"Remember that he who conquers himself is greater than the one who conquers a city."

― Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time

In Our Time is Ernest Hemingway's first collection of short stories. Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman whose works are considered classics of American literature.

In Our Time consists of fifteen short stories, each beginning with a short vignette about the years before, during, and after World War I.

The first story, "On the Quai at Smyrna," introduces the war through a description of an evacuation and the succeeding few chapters until the fifth, follows the story of Nick Adams from that time he witnessed an emergency cesarean section and a suicide as a young boy, to the time he was old enough in the stories to get drunk with a friend, have a girlfriend and when he was in the war. Nick is largely an autobiographical creation and appears more often in the collection compared to other characters.

The short stories that followed took up different subjects. "A Soldier's Home," tells the story of Krebs, a former soldier, who has trouble adjusting to normal life after his time in the war is finished. "Mr. And Mrs. Elliot," "Cat in the Rain," and "Out of Season" are all about American couples living or on vacation in Europe. "Cross-Country Snow" is about two men on a cross-country skiing trip. "My Old Man" is about a son reminiscing his childhood with his dad, who was a jockey. Nick Adams appears again in the last two chapters with his fishing expedition story in the two-part "Big Two-Hearted River".

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