I was amazed to find out that Hemingway wrote this book when he was only 27 years old. It was his first novel and I am thinking, fairly autobiographical. Even though it takes place in 1920s Paris and Spain, I saw lots of parallels with our American cultures. Hemingway writes about the “lost generation” (named that by Gertrude Stein) that emerged from post-World War I. The lives of Hemingway’s characters seemed (to me) to parallel the post-Vietnam, post-recession world. Young people growing up in those eras found themselves caught in changing values and morals. Just like in the book, finding validation in the social order brings a myriad of conflicting human behaviors that resonate with my psychology background! The story revolves around a group of American and English expats who go on an excursion to Pamplona during the running of the bulls. Pamplona provides a colorful backdrop to the soap opera relationships of this group and the "running" they do to find themselves. It’s filled with a ton of dramatic tension of all types and is a wonderful classic read. An interesting tidbit is the title, The Sun Also Rises , comes from a Bible verse in the Ecclesiastes.