Extravagance

Extravagance
Author :
Publisher : Crown
Total Pages : 271
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780767913324
ISBN-13 : 0767913329
Rating : 4/5 (329 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Extravagance by : Gary Krist

Download or read book Extravagance written by Gary Krist and published by Crown. This book was released on 2002-09-24 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Tobias Merrick, an energetic young man from the provinces, travels to the big city in a time of great optimism and ferment, hoping to make his mark on a frenzied, money-crazed society obsessed with the promise of new technologies. The city in question is London in the 1690s; but it is also New York in the 1990s. The new technologies are diving bells, pneumatic winches, and "sucking-worm" drainage engines; but they are also wireless telecommunication devices, patented biotechnology processes, and revolutionary electronic Internet routers. Only the sense of unlimited possibility remains the same throughout. Unfolding simultaneously in two distant--but remarkably similar--periods of history, Extravagance is a comic, pictaresque novel of financial mania, the story of a world gripped by a terminal case of irrational exuberance. Navigating the perils of both eras is a single cast of characters: Will himself, a young man on the make, eager to do whatever it takes to make his fortune; Will's uncle (and sponsor) Gilbert Hawking, a shrewd businessman with one foot in the Old Economy and one in the New; Benjamin Fletcher, the developer of a pioneering new technology destined to set the world on fire; and Theodore Witherspoon, the cheerfully unscrupulous wizard of the financial markets who promises to make them all wealthy beyond their dreams. Meanwhile, Will's aspirations are complicated by his pursuit of Ben Fletcher's sister, Eliza, the gorgeous and disconcertingly aggressive woman who is as desirable as she is elusive. Can Will succeed in his efforts to win both Eliza and the fortune that her brother's new technology seems likely to bring him? And can he make it all happen before the general euphoria of the age reaches its inevitable climax? Extravagance is a uniquely conceived work of high comic entertainment -- an ultra-smart time machine of a novel that proves that both love and greed are timeless.


Extravagance Related Books

Genre and Extravagance in the Novel
Language: en
Pages: 240
Authors: Jed Rasula
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-07-15 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

GET EBOOK

This book addresses an anomaly in the novel as genre: the generic promise to readers—that "reading a novel" is a familiar and repeatable experience—is chall
Extravagance
Language: en
Pages: 271
Authors: Gary Krist
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2002-09-24 - Publisher: Crown

GET EBOOK

William Tobias Merrick, an energetic young man from the provinces, travels to the big city in a time of great optimism and ferment, hoping to make his mark on a
The Self and It
Language: en
Pages: 308
Authors: Julie Park
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010 - Publisher: Stanford University Press

GET EBOOK

The Self and It makes a fresh and bold intervention in histories and theories of the rise of the novel by arguing that the material objects proliferating in eig
Phoenix Extravagant
Language: en
Pages: 322
Authors: Yoon Ha Lee
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-10-15 - Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

GET EBOOK

Dragons. Art. Revolution. The new blockbuster original fantasy work from Nebula, Hugo and Clarke award nominated author Yoon Ha Lee! “An arresting tale of loy
Dig
Language: en
Pages: 401
Authors: A.S. King
Categories: Young Adult Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-06-30 - Publisher: Penguin

GET EBOOK

Winner of the Michael L. Printz Medal ★“King’s narrative concerns are racism, patriarchy, colonialism, white privilege, and the ingrained systems that per