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    Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961
    Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961
    Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961
    Audiobook9 hours

    Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961

    Written by Nicholas Reynolds

    Narrated by Fred Sanders

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A former CIA officer and curator of the CIA Museum unveils the shocking, untold story of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway’s secret life as a spy for both the Americans and the Soviets before and during World War II.

    While he was the curator of the CIA Museum, Nicholas Reynolds, a longtime military intelligence expert, began to discover tantalizing clues that suggested Ernest Hemingway’s involvement in the Second World War was much more complex and dangerous than has been previously understood. Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy brings to light for the first time this riveting secret side of Hemingway’s life—when he worked closely with both the American OSS, a precursor to the CIA, and the Soviet NKVD, the USSR’s forerunner to the KGB to defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

    Reynolds dig deep into Hemingway’s involvement in World War II, from his recruitment by both the Americans and the Soviets—who valued Hemingway for his journalistic skills and access to sources—through his key role in gaining tactical intelligence for the Allies during the liberation of Paris, to his later doubts about communist ideology and his undercover work in Cuba. As he examines the links between his work as a spy and as an author, Reynolds reveals how Hemingway’s wartime experiences shook his faith in literature and contributed to the writer’s block that plagued him for much of the final two decades of his life. Reynolds also illuminates how those same experiences also informed one of Hemingway’s greatest works—The Old Man and the Sea—the final novel published during his lifetime.

    A unique portrait as fast-paced and exciting as the best espionage thrillers, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy illuminates a hidden side of a revered artist and is a thrilling addition to the annals of World War II.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateMar 14, 2017
    ISBN9780062659774
    Author

    Nicholas Reynolds

    Nicholas Reynolds has worked in the fields of modern military history and intelligence off and on for forty years, with some unusual detours. Freshly minted PhD from Oxford University in hand, he joined the United States Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as a historian. As a colonel in the reserves, he eventually became officer in charge of field history, deploying historians around the world to capture history as it was being made. When not on duty with the USMC, he served as a CIA officer at home and abroad, immersing himself in the very human business of espionage. Most recently, he was the historian for the CIA Museum, responsible for developing its strategic plan and helping to turn remarkable artifacts into compelling stories. He currently teaches as an adjunct professor for Johns Hopkins University and, with his wife, Becky, cares for rescue pugs.

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    Reviews for Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy

    4/5

    34 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      That was a fun listen. Sheds light on Hemingway’s life and motivations.
    • 3/5
      Having never read a full Hemingway biography, but a fan of his work, I found just enough here to keep me engaged. If I was less interested in Hemingway or less interested in the birth of the Cold War and the death of American communism, I might have put the book away much sooner.
    • 4/5
      This book documented interesting aspects of Hemingway that is very intriguing to me. The book is well done.
    • 3/5
      Before this book, I knew only the hazy outlines of Hemingway's life and I appreciated the way this book fleshed out the details of Hemingway's life from the 1930s to his suicide in 1961. Hemingway's spying activities (if they could be called that) provide insight into how the famous writer thought and perceived the world around him. Considering the big events of the period - the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China, World War II, and Castro's revolution in Cuba - this book also reads as a fascinating history of a tumultuous era. I'd recommend this to Hemingway fans and those interested in the history of the period.
    • 4/5
      This is a fascinating take on Hemingway's political self, and Reynolds does a fine job of distilling the background needed to grasp where Papa was coming from at any given time from the Spanish Civil War through the Cold War without drowning the reader in detail. I've read a number of other biographies of Hemingway, and have always found his personal life more interesting than his fiction. This one may turn me back to the iconic novels I've brushed aside since my 20's, because now I feel I may "get" them better. I'm sure I'll still find them a bit too macho for my taste, but I've never been entirely comfortable with my attitude toward his work. The premise of WSSS is that Hemingway flirted with spying for Russia, even while he was doing some low-grade espionage in an unofficial capacity for the US. Although he was demonstrably never a communist, or even a sympathizer, he was fiercely anti-fascist, and believed for decades that the United States needed to have better relations with Russia for the good of Europe and North America. He was most definitely contacted by the NKVD (pre-cursor to the KGB) as a potential spy, and the FBI kept a file on him, without actively investigating him. These two facts weighed on Hemingway's mind in his later years, and fear of eventual consequences of his activities may have contributed to the paranoia he suffered before his suicide.