John Dos Passos

This is the first novel of Dos Passos's trilogy, U.S.A., which covers the years between 1900 to 1914. "The individual episodes and the characterization, the setting and the commentaries, are in themselves less important than the effectiveness of the entire book and the trilogy. Dos Passos employs with skill the modernist techniques that were coming into fashion during the first decades of the century. There is no definite plot; the book flows in a...

Unique among American novels for its epic scope and panoramic social sweep, John Dos Passos' U.S.A. has long been acknowledged as a monument of modern fiction. In the novels that make up the trilogy -- The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936) -- Dos Passos creates a collective portrait of America in the first three decades of the 20th century, shot through with sardonic comedy and social observation. He interweaves the careers...

Includes the works that comprised the author's ground-breaking epic, written before his U.S.A. trilogy, featuring a kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City, the author's experiences as an ambulance driver in war-torn Paris, and the dehumanizing struggles of American servicemen in battle.

"John Dos Passos traveled widely in Europe, the Middle East, Mexico, and the United States, witnessing many of the tumultuous political, social, and cultural events of the early 20th century and recording his changing response to them. This volume collects the vibrant and insightful travel books and essays he wrote at the same time he was publishing his fictional masterpieces Three Soldiers, Manhattan Transfer, and U.S.A." "Rosinante to the Road...

This novel, based on the author's own stressful experiences at the New Playwrights Theatre in New York City and in Hollywood, concerns a playwright-turned-screenwriter who falls under the influence of the Communist Party. The satirical work conveys Dos Passos's suspicions about Communist infiltration in the American artistic community.

"His final novel in a series of thirteen "contemporary chronicles," Century's Ebb, is published posthumously. As in the U.S.A. trilogy, Dos Passos contrasts the main action with biographical sketches of select figures from history, such as John Foster Dulles and Robert H. Goddard. Century's Ebb is unrevised and incomplete, but its themes are evident. Against the slate of recent American history, Dos Passos celebrates the virtues of the farmer and...

This is the second novel in Dos Passos's trilogy U.S.A. and it carries into World War I the careers of the characters in the first novel, the Forty second parallel, beginning with Joe Williams, the wandering, battered, and hapless sailor. Four new characters are introduced; Dick Savage, an esthetic, idealistic young Harvard man; Eveline Hutchins, bored and seeking new sensations; "Daughter" (Anne Elizabeth Trent), a relief worker; and Ben Compton,...