Peter Benchley. JAWS. Doubleday, 1974. HC/DJ

Benchley, Peter.  JAWS.  Garden City, NY:  Doubleday, 1974.  This is NOT a book-club book.  This is NOT an ex-library book.Peter Benchley was born in 1940 and died in 2006.  He graduated from Harvard University.  He is most famous for his first book, JAWS (offered here), and for the subsequent famous film of the same name.  JAWS was published in 1974 and became a great success, staying on the bestseller list for 44 weeks.  Peter Benchley co-wrote the screenplay for the great and famous movie, along with Howard Sackler and John Milius.  The film (directed by Steven Spielberg) was released in 1975, starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss.  “Jaws” became the first film to gross over $100 million in U.S. theaters.  From this success, the summer blockbuster was born.  The film was followed by three sequels.  Peter Benchley was also the author of such famous books as THE DEEP, THE ISLAND, THE GIRL OF THE SEA OF CORTEZ, Q CLEARANCE, and several others.From the dust jacket flap:  “ . . . JAWS . . . A young woman makes love on the beach, then takes a midnight swim.  As she swims, she is violently struck, chopped in two.  The next morning pieces of her body are found at the water’s edge . . . So begins JAWS, the story of a Long Island resort town called Amity that is set upon by a rare and fearsome creature, the great white shark.  A superbly exciting novel, JAWS is also a tale of moral dilemma.  For the town fathers of Amity decide to cover up the woman’s death:  news of a killer shark could ruin the summer  business.  They forbid police chief Martin Brody to close the beaches.  The shark has gone, they say.  But the shark remains and kills again, and the life of the town becomes governed by the remorseless, almost supernatural presence offshore . . . “From the rear flap of the dust jacket:  “ . . . Peter Benchley is the third generation of writing Benchleys; his father is the novelist Nathaniel Benchley and his grandfather was the humorist Robert Benchley.  He was born in 1940 in New York City and grew up there.  After graduating from Harvard, cum laude, he served in the Marines, then became a reporter for the Washington Post.  Later he worked as an editor of Newsweek, a speechwriter for President Johnson, and a television commentator.  His interest in sharks began during summers in Nantucket, on shark-fishing expeditions from that island.  He has written about sharks and other topics for many magazines, including The National Geographic, The New Yorker, Life, Holiday, New York, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine.  He lives in Pennington, New Jersey, with his wife, Wendy, and their two small children, Tracy and Clayton . . . “