Ernest Hemingway was one of the 20th century's most important writers. His simple, direct style. greatly influenced other writers.
Hemingway was born July 21, 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois. His father was a doctor. His mother was a singer who had given up her career to marry.
Ernest learned about nature, hunting, and fishing from his father, The Heminways spent their summers on Walloon Lake in northern Michigan, and Ernest was soon able to shoot, fish, and swim very well. He entered first grade a year younger than usual, so he had to work hard to keep up with his older classmates. Ernest read a great deal. He especially liked adventure stories and science. He learned to play the cello so he could take part in family concerts. In high school he got straight A's, edited the school paper, and played in the orchestra. Some of his stories were printed in the school annual.
After high school Ernest got a job as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. But World War I was on in Europe, and Ernest wanted very much to go. He tried to enlist, but his eyesight was too poor. So he joined the Red Cross and was sent to Italy. He was wounded when distributing supplies to frontline troops and returned home a hero.
He began writing for the Toronto Star and later became the paper's foreign correspondent. He and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, settled in Paris. One of their close friends was the writer Gertrude Stein. She discussed Hemingway' s work with him and encouraged him to do more creative writing. When the Star sent him to cover the war between the Turks and the Greeks, he knew what he wanted his writing to do. He wanted it to show the horrors of war so clearly that readers would experience the horrors themselves and would act to put an end to all war.
In 1923 Three Stories and Ten Poems was published in France. A second book of stories, In Our Time, appeared in 1924. Hemingway then decided to give all his time to independent writing. He began work on his first serious novel, The Sun Also Rises. Its motto was Gertrude Stein's remark, "You are all a lost generation." When it was published in 1926, it became a best seller.
Hemingway was divorced from his first wife and married Pauline Pfeiffer in 1927. They lived in Key West, Florida, where Hemingway did a great deal of deep-sea fishing while working on A Farewell to Arms (1929). The book was based on his war experiences in Italy. After it was published, the Hemingways went to Cuba for sport fishing. In later years Hemingway bought land in Cuba and lived there much of the time.
He went big-game hunting in Africa and wrote about it in the Green Hills of Africa (1935). The civil war in Spain became the background for his longest novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. (1940). The year it was published Hemingway was divorced a second time and married Martha Gellhorn, a journalist. As correspondents for Coller’s they followed World War Ⅱ in Europe. Hemingway took part in the D-Day invasion and the French Resistance. After his third divorce in 1945, he married Mary Welsh, whom he had met in London during the war.
In 1953 Hemingway's short novel The Old Man and the Sea (1952), about an old Cuban fisherman, was given a Pulitzer Prize. The book also brought Hemingway the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway had been living in Cuba but he left in 1960 and settled in Ketchum, Idaho. He was ill and depressed. On July 2, 1961, he shot himself.
Ernest Hemingway's first book was published in______.
A．1923
B．1924
C．1926
D．1929
Darwin's great work, The Origin of Species, is now generally accepted as one of the most important books ever written. But when it first came out in 1859, it was both derided and bitterly condemned by scientists and laymen.
Much of opposition to The Origin of Species arose from Darwin's claim that all living creatures, including man, are somehow related. Many people were outraged by the suggestion that man shared a common ancestor with animals such as apes and monkeys. They attacked Darwin for saying that man had descended from the apes.
But Darwin never actually said this. He believed that modern men and modern apes have both descended from the same ancestor. But at some time in pre-history, millions of years ago, men and apes began to develop separately, and ever since have continued to take on different characteristics. Today, more than 90 years after Darwin's death, this is the opinion which scientists continue to hold.
In his works, Darwin described the progression of life from its earliest forms. First came the invertebrate-creatures without a backbone. Then invertebrates evolved into fish; fish into amphibians; amphibians into reptiles; and reptiles into birds and mammals.
Fossil remains found after his death show that Darwin was right. Perhaps the most amazing fact about his theory is that he managed to work it out with the aid of only a few fossil discoveries.
Fossil remains were not the only information which we now possess but which Darwin lacked. He did not know that apes have the same diseases as men; nor that they and men have the same kind of blood. Nor did he know about the modern uses of radiation which enable scientists to tell the age of fossil remains and so estimate the speed at which evolution has taken place.
Which of the following best describes the passage as a whole？
A．The Origin of Species is a very significant book.
B．Darwin's discoveries were proved to be right though the Origin of Species was severely attacked.
C．The evolution of men has gone through a very long process.
D．It was impossible for Darwin to prove his ideas only with the aid of fossils.
