Hemingway was famous both for his literary output and his "macho" lifestyle; the work and the lifestyle were closely related. His personal adventures in war, his life and travels in Europe, Florida, Africa, and Cuba, and his passionate interests in such activities as bullfighting, big-game hunting and fishing formed the basis for most of his writing. But there was more to Hemingway than a superficial masculinity; his writing is sensitive to the great challenges of life, which he eventually found overwhelming. To survive in a world of pain and destruction he lived by the "the Hemingway code", which stressed honor, courage, endurance, and dignity.

The second child and eldest son of a Chicago doctor, Hemingway skipped college to begin his writing career as a reporter at the Kansas City Star. Rejected for military service because of a defective eye, he entered World War One as an ambulance driver. His later war journalism included his support of the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and his participation in the Battle of the Bulge and the Liberation of Paris. When not covering wars he lived in Paris; Key West, Florida; Cuba, and, at the end of his life, Idaho. He was married four times and fathered three sons. Like his father before him and his granddaughter after him, Hemingway committed suicide.