Feb. 26, 2026

#3 Greatest Book of All Time

#3 Greatest Book of All Time

The Great Gatsby ranks #3 on the History of Literature Podcast's list of the Greatest Books of All Time.

Explore The Great Gatsby with HOL host Jacke Wilson who takes a look at the ancient underpinnings of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous creation, in Episode 769.

Here's the opening line of this great novel:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

For more about Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby, take a listen to Episode 687, in which Jacke talks to Fitzgerald scholar James West about his work editing the Cambridge Centennial Edition of The Great Gatsby, which celebrates 100 years of this enduring tale of illicit desire, grand illusions, and lost dreams, delivered in lyric prose by an author writing at the peak of his powers.

25 Greatest Books Of All Time (GBOAT)

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"I want to write something new," American author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his editor, "something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." Months later, he presented the results: the novel that would eventually be titled The Great Gatsby. Published in 1925 to middling success, the book has since become a candidate for the Great American Novel, selling more than copies in a month than the book sold during Fitzgerald's entire lifetime. In this episode, Jack...
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