The Great Gatsby has sold 25 million copies worldwide and sells 500,000 copies annually. The book has been made into three movies and produced for the theatre. It is considered the Greatest American Novel ever written. Yet, the story of how The Great Gatsby was written has not been told except as embedded chapters of much larger biographies. This story is one of heartbreak, infidelity, struggle, alcoholism, financial hardship, and one man’s perseverance to be faithful to the raw diamond of his talent in circumstances that would have crushed others. The story of the writing of The Great Gatsby is a story in itself. Fitzgerald had descended into an alcoholic run of parties on Great Neck, New York, where he and Zelda had taken a home. His main source of income was writing for the “slicks,” or magazines of the day, the main source being the Saturday Evening Post , where Fitzgerald’s name on a story got him as much as $4,000. Then on May 1, 1924, he, Zelda, and baby daughter Scottie quietly slipped away from New York on a “dry” steamer to France, the writer in search of sobriety, sanity, and his muse, resulting in the publication of The Great Gatsby a year later. Hazelgrove brings a novelist artfulness to his work, imbuing it with narrative force and enlivening and energizing his deep research. Among previous books on his ever filling nonfiction shelf are Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson, Al Capone and the 1933 Worlds Fair, and Sally Rand, American Sex Symbol. In his latest he writes that "Gatsby" is the greatest work of American fiction that the world has ever known. He then gives readers a typically well researched and smartly written story that focuses on the 11 months between the summer of 1924 when Fitzgerald began writing his novel, and April 10 1925, when it was published. You get a fine look at the writer before and after that writing interlude, on a booze filled journey from "one party to another and one hotel to another" and will cringe at the self destructive antics of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, a pair who came to define the Jazz Age in all its' raucous energy. Will reading this book compel you to grab a copy of The Great Gatsby...it convinced me to read it for about the fifth time...It is a terrific book! Chicago Tribune, Rick Kogan "William Hazelgrove has a way of finding the topics that need to be heard and read about....it's a remarkable book." WGN 720 Chicago F. Scott Fitzgerald went to the Riviera in 1924 to write The Great Gatsby. What I found out was what a high price he paid for a book that failed when it came out... but then became The Great American Novel all others would be compared to. "They all turned against him in the end. Hemingway, the critics, the reading public. Only Max Perkins, his editor at Scribners and Harold Ober, his agent stuck with him. Even the church turned on him, refusing to let him be buried in a Catholic cemetary....in his final years, Scott was reduced to telling people he was a famous author. The Great Gatsby could only be found in the Scribner warehouse. It was not out of print, worse, it just didn't sell." Writing Gatsby William Elliott Hazelgrove has a master's in history and is the best-selling author of ten novels and twelve narrative nonfiction books, including Madam President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson , Forging a President: How the West Created Teddy Roosevelt (Regnery Publishing), and Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair (Rowman & Littlefield) One Hundred and  Sixty Minutes The Race To Save the RMS Titanic. His books have been Book of the Month Club Selections, History Book Club Selections, Literary Guild Selections, Distinguished Books Award, Junior Library Guild Selections and optioned for the movies. He  lives in Chicago, Illinois.