Ernest Hemingway's triumphs as a writer during the 1940s and 1950s accompanied a life of risk and danger. Michael 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 Omaha Beach on D-Day. The post-war period, when he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea, was the most productive time of Hemingway's writing life but his physical and mental health deteriorated. In 1961 he committed suicide. Using interviews, letters, memoirs and previously classified documents, Reynolds brings his eyes to Hemingway's later years, recreating his life and the atmosphere of post-war America.