About the Film
Tune in or Stream Monday, April 5 at 8/7c
Hemingway, a three-part, six-hour documentary film by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, examines the visionary work and the turbulent life of Ernest Hemingway, one of the greatest and most influential writers America has ever produced. Interweaving his eventful biography — a life lived at the ultimately treacherous nexus of art, fame, and celebrity — with carefully selected excerpts from his iconic short stories, novels, and non-fiction, the series reveals the brilliant, ambitious, charismatic, and complicated man behind the myth, and the art he created.
Featured Video
Hemingway — The Myth
Uncover the man behind the myth of one of America’s greatest and most complicated writers. Hemingway from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick premieres April 5, 2021.
Preview | 30s
PBS Reading List
The Old Man and the Sea
This minimalistic 1953 Pulitzer Prize winning novella describes the epic struggle between a sun-weary Cuban fisherman and a giant marlin as they hash it out in the deep waters of the Gulf. It is often cited as the chief catalyst for Hemingway winning the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
A Farewell to Arms
This powerful treatise on love and war is considered to be one of the best American novels to have emerged from the aftermath of World War I. It tells the story of an American ambulance driver posted on the Italian frontlines and his intense passion for a dazzling English nurse.
The Sun Also Rises
This formerly banned book, often regarded as Hemingway’s first literary masterpiece, is a quintessential portrait of the Lost Generation, detailing the wanderings of Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley through roaring Parisian nightlife and savage Spanish bullfights.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
This is Hemingway’s timeless tale of ardent love and antifascist guerrilla warfare in the jagged peaks of Spain tells of bravery, loyalty, love, and the death of an ideal at the final stand of El Sordo during the Spanish Civil War.
A Moveable Feast
Published in 1964, this book examines the glamorous happenings of creative minded gatherings in 1920’s Paris. The story comes face to face with Hemingway’s real-life interactions with writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein.
Green Hills of Africa
This is Hemingway’s personal memoir of a picturesque safari across the Serengeti. It offers a rare look into the mindset of literature’s most famed biggame hunter and his prescient qualms with the end of the untamed wilds at the hands of men.
To Have and Have Not
This book explores Hemingway’s sunsoaked encounters with working men, boaters, and black-market smugglers. It explores character Harry Morgan’s dramatic fall from grace at the onset of the Great Depression.
The Hemingway Stories
Curated by award-winning author Tobias Wolff, this collection of Hemingway’s best short stories includes: “The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “Up in Michigan,” “Indian Camp,” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
In Our Time
Ernest Hemingway This collection of short stories and vignettes demonstrated Hemingway’s trademark knack for invoking a wide spectrum of emotions through sparse and simple prose. The book, published in 1925, was his literary debut.
Ernest Hemingway: A Biography
Mary V. Dearborn This hefty tome is the most popular Hemingway biography to date and is also the first Hemingway biography written by a woman.
Papa Hemingway: A Personal Memoir
A.E. Hotchner This unique account, penned by a Hemingway confidante, reports on a 14- year conversation that took place over trips from New York to Paris to Spain, to fishing in Cuba, hunting in Idaho, and running with the bulls in Pamplona.
The Man Who Wasn’t There: A Life of Ernest Hemingway
Richard Bradford This recent examination of Hemingway’s chameleonic nature is a must read for the serious Hemingway fan.
