Hemingway's Attic focuses on Ernest Hemingway's years in Cuba from 1950 to 1952, and also tells the story behind the writing of The OldMan and the Sea from the contemporary viewpoint of writing in Hemingway's attic from 1998 to 2008. One would think after all this time there is nothing more to be said about Ernest Hemingway. Much has been written on this man who changed American literature in the twentieth century. The studies of his childhood, sexuality, stories, novels, parentage, sisters, brothers, strange proclivities, brutality, genius, flaws, are many. But the two years in Cuba between his biggest failure, Across the River and into the Trees and his greatest triumph, The Old Man and the Sea, have not been covered. The narrative ride of his life from 1950 to 1952 in Cuba is a time capsule that brings forth the consequences of a life lived in an alternate world ninety miles off the coast of Florida. It is in these two years when he wrote The Old Man and Sea that Hemingway is at the most destructive, brutal, and tragic part of his life. No one has grasped the implications of this life that began when Hemingway abandoned Key West in 1939 for a life in Cuba and began to live a life by his own rules. By combining the view of a writer who ended up in the most famous writer's attic in America for ten years, becoming enmeshed in the business and mythology of Hemingway and meeting two of his sons, with the roller coaster ride of his years in Cuba, this book brings a different light to the Hemingway mystique.
William Elliott Hazelgrove wrote from the attic of Ernest Hemingway's birthplace in Oak Park, Illinois from 1998-2008. His tenure there was covered by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, CSpan, USA Today, LA Times, PBS, Chicago Tribune, The Plain Dealer, the Globe and Mail, and NPR's All Things Considered. He has a Masters in History and is the best-selling author of ten novels and seven narrative nonfiction books: Madame President: The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson, Forging a President: How the West Created Teddy Roosevelt (Regnery Publishing), Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair (Rowman and Littlefield). He lives in Chicago, Illinois.
"A legion of books and films has honed the mythology of the indomitable British stiff upper lip maintained by doomed passengers and crew aboard the gargantuan vessel lost without hope or salvation in a vast ocean as the orchestra played on. But a new book explodes that fantasy...every soul on the Titanic could have been saved" -- "Irish Daily Star" "A retelling of an iconic episode in the American Revolution. Early in the revolution, still-good-guy Benedict Arnold teamed up with Ethan Allen to take the remote British fort at Ticonderoga, where hundreds of cannons were among the booty. Not many were serviceable, and then there was the matter of getting them to George Washington's forces outside Boston. Enter Henry Knox (1750-1806), a young bookseller who, writes popular historian Hazelgrove, 'simply could not read enough about what men constructed during times of war.' Knox was gifted at logistics and was an early convert to the cause of independence, and he managed to pull together a "noble train" of oxen, horses, and sledges to haul the useable cannons over ice-covered rivers, mountain ranges, and what the author calls 'unchartered wilderness.' It was a formidable undertaking, full of peril, as Hazelgrove repeats in various formulations--e.g., 'hours of painstaking effort in freezing water, ice, and snow'; 'so they trudged on, men fighting the cold and the terrain as they bedded down at night with tents and warmed themselves by fires, drinking whiskey and smoking pipes....'" -- "Kirkus Reviews" Praise for Henry Knox's Noble Train: "The author of Wright Brothers, Wrong Story (2018) does an impressive job of sifting through frequently contradictory primary and secondary sources to piece together an engaging account of Henry Knox's "noble train"--an astonishing assembly of people and animals that brought the artillery to Boston just in time to avert the possible derailment of the American Revolution. It was an arduous and danger-fraught expedition, and Hazelgrove makes readers feel as though they were a part of it. This is a fine example of dramatic, immersive history." -- "Booklist" Praise for One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: "One might think that we know all there is to know about that April 14, 1912 story, but Hazelgrove, an energetically curious man, has unearthed a compelling and exciting story and effectively pokes holes in some of the persistent myths surrounding the tragedy." -- "Chicago Tribune"
