While this book was well written and well researched, it was also a disappointment in many ways. The offensive language was horrific. Ernest Hemingway appears to have been, from this account, a bitter, vengeful, vindictive sort. He also, apparently, was not loyal to any of his wives. The broken friendship between Hemingway and John Dos Passos was heartbreaking. Also, the book didn’t focus on the ambulance driving and the war as much as I expected. I would have enjoyed this book better if the language was significantly cleaner.

Content: alcohol, expletives, prostitutes, war violence, crude sexual content, profanity, replacement profanity, tobacco, Catholicism, suicide, bars, miscarriages, nudity, sexual immorality, derogatory terms, marital affairs

such a great read!
i love how the author manages to portray the real people in this book in a way that makes them feel more realistic (of that makes any sense? they real realistic and not just dry or boring or as if someone put together facts and that’s it, in this it feels very much alive an life like!) and doesn’t shy away from showing both positive and negative sides of a person.

defiantly worth a read!

Hemingway nonfiction is tough, mostly because I can't help but compare it to A Moveable Feast, against which it all, of course, falls spectacularly short.

The focus here takes a different tone and homes in on a different part of Hemingway's life, which helped create some distance from his memoirs, yet it's not even the best account outside of his own. If you want some nonfiction highlighting Hemingway's war heroics, I recommend Tilar J. Mazzeo's Hotel on the Place Vendome instead, though if you're a "more is more" type when it comes to Hemingway, there's good stuff to be found in The Ambulance Drivers as well,

Confirms what we already knew - that Hemingway was a total ass.
In all seriousness though, I loved this book. Morris writes beautifully, weaving the stories of these two very different men - differences that both assured and ultimately ended their friendship - together.

Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos met on the battlefields of WWI when Dos Passos was 22 and Hemingway not quite 19. Both were volunteer ambulance drivers, both later became war correspondents and both later became novelists. A close friendship developed between them and for many years their lives moved in tandem along very similar trajectories. But the friendship became - mainly on Hemingway's side – more and more volatile and increasingly the rivalries and jealousies between them – again mainly on Hemingway’s side – forced them apart. In this well-researched and engaging dual-biography, Morris explores this personal and literary friendship in a lively and well-written account, from which Hemingway doesn’t come out at all well. It must have been very difficult to sustain any sort of friendship with him. What a pity that he is now the best-remembered writer and Dos Passos far less well known. Perhaps this book will revive interest in him.

Most biographies for Earnest Hemingway focus on life after World War I, but The Ambulance Drivers provides a view into the young adult years. This perspective of the young adult years ties together Hemingway's character that plays out throughout his life and the influences of the world events in which he puts himself.

I received a free electronic copy of this biographical history from Netgalley, James McGrath Morris, and Da Capo Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for sharing your very hard work with me.

And there was a great deal of incredibly hard work involved in compiling this history. There is so much out there about Hemingway, and so little about Dos Passos that finding truth imbedded in the legends must have been difficult indeed. I came away from this with the same ideals I brought into the quest - I have adored Dos Passos all my adult life, just as my Dad worshipped at the feet of Hemingway. The major truth I was able to add to my preconceived notions is that both Hemingway and Dos Passos were mere men facing difficult times. It was their reactions to the whims of fate that bound them together as friends while young, and inevitably separated them into armed retreat toward the end of their lives. How human. And how tragic.

I got this book free from Netgalley in exchange for my honest feedback. I would give the book 3 stars because the amount of research the author had to do to put this together is quite impressive. I felt like I was getting a look into the private lives of Hemingway and Dos Passos, not just information I could find on Wikipedia or something. The detail and timeline was fun to follow, although it did feel a little choppy at times jumping back and forth between the two. I don't think there is any way to avoid that in a book about 2 separate people though.

I would likely give this book a higher rating if it was less descriptive about war and the atrocities that come with it. Somehow when reading the book description I didn't realize how much the book would talk about war, and some of it is quite graphic. I have a wild imagination and incredible memory, so I avoid books/movies/tv shows that are too graphic and dark because they leave a lasting negative impression on me. I was excited to read the book to hear more about Hemingway and Dos Passos, but was really turned off by the parts about war. If you aren’t bothered by those things, then you would enjoy this book much more than I did. I just had different expectations. I would recommend it if the topic interests you.

Thank you Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review this excellent work. So completely readable you lose track at times that this is non-fiction, until you arrive at the pages of sources, citations and end notes at the conclusion. Readers hesitate to embark on another examination of Hemingway, but framed as this was in the context of his relationship with Dos Passos it created boundaries and a focus. Perhaps because I was not familiar with Dos Passos life, I felt at times as the book was skewed toward him, but that may not be true. Nor was that a complaint, since I learned more there, and so enjoyably. I have Three Soldiers, but haven't read it yet. I can't say that the descriptions of his other, more experimental, works really appeal to me, thus damning me forever to the ranks of the popular reader, and not the literary eagle I dream to be. However, when the author describes what Dos Passos wanted to do with Manhattan Transfer, mixing in news and related other items and media, I was floored. Maybe I'll try that. I'm not really sure what to say about the Hemingway side of things. I don't remember anything really stunning me as new and exciting, Hemingway is not new territory for me. I really recommend this for readers familiar or not with these authors - it would be a great entre as well for the curious.

I knew only the basics about Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos and this was a good place to start to build a greater understanding of these men, despite Mr. Morris's unmistakable dislike of Hemingway. The commonality of ambulance driving is an excellent starting point to the lives of the two men, tying them together through their shared, yet profoundly different experience of war.

Dos Passos was a bit older than Hemingway and was able to join the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps and serve in France and Italy under fire. He found the war horrifying and evil and driven by greed and stupidity. Like many other liberals of the period, he embraced the ideals of communism and even went to the USSR to study.

Hemingway lied about his age to join the war but was still too late to experience the war in Europe at its worst. He was seriously injured soon after his arrival in Italy, and was proclaimed a hero. This was all rather grand and Hemingway developed an idea of war as exhilarating and manly.

Dos Passos continued to hate war and other forms of oppression but over time he came to realize that under Soviet communism the end justified the means, even if the means were vile. Hemingway when faced with the reality of the Spanish Civil War, recognized that war is brutal and stupid.

This interweaving of political opinions amid the ups and downs of their very different writing careers, forms the basis of Mr. Morris's work. Once strong, over time the men's friendship failed, and if we are to believe Mr. Morris, it was Hemingway who severed the tie with his jealousy and reluctance to celebrate Dos Passos (or anyone's success).

I enjoyed Mr. Morris's discussion of the very different writing styles of Hemingway and Dos Passos and I find myself interested in rereading Hemingway, a writer I have ignored for a long time.

I received a review copy of "The Ambulance Drivers: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and a Friendship Made and Lost in War" by James McGrath Morris (Da Capo Press) through NetGalley.com.

With so much having been written about Hemingway, this book takes an interesting perspective as it explores the long friendship between Hemingway and his fellow US writer John Dos Passos. Both served as ambulance drivers during WW1; both were later war correspondents; and both, of course, contributed to the formation of modernist literature. Hemingway's books still speak to us - Dos Passos' are rarely read other than by academics.

The book is a kind of dual biography of the two men as well as a biography of their friendship. If you're familiar with either Hemingway's books or life then there's little new here on him, but I knew very little about Dos Passos and so enjoyed that aspect of the tale. There are certainly more detailed books but this is a good introduction to the men, their lives and their visions of what literature can do and is for.

To be posted on Amazon