The Great Gatsby at 100 Audiobook By Sheila Liming, The Great Courses cover art

The Great Gatsby at 100

Preview
Try for $0.00
Access a growing selection of included Audible Originals, audiobooks, and podcasts.
You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
Audible Plus auto-renews for $7.95/mo after 30 days. Upgrade or cancel anytime.

The Great Gatsby at 100

By: Sheila Liming, The Great Courses
Narrated by: Sheila Liming
Try for $0.00

$7.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $13.00

Buy for $13.00

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

How does a 100-year-old novel feel fresher than ever? F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was first published in April of 1925. Though it initially sold poorly in comparison to Fitzgerald’s previous novels, it has since come to be considered his masterpiece. Not only is the novel frequently cited as a cornerstone of American literature, but it also continues to appear on best-seller lists in the 21st century. It is also regularly adapted for stage and screen and has been one of the most assigned novels in American high schools for decades. How did a Jazz Age novel become such a lasting work of literature? What is it about Fitzgerald’s tragic story of lost love and the dark side of the American Dream that has kept the novel so relevant to generations of readers?

In the six lectures of The Great Gatsby at 100, you will join Sheila Liming of Champlain College to revisit the context and culture of the Roaring ‘20s, which inspired the story of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his disastrous pursuit of Daisy Buchanan. As you’ll discover, while Gatsby is framed as a love story, it’s also a story of the American experience, revealing the unspoken rules of wealth and class and the false promises of self-made success in a world of Old Money privilege.

As you explore Gatsby’s complex view of money and class, you’ll also dive into the way the novel interrogates gender and sexuality and the popular culture of its day—a time that, much like our own, was rapidly changing thanks to technological innovation and social movements. While the trappings of jazz music, bobbed hair, and bootleg gin may set The Great Gatsby firmly in the past, you’ll find that many of its themes and ideas remain as relevant today as they were a century ago.

©2025 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2025 Audible Originals, LLC.
Art & Literature Authors Literary History & Criticism
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_webcro768_stickypopup

What listeners say about The Great Gatsby at 100

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    14
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    16
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    15
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    2

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Learning more of this familiar novel

Good short read of a good short book. Illuminated facets I had not considered. I’ll have to read TGG again.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A couple fresh ideas

The author covers the usual perspectives of class, class mobility, the American dream, masculinity and gender, capitalism and consumerism. I enjoyed the addition of new to me lenses from wardrobe and music. Overall a thorough yet concise presentation.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Gatsby just got better!

Get one of the world’s favourite novel and have an Uber smart academic decipher nuances, historical, economic, political and sociological context in easily accessible lectures and your IQ will go up 5% and you’ll be whetting your appetite for more FSF. What a find!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Warning: A Woke Perspective

This should should be titled "A Neo-Marxist Look at the Great Gatsby Through the Lens of Class, Race, and Gender."

The author presents many interesting observations and theories (including the unquestioned assertion that narrator Nick is "queer" and that he had sex with Mr. Mckee). This audiobook is an interesting work, but it should be branded as what it is: a postmodern look at Gatsby through modern academic "theory", rather than a straight-up retrospective on its 100th anniversary.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Hard to enjoy

The Great Gatsby is in my list of top 10 novels. I love it. This lecture would have been SO much better had it not been read by its writer. Her enunciation was so strange and uneven. Every time she said the name Myrtle, I cringed. I would love to find it in written form so I can enjoy it thoroughly.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Anachronistic scholarship

Mediocre arguments based more on theory than text evidence culminate in chapter 3, on Gender. The lecturer makes an argument that Gatsby’s “pink suit” sets up Gatsby as a sort of attack on traditional masculinity.

The problem with this line of thinking is that Pink was much more associated with masculinity until the 1940’s and really the 1950’s. Just google it.

The one piece of text evidence cited for their argument is misread. Astoundingly poor scholarship. I’m amazed this was published.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!