royce to cart them all round in. To a backdrop of popping champagne corks & orchestral jazz, our hero bids to buyout his old adversary, perennial jock, Tom Buchanan & reclaim Daisy, his favourite bit of High Society totty. ...

The Great Gatsby lives in a luxurious Long Island mansion, playing lavish host to hundreds of people, & yet no-one seems ...

The essential guidebook to walking the Great Glen Way, a 79-mile National Trail that runs along the Great Glen between Fort William & Inverness. The Great Glen is one of the most remarkable features in the Scottish landscape
- a ruler-straight valley along an ancient fault line through the Highlands. Ideal as an introduction to long-distance walking, the Great Glen Way can easily be walked within a week, & most walkers will aim to complete the route in five or six days. The guidebook provides the walker with practical information, maps & clear route descriptions for every stage of the trek & lists the facilities found along the way. A separate OS map booklet shows the trail, which can be walked in either direction. The Great Glen Way stretches alongside the scenic Caledonian Canal, which links Loch Lochy & Loch Oich with the famous Loch Ness. The route uses undulating forest tracks, lakeside paths, old drove roads & military roads, as well as contrasting stretches over heather moorlands or through city suburbs. Walkers can enjoy the scenery & wildlife, delve into the history of the Highland clans, visit crumbling castles, or keep an eye open to spot the elusive Loch Ness Monster!
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Each spread focuses on one destination, & the intricate artwork gives readers a visual flavour of the place, with masses to look at & discover the more you look. There are links from one place to the next
- historical, geographical, natural history or just simple proximity
- for example, there is an ancient Egyptian obelisk in NY`s central park, with two sister obelisks in Paris & London. Find the one in the Central Park using Google[trademark] Earth co-ordinates & it gives you the clue to where you will be going next. The pyramids at the Louvre in Paris will whisk you off to the temples of Ancient Egypt, then find a connection from the Colosseum of Ancient Rome to the hot plains of Tanzania that team with wildlife, from flocks of flamingos to herds of wildebeest to prides of lions. & so on... In each location you have to find a souvenir to take with you. You will also need to solve a puzzle with the help of Google[trademark] Earth to collect co-ordinates for your final secret location
- again on Google[trademark] Earth. For instance, the puzzle tells you to visit the Statue of Liberty on Google[trademark] Earth & to count the number of points on its crown. This number is one of the co-ordinates you need to find your final destination on Google[trademark] Earth at the end of the book.


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Each spread focuses on one destination, & the intricate artwork gives readers a visual flavour of the place, with masses to look at & discover the more you look. There are links from one place to the next
- historical, geographical, natural history or just simple proximity
- for example, there is an ancient Egyptian obelisk in NY`s central park, with two sister obelisks in Paris & London. Find the one in the Central Park using Google [trademark] Earth co-ordinates & it gives you the clue to where you will be going next. The pyramids at the Louvre in Paris will whisk you off to the temples of Ancient Egypt, then find a connection from the Colosseum of Ancient Rome to the hot plains of Tanzania that team with wildlife, from flocks of flamingos to herds of wildebeest to prides of lions. & so on... In each location you have to find a souvenir to take with you. You will also need to solve a puzzle with the help of Google [trademark] Earth to collect co-ordinates for your final secret location
- again on Google [trademark] Earth. For instance, the puzzle tells you to visit the Statue of Liberty on Google [trademark] Earth & to count the number of points on its crown. This number is one of the co-ordinates you need to find your final destination on Google [trademark] Earth at the end of the book.


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A brilliantly interactive book from award-winning illustrator Jennie Maizels that makes learning grammar fun! Turn the wheels, lift the flaps & pull the tabs to learn all about nouns, punctuation & sentences. Play heads bodies & legs to find out about adjectives, look in the mirror to discover what a pronoun is, & take a dog for a walk as he explains prepositions! ...

This is the quest for a lost wonder of the world, in the author`s words his `ridiculous obsession`, arose from the chance discovery of some dusty memoirs that told of a mighty hedge spanning the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century. The hedge was set in place to allow the collection of the Salt Tax by British customs officers, Inspired by the concept of this amazing living barrier, now forgotten, Roy Moxham set off to find out what has happened to it & whether any remnant existed today. His travels in India, & what he found there, form the basis for this illuminating book. Writer Jan Morris comments, ` At first I thought this remarkable book must be a hoax.. . It tells the story of one of the least-known wonders of Queen Victoria`s India
- a customs barrier 2, 300 miles long, most of it made from hedge. It was patrolled by 12, 000 men & would have stretched from London to Constantinople, yet few historians mention it & most of us have never heard of it. Could anything be more astonishing?`
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