Did you read THE GREAT GATSBY in High School? Or teach it in HS? I’m writing a piece for the book’s 100th birthday and I need your help! What do you remember about how it was taught? Specific assignments, discussions, exercises, essay prompts? The further back the better!

56 years ago, January 22 1969, students at UC Berkeley began a three-month strike. Led by the Third World Liberation Front, a coalition of Black, Mexican-American, Asian-American, and Native American student groups, the strike led to the creation of the Ethnic Studies Department

Reposting for the weekend crowd! If you read GATSBY in high school, I’d love to hear from you!

I had a great time discussing the changing shape (and changing politics) of historical fiction with Caterina (Cat) Domeneghini and Claire Barnes for New American Studies Journal! Here's a link to our conversation and an excerpt from my book...nasjournal.org/NASJ/article/v…

Very excited to be giving a lecture tomorrow night (Feb. 20) as part of this award and St. Louis University's Campus Read series! If you're in the area, or want to attend by Zoom, you can find the details here: slu.edu/library/st-lou…

Now you can also listen to Alexander Manshel's amazing book, WRITING BACKWARDS, which is now available as an audiobook! tinyurl.com/44nasb56 Xander Manshel Columbia University Press

F. Scott Fitzgerald once worried that The Great Gatsby was a flop, but worldwide sales of the novel are now upward of thirty million copies. What changed? According to McGill’s Alexander Manshel, the answer is high-school English. newyorker.com/books/page-tur…

If you took high school English in the US or Canada, chances are you read The Great Gatsby at some point. But why is it so ubiquitous? As the novel turns 100, Xander Manshel has some fascinating answers in @newyorker: newyorker.com/books/page-tur…

More than any literary prize or celebrity book club, the school syllabus shapes American reading. “The Great Gatsby” is one of the most frequently assigned texts—but its place in the high-school canon was hardly inevitable. nyer.cm/aTYHpet

"By some estimates, the total worldwide sales of the novel are now upward of thirty million copies. How did “Gatsby” grow so great, and why has it endured so long? The answer is high-school English." newyorker.com/books/page-tur…

I've been waiting for this exposé for half a century. newyorker.com/books/page-tur…

For more than seven decades, high-school teachers have used “The Great Gatsby” to investigate the American Dream, to introduce students to literary techniques, and to stress the importance of finding a designated driver. How did it become an essential text?nyer.cm/AVJTCZe

“An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters for ever afterward,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, in 1920. In this, he was wildly successful. nyer.cm/YzOKki3

In the century since its publication, “The Great Gatsby” has been adapted for film at least five times, mounted on the stage, and even turned into a video game. How did “Gatsby” grow so great, and why has it endured so long? nyer.cm/HMntIjY

It's a big day at the Post45 Data Collective. It's a data journal I co-founded with Laura McGrath in 2021, though we began planning in 2019. So I've worked on it for six years. Today I step off as co-editor and Xander Manshel & J.D. Porter step on 🥳🥳🥳 data.post45.org

New Penguin Books catalogue feels like a publicist threw up their hands and said, "it' the new novel from Thomas Pynchon. What else can we say?"

More than any literary prize or celebrity book club, the school syllabus shapes American reading. “The Great Gatsby” is one of the most frequently assigned texts—but its place in the high-school canon was hardly inevitable. nyer.cm/yfaQLCt

Sigrid Nunez