Hemingway at eighteen: the pivotal year that launched an American legend

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"In the summer of 1917, Ernest Hemingway was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate unsure of his future. The American entry into the Great War stirred thoughts of joining the army. While many of his friends in Oak Park, Illinois, were heading to college, Hemingway couldn't make up his mind and eventually chose to begin a career in writing and journalism at the Kansas City Star, one of the great newspapers of its day. In six and a half months at the Star, Hemingway experienced a compressed, streetwise alternative to a college education that opened his eyes to urban violence, the power of literature, the hard work of writing, and a constantly swirling stage of human comedy and drama. The Kansas City experience led Hemingway into the Red Cross ambulance service in Italy, where, two weeks before his nineteenth birthday, he was dangerously wounded at the front"--Jacket.;Foreword / by Paul Hendrickson -- Introduction -- Prologue -- Summer of indecision -- Creative cauldron -- "The morally strenuous life" -- "The insignificance of self" -- A lack of vices -- The "great litterateur" -- A suicide, a flea, a vile place -- The ambulance run -- Crime and punishment -- The war beckons -- "Snap and wallop" -- "You see things" -- At the Piave -- Lies and disillusionment -- Coda. Foreword / by Paul Hendrickson -- Introduction -- Prologue -- Summer of indecision -- Creative cauldron -- "The morally strenuous life" -- "The insignificance of self" -- A lack of vices -- The "great litterateur" -- A suicide, a flea, a vile place -- The ambulance run -- Crime and punishment -- The war beckons -- "Snap and wallop" -- "You see things" -- At the Piave -- Lies and disillusionment -- Coda.