In Our Time incorporates [the Nick Adams stories in a broad] … unity of form and theme and in a complexity of structure well worth exploring. Reading the book for these qualities yields unexpected and exciting dividends, for it reveals that In Our Time is indeed a consciously unified work built on a noble model and containing the careful artistry and the central vision of the world and the human condition which characterize Hemingway's writing from beginning to end. As such, In Our Time is not only the first of Hemingway's major works but also the best introduction to his thought and art in the rest.

When it was published on October 5, 1925, In Our Time was the culmination of a long development and a combination of previously published and new work. Several of the sixteen inter-story vignettes had originated as newspaper dispatches … and all, as well as two of...