The majority of those familiar with Hemingway's overall work argue that he only achieved perfection in his short stories. He followed what he called the "iceberg principle," omitting details he knew well, believing that the reader would infer them by carefully reading the surface plot. This technique gives his short stories a captivating sense of unspoken depth. In many of these, the protagonist is Hemingway's fictional alter ego, Nick Adams, whom we first meet as a boy living near an Indian camp, then as a soldier in World War I, and in the last story, "Fathers and Sons," as a father. Some of the stories in this collection are taught in schools and universities or have been adapted into films, such as "The Killers" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." Through the wise simplicity of the best of these, like "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" or "Hills Like White Elephants," one of the greatest literary voices of the past century speaks to us vividly.