Authors, United States 

Michael Reynolds's "masterpiece in the making" (Library Journal) concludes with a rich and sympathetic portrayal of Nobel Prize recipient Hemingway's final twenty years. Hemingway's triumphs as a writer during the 1940s and 1950s accompanied a life of risk and danger. Reynolds discovers the truth about Hemingway's activities during the war years, including running a counterintelligence operation in Havana and riding a landing craft into the horror of Omaha Beach on D-Day. The postwar period was the most productive of Hemingway's writing life, when he authored the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea and five posthumously published books, including A Moveable Feast. Even as Hemingway graced the cover of Life magazine, his physical and mental health deteriorated while his public image as hunter and sportsman continued to demand the strenuous life. In 1961 he committed suicide, leaving behind the stuff of which American myths are made. Using newly available letters, recently published memoirs, previously classified documents in the National Archives, and detailed interviews, Reynolds brings to these later years the sensitive eye of a biographer who has matured along with his subject, evocatively recreating Hemingway's life and the atmosphere of postwar America. The result is the fullest and most accurate account of Hemingway's final years ever written.