Iwent time traveling recently, back 100 years to the Jazz Age, a time of bootleg booze, the Charleston, a new mass media called radio, and deep cynicism after the mindless slaughter of World War I and a global pandemic that killed 100 million or more. How did I pull off this stunt?

I read a book.

Specifically, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” published one hundred years ago, and first encountered by me in High School half a century ago. I grew up in Gatsby country, Great Neck, New York, which is where Fitzgerald lived when he wrote Gatsby. Fictionalized as “West Egg” my home town is also home to one of literature’s most famous enigmas, Jay Gatsby, dreamer, rogue or both? I’m happy to report, Jay has aged well.

Revisiting Fitzgerald led me to Hemmingway’s “A Farewell to Arms,” a

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