Jim Lehrer's six favorite 20th century novels

Jim Lehrer’s new book, Tension City, is a history of televised presidential debates, 11 of which he has moderated. Lehrer's many books include the novel, The Phony Marine.

For The Week magazine, he named his six favorite 20th century novels, including:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby works on every one of the multitude of levels required of superior, serious fiction. And it is absolutely dazzling from its beginning to its famous last line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Read about the other books on Lehrer's list.

The Great Gatsby appears among John Mullan's list of ten of the best misdirected messages, Tad Friend's seven best novels about WASPs, Kate Atkinson's top ten novels, Garrett Peck's best books about Prohibition, Robert McCrum's top ten books for Obama officials, Jackie Collins' six best books, and John Krasinski's six best books, and is on the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

--Marshal Zeringue