Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois, and was educated there in the public schools. Rather than attend college, however, Hemingway decided to work for the Kansas City Star newspaper. In World War I Hemingway served as a Red Cross ambulance driver until he was severely wounded in action. After recuperating in Italy, he settled in Paris, where he began his serious writing career while spending time with other American expatriates, including …showed first 75 words of 323 total…

…showed last 75 words of 323 total…a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War -- which eventually became the background for his 1939 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls -- and World War II. Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953, and contributed to his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. By the 1960's, however, Hemingway was in poor health, depressed, and losing his memory, and he committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.