Mythbusting Hemingway

Book excerpt: Did Ernest Hemingway kill 122 Nazis during World War II? Did he really fight champion Gene Tunney? Did he have very particular thoughts about hair? Mythbusting Hemingway answers these longstanding questions and more. It’s fitting treatment for an author who won both the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, survived back-to back plane crashes, and played the cello. He really was “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” who once shot himself in the leg (while hunting sharks), and brawled with Orson Welles. In this book, Hemingway legends—both true and debunked—are informed by detective work the authors did for the Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, and Huffington Post. For this volume, the authors conducted fresh interviews and scholarship that shed new light on the man, his work, and legacy. The authors have also unearthed an original essay--never before published in a book--from Frances Elizabeth Coates, Hemingway's high school crush and classmate, about growing up in Oak Park with the young man who would become the legend.