Everybody Behaves Badly

An account of the making of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the larger-than-life people that inspired it, and the vast changes it wrought on the literary world

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020 New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume reveals how one courageous American reporter uncovered one of the deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century—the true effects of the atom bomb—potentially saving millions of lives. Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked—until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world. As Hersey and his editors prepared his article for publication, they kept the story secret—even from most of their New Yorker colleagues. When the magazine published “Hiroshima” in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, and inspired pervasive horror about the hellish new threat that America had unleashed. Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have ever been deployed in war partly because Hersey alerted the world to their true, devastating impact. This knowledge has remained among the greatest deterrents to using them since the end of World War II. Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Fallout is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved—and can still save—the world.

“A bittersweet modern love story [that] reads as easily as a novel.” —Vogue “Fascinating. . . . A detailed, grittier portrait of the woman Hemingway loved and left.” —Newsday Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway were the golden couple of Paris in the twenties, the center of an expatriate community boasting the likes of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and James and Nora Joyce. In this haunting account of the young Hemingways, Gioia Diliberto explores their passionate courtship, their family life in Paris with baby Bumby, and their thrilling, adventurous relationship—a literary love story scarred by Hadley’s loss of the only copy of Hemingway’s first novel and ultimately destroyed by a devastating ménage à trois on the French Riviera. Compelling, illuminating, poignant, and deeply insightful, Paris Without End provides a rare, intimate glimpse of the writer who so fully captured the American imagination and the remarkable woman who inspired his passion and his art—the only woman Hemingway never stopped loving.

The New York Times bestseller. “Fiendishly readable . . . a deeply, almost obsessively researched biography of a book.”—The Washington Post In the summer of 1925, Ernest Hemingway and a clique of raucous companions traveled to Pamplona, Spain, for the town’s infamous running of the bulls. Then, over the next six weeks, he channeled that trip’s maelstrom of drunken brawls, sexual rivalry, midnight betrayals, and midday hangovers into his groundbreaking novel The Sun Also Rises. This revolutionary work redefined modern literature as much as it did his peers, who would forever after be called the Lost Generation. But the full story of Hemingway’s legendary rise has remained untold until now. Lesley Blume resurrects the explosive, restless landscape of 1920s Paris and Spain and reveals how Hemingway helped create his own legend. He made himself into a death-courting, bull-fighting aficionado; a hard-drinking, short-fused literary genius; and an expatriate bon vivant. Blume’s vivid account reveals the inner circle of the Lost Generation as we have never seen it before and shows how it still influences what we read and how we think about youth, sex, love, and excess. “Totally captivating, smartly written, and provocative.”—Glamour “[A] must-read . . . The boozy, rowdy nights in Paris, the absurdities at Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls and the hungover brunches of the true Lost Generation come to life in this intimate look at the lives of the author’s expatriate comrades.”—Harper’s Bazaar “A fascinating recreation of one of the most mythic periods in American literature—the one set in Paris in the ’20s.”—Jay McInerney

The 1920s in Paris are the pivotal years in Hemingway's apprenticeship as a writer, whether sitting in cafés or at the feet of Gertrude Stein. These are the heady times of the Nick Adams short stories, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and the writing of The Sun Also Rises. These are also the years of Hemingway's first marriage to Hadley Richardson, the birth of his first son, and his discovery of the bullfights at Pamplona.

Expatriates, World War I veterans, and former lovers, Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley remain friends several years after the war. Accompanied by friends and acquaintances, they travel through Europe. Jake struggles with relationships, and Brett has an affair. Alongside friends and acquaintances alike, the two search for meaningful connections and experiences in the wake of the war. First published in 1926, this unabridged edition explores the lifestyles and disillusioned attitudes of members of the Lost Generation—the group of people that came of age during World War I—and the massive cultural shift it brought.

A close reading of one of Hemingway's short story collections. It guides readers towards understanding how Hemingway tested old ideas of family, gender, race, ethnicity and manhood.