The Great Gatsby (Transaction Large Print Books)

Drury describes the chaos that overtakes America and the world with the suspicious death of the President just after his renomination. His death leaves the incumbent party without a candidate or a clear-cut way of selecting one. Against a backdrop of national and international chaos, Drury examines the motives and ambitions of a now-famous gallery of political characters. As the novel moves to its dramatic climax, the question of what candidate will be nominated by what groups keeps the future of America and the world hanging in the balance.

It's also a love story, of sorts, the narrative of Gatsby's quixotic passion for Daisy Buchanan. The pair meet five years before the novel begins, when Daisy is a legendary young Louisville beauty and Gatsby an impoverished officer. They fall in love, but while Gatsby serves overseas, Daisy marries the brutal, bullying, but extremely rich Tom Buchanan. After the war, Gatsby devotes himself blindly to the pursuit of wealth by whatever means--and to the pursuit of Daisy, which amounts to the same thing. "Her voice is full of money," Gatsby says admiringly, in one of the novel's more famous descriptions. His millions made, Gatsby buys a mansion across Long Island Sound from Daisy's patrician East Egg address, throws lavish parties, and waits for her to appear. When she does, events unfold with all the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama, with detached, cynical neighbor Nick Carraway acting as chorus throughout. Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose, The Great Gatsby is as perfectly satisfying as the best kind of poem.