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 “I remember, in 8th grade,” reminisces Andy Farah. “Trying to understand 'Farewell to Arms' and going to your father and asking him to explain the Spanish Civil War.” 
 
 That’s OK – Andy Farah did just fine in school. He went to medical school, became a psychiatrist and now explains Ernest Hemingway to so many of his fans. 
 
 For 20 years, Farah has used his training to study what a number of concussions that Hemingway suffered – at least nine, by Farah’s count – did to his brain. 
 
 “You have this man who is a genius and, as he ages, the cumulative damage that his brain sustained led to a deterioration in the work - not only the life and interactions were affected but the work was affected,” says Farah. “And the two plane crashes in Africa really sealed the deal. Those were severe.” 
 
 In one of them, Hemingway – probably already concussed from the crash – used his head to knock out the door he used to escape the plane that was filling with smoke. 
 
 “Hemingway, himself, in multiple letters wrote about the effects of concussion,” says Farah. “And his exact words were, ‘I've been studying it and concussions are a funny thing.’” 
 
 They weren’t funny by the end of his life. In fact, Farah believes they played a central role in why Hemingway killed himself in 1961, three weeks before his 62nd birthday, and tells the story in his new book "Hemingway’s Brain." 
 
 “There's so much mythology surrounding him that I wanted to set the record straight,” says Farah. 
 
 See if you think he did in this edition of the Buckley Report. ||||| NYT bestselling author Wiley Cash’s new novel, ‘The Last Ballad,’ is his best
– In 1936, Ernest Hemingway told a friend he'd never kill himself, the Charlotte Observer reports. The great author was dead by his own hand 25 years later. According to Smithsonian, Hemingway scholars have long blamed the writer's decade-long decline and eventual suicide on some combination of alcoholism and bipolar disorder. But a psychiatrist in North Carolina says the actual culprit is something more associated with modern football players than authors: CTE. Andrew Farah has been studying Hemingway for 20 years, Fox 8 reports. By reading Hemingway's letters, memoirs by his friends and family, and the FBI file on him, Farah was able to trace what he believes is the source of Hemingway's downfall: at least nine concussions. Those concussions came from boxing, car crashes, exploding shells during two world wars, and more. "His injuries and head traumas were frequent, random, and damaging," Farah writes in his newly published book, Hemingway's Brain. For example, following a plane crash that had likely already concussed him, Hemingway used his head to bash out a door and escape the plane. While we likely will never know for sure if Hemingway suffered from CTE, Farah says he showed symptoms in his final years, such as paranoia, anger, and violence. He also got worse following electroconvulsive therapy. "It didn't take long to connect the dots," Farah tells Smithsonian. He says he hopes his conclusion will allow the focus to shift from the "mythology" of Hemingway's death to the greatness of his work. (How sports destroyed a young man's brain.)