Some Books of 1917

1917 was a watershed year for the United States. In April of that year the United States finally entered the First World War, which transformed the nation. By the war’s end 4,743,829 men and women were mobilized into service, 53,513 were killed in combat, and 63,195 were dead from disease and other causes. There were…

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“That’s my middle-west”: Nick Carraway’s Christmas Memories

One of my all time favorite passages from The Great Gatsby concerns Christmas and the Midwest. The passage comes towards the end of the novel as Nick Carraway is describing the aftermath of Gatsby’s murder and preparing to leave New York. There’s something about this passage that captures that exhilaration of returning home for the…

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