Non-Fiction Books

Almost 600 letters written by Ernest Hemingway between 1917 and 1961 that provide an intimate portrait of one of the most original and influential American writers. While many people are familiar with the public image of Hemingway and the legendary accounts of his life, few knew him as an intimate. With this collection of letters, a new Hemingway emerges. Ranging from 1917 to 1961, this generous selection of nearly six hundred letters is, in effect, both a self-portrait and an autobiography. In his own words, Hemingway candidly reveals himself to a wide variety of people: family, friends, enemies, editors, translators, and almost all the prominent writers of his day. In so doing he proves to be one of the most entertaining letter writers of all time. Carlos Baker has chosen letters that not only represent major turning points in Hemingway's career but also exhibit character, wit, and the writer's typical enthusiasm for hunting, fishing, drinking, and eating. A few are ingratiating, some downright truculent. Others present his views on writing and reading, criticize books by friend or foe, and discuss women, soldiers, politicians, and prizefighters. Perhaps more than anything, these letters show Hemingway's irrepressible humor, given far freer rein in his correspondence than in his books. An informal biography in letters, the product of forty-five years' living and writing, Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters leaves an indelible impression of an extraordinary man.

Ernest Hemingway’s most important writings on war—perhaps the author’s greatest subject—are brought together in a single volume, introduced and edited by his grandson, Seán Hemingway, with a foreword by his son, Patrick Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway witnessed many of the seminal conflicts of the twentieth century—from his post as a Red Cross ambulance driver during World War I to his nearly twenty-five years as a war correspondent for The Toronto Star —and he recorded them with matchless power. This landmark volume brings together Hemingway’s most important and timeless writings about the nature of human combat. Passages from his beloved World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, about the Spanish Civil War, offer an unparalleled portrayal of the physical and psychological impact of war and its aftermath. Selections from Across the River and into the Trees vividly evoke an emotionally scarred career soldier in the twilight of life as he reflects on the nature of war. Classic short stories, such as “In Another Country” and “The Butterfly and the Tank,” stand alongside excerpts from Hemingway’s first book of short stories, In Our Time, and his only full-length play, The Fifth Column . With captivating selections from Hemingway’s journalism—from his coverage of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22 to a legendary early interview with Mussolini to his jolting eyewitness account of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944— Hemingway on War collects the author’s most penetrating chronicles of perseverance and defeat, courage and fear, and love and loss in the midst of modern warfare.