Ernest Hemingway, as a result of his short stories, novels, and nonfiction, has become perhaps the best-known American writer of the twentieth century. In such novels as The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway chronicled the lives of aimless, adventuring young adults in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century. In other writings, Hemingway wrote elegantly and perceptively about some of his passions: bullfighting, hunting, fishing, drinking. But it is in his short stories where Hemingway best shows his mastery of style and structure and where his deepest and most enduring themes—death, writing, machismo, bravery, and the alienation of men in the modern world7mdash; dominate.

Hemingway was born, in 1899, into perhaps the most characteristically American of environments: the suburbs. His mother was domineering, and dressed young Ernest in girls' clothes when he was young (a fact that many...