This is an outstanding selection of Hemingway's professional newspaper and magazine articles. Many of them deal with culture, geopolitics, and conditions in Europe from the 1920s through the end of World War II, with special attention on the rise of fascism in Italy and Spain and the conflict between Japan and China.

Hemingway gives a ground-level narrative of history as only he can, chronicling the Spanish Civil War and advocating a dubious position (with the benefit of hindsight) of isolationism late into the 1930s.

Much less interesting to this reader are the many articles on big game hunting in Africa, war stories of deep sea fishing, and an enthusiastic account of bullfighting in Spain.

It's tempting to read the book from cover to cover, but this makes for laborious and repetitive labor. It is an anthology of carefully crafted free-standing articles after all, many of them short but all of them punchy, and it's perhaps best browsed and sampled.

While the book is of uneven interest, the material on Europe entre les deux guerres is vital reading.