A Farewell to Arms stature. The book became his first best-seller, and has been called "the premier American war novel from that debacle World War I." The novel has been adapted a number of times, initially for the stage in 1930; as a film in 1932 and again in 1957, and as a three-part television miniseries in 1966. The 1996 film "In Love and War", directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Chris O'Donnell and Sandra Bullock, depicts Hemingway's life in Italy as an ambulance driver in the events prior to his writing of "A Farewell to Arms". The novel is divided into five sections.
Book censorship in the United States of World War I, and the story of the two lovers, Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley, includes graphic details of a childbirth gone awry. This story strays greatly from traditionalist literature, the majority of American literature at the time, which depicted good prevailing over evil. Some cities, including Boston, banned "A Farewell to Arms" in 1929, labeling the book "salacious." In addition, Boston in the 1920s censored other novels such as "The American Mercury", "Elmer Gantry", "An American Tragedy", "Strange Interlude", and "Lady Chatterley’s Lover". The rise of censorship in Boston aroused local opposition. The Harvard Crimson in 1929 wrote,