Reading the assembled vignettes and short stories of In Our Time, "Hemingway's American debut," is like taking a look at an artist's working sketches that eventually evolve into masterpieces. The reader finds all of the usual denizens of Hemingway's world: anglers, ex-patriates, toreadors, soldiers, men and women who are in love, and those who have fallen out. And, of course, Nick Adams. In these tales, Hemingway demonstrates the superfluousness of semicolons and the superiority of spartan sentences for which he is famous.While it isn't my favorite of Hemingway's works, it makes a good sampler for those wishing to get short doses of Hemingway, especially for those whose only exposure to Hemingway was reading The Old Man and The Sea in high school.