Richard Webb Jr.

Richard "Deej" Webb Jr., is an author, an award winning educator, and a documentary filmmaker. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, he taught history for twenty four years at both the high school and college levels. A featured presenter in the Connecticut Public Broadcasting Prohibition documentary Connecticut Goes Dry, Webb is also co-creator and co-producer with Robert Williams of a documentary film about the Fitzgeralds in Connecticut, which is a companion to this book. He has been a resident of the Westport, Connecticut area since 1967. Webb is a national consultant to many historical societies and libraries. He lives happily in an historic home with his wife Deborah, and their dogs, Zelda and Daisy. Foreword by Robert Steven Williams, a Harvard Business School Graduate, music industry consultant and film-maker who lives in Westport, Connecticut. Williams and Webb have collaborated on a film about Fitzgerald in Westport that will air in 2020. You can visit the companion website www.boats-against-current.com. BOATS AGAINST THE CURRENT REVIEWS: “As the fourth generation of Charleses involved in publishing this classic Jazz Age novel, this one is quite simply the most original, entertaining and dramatic new window on the origins of Gatsby… refreshing, engaging, enlightening, and as fun as one of Gatsby’s parties, it is more than a beautiful book: it is a gift, indeed a treasure. Five stars plus a green light!” CHARLES SCRIBNER III “It is rare to find anything new in Fitzgerald scholarship- truly it is. Most of it is very familiar and very repetitive. Well, this is truly fresh.” JAMES L.W. WEST III Author The Perfect Hour: The Romance of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ginevra King (2005) and William Styron: A Life (1998). West is the General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Much of this lavish book consists of Webb’s evidence for replacing Great Neck with Westport, as the incubator of Fitzgerald’s imagination…Fitzgerald fanatics should find this information intriguing. Webb makes a genial, meandering case for Westport as Gatsbyville… Webb’s sketch of their saga is workmanlike and lucid.” KIRKUS REVIEWS “Well researched and documented book. This book is intense.” INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION