New Releases by John Dos Passos

"One Man''s Initiation—1917" is a novel written by American author John Dos Passos, published in 1920. The novel is a semi-autobiographical work that draws on Dos Passos'' own experiences during World War I. The story follows the journey of John Andrews, a young American who enlists in the ambulance corps of the American Red Cross during World War I. The novel explores his experiences on the battlefield, the challenges he faces, and the impact of war on his psyche and worldview. It vividly depicts the horrors and disillusionment of war, as well as the camaraderie among soldiers. "One Man''s Initiation—1917" is considered one of Dos Passos'' early works, and it reflects the impact of his own experiences as an ambulance driver during the war. The novel is known for its realistic portrayal of the wartime atmosphere and the psychological effects of combat. It provides valuable insights into the author''s literary development and his exploration of social and political themes.

Harlan Miners Speak, originally published in 1932, remains today a vivid record of the plight of coal miners in eastern Kentucky. Led by prominent left-leaning writers Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners traveled to Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1931 to examine the situation of the miners and their families.

Here, from the legendary author John Dos Passos and American Heritage, are portraits of three men critical to the early history of the United States: Aaron Burr, whose political skills carried him to the threshold of the White House but was ultimately indicted for treason; Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution who could not apply his ideals to a France sliding into terror; and Robert Morris, whose skills as a financier aided the new nation but led to his own ruin.

In a novel that closely parallels author John Dos Passos’s own ideological struggles during the Spanish Civil War, protagonist Glenn Spotswood, an American, travels to Spain to fight on the Republican side. There, Spotswood joins the Communist Party to help establish a more just society, but his idealism quickly degrades under the stress of party orthodoxy and hypocrisy.

A record of his childhood, young adulthood, and twenties, The Best Times is a collage of cherished memories. He reflects on the joys of an itinerant life enriched by new and diverse friendships, customs, cultures, and cuisines. Luminary personalities and landscapes abound in the 1920s literary world Dos Passos loved. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Gerald and Sara Murphy, Horsley Gantt—they are his beloved friends. Spain, the French Riviera, Paris, Persia, the Caucasus—they are his beloved footpaths.

Before John Dos Passos enjoys fame as a chronicler and critic of American society, he wins recognition for command of aesthetics. Orient Express, a memoir of the author’s travels through Eastern Europe, the Near East, and the Middle East, focuses on sights, sounds, and smells rather than plot or character. Dos Passos applies his instincts as a painter to mountain ranges and grimy alleyways, finding beauty everywhere. His tour extends from Tiflis, Georgia, to Erivan, Armenia, and Marrakesh, Morocco; from Kasvin, Iran, to Baghdad, Iraq, and Damascus, Syria. He crosses the Syrian Desert, observes the aftermath of the Greek-Turkish War, climbs the Caucasus, explores Persia during the rise of Reza Kahn, and records the creation of Iraq by the British. His message is clear and relevant to contemporary travelers: holiness and happiness abounds in the East as much as the West. “With the name of Allah for all baggage,” Dos Passos writes, “you could travel from the Great Wall of China to the Niger and be fairly sure of food, and often of money, if only you were ready to touch your forehead in the dust five times a day and put away self and the glamorous West. And yet,” he adds, “the West is conquering.”

Dos Passos''s first novel published in 1920.

“A Depression-era novel about American tumult has—perhaps unsurprisingly—aged quite well.”—The New Yorker In 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his “vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America” (Forum). Employing a host of experimental devices that would inspire a whole new generation of writers to follow, Dos Passos captures the many textures, flavors, and background noises of the era with a cinematic touch and unparalleled nerve.1919 opens to find America and the world at war, and Dos Passos’s characters, many of whom we met in the first volume, are thrown into the snarl. We follow the daughter of a Chicago minister, a wide-eyed Texas girl, a young poet, and a Jewish radical, and we get glimpses of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier. Named one of the Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century, “U.S.A. is a masterpiece” (Tim O’Brien) and 1919 is an unforgettable chapter in the saga. “It’s the kind of book a reader never forgets.”—Chicago Daily Tribune

John Dos Passos, the distinguished American novelist and historian has been personally interested in Brazil for the last fifteen years. He first visited the country in 1948, and returned again in 1956 and 1962. This book, which is based on his experiences in Brazil, presents the people and landscapes of a young country on the move. Here you will find several extraordinary reports on Brasilia, first in the planning stage, second in the wildly frantic period when it was a half-finished group of buildings, and, finally, as it appeared to Mr. Dos Passos in the summer of 1962 when it was at last beginning to function as a city. Here, too, is the story of Brazil’s great road building program designed to unify the country, and of the political battles in this enormous country which totters on the verge of a Communist takeover. From traveling the length and breadth of the land and from interviewing all kinds of people: politicians like Carlos Lacerda and religious leaders like Bishop Sales, Mr. Dos Passos has been able to transmit some of the flavor of the most important of Latin American nations. Mr. Dos Passos himself is of Portuguese descent, and he speaks Portuguese as well as Spanish. He begins this readable and fascinating book with a much needed short sketch of the history of Brazil and how the Portuguese tradition differs from the Spanish in South America.

Despite sickness in the final years of his life, Dos Passos presses on for adventure. He and his wife journey to Easter Island, where they explore the history behind the famous statues—called maois. “When I was a small boy,” Dos Passos says, “some kind person took me to the British Museum. There I saw a statue, a huge, rough, dark-gray statue with [a] long, sad, dark-gray face. The statue stared back out of deep, sunken eyes. What was it trying to say? To this day I can remember the feeling it gave me of savage, brooding melancholy.”

This selective history of Portugal reflects the author’s fascination with his own Portuguese/Madeiran heritage. The work tracks the nation’s rise and fall as a world power, drawing from the author’s travels and archival research. “Dos Passos,” writes historian J. H. Plumb, “brings to his material a novelist’s acute eye for human character and a narrative skill that any historian might envy; and he has produced one of the most readable books on the subject that I know.”

With his U.S.A. trilogy, comprising THE 42nd PARALLEL, 1919, and THE BIG MONEY, John Dos Passos is said by many to have written the great American novel. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were cultivating what Edmund Wilson once called their own little corners, John Dos Passos was taking on the world. Counted as one of the best novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library and by some of the finest writers working today, U.S.A. is a grand, kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation, buzzing with history and life on every page. The trilogy opens with THE 42nd PARALLEL, where we find a young country at the dawn of the twentieth century. Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the storm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and double back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make cameo appearances.

Unique for its epic scale and panoramic social sweep, Dos Passos'' masterpiece comprises three novels--The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money--which create an unforgettable collective portrait of modern America.

A novel begun in college and then reworked for seven years, this work mirrors the author''s experience at Harvard and in greater Boston. The novel reflects young Dos Passos''s interests in aestheticism, Greek and Roman culture, and Walt Whitman.

In the 1960''s John Dos Passos began calling his novel contemporary chronicles, and to his latest piece of fiction he gave the working title The Thirteenth Chronicle. These letters abd duarues naje a chronicle too.

THE BIG MONEY completes John Dos Passos''s three-volume "fable of America''s materialistic success and moral decline" (American Heritage) and marks the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" (Time). Here we come back to America after the war and find a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobiles. From New York to Hollywood, love affairs to business deals, it is a country taking the turns too fast, speeding toward the crash of 1929. Ultimately, whether the novels are read together or separately, they paint a sweeping portrait of collective America and showcase the brilliance and bravery of one of its most enduring and admired writers.

Contains American author John Dos Passo''s epic "U.S.A." trilogy which provides a collective portrait of America following dozens of characters from the Spanish-American War to the beginning of the Depression

Tells the story of the birth of our nation, from before the Revolution to 1810.

In this semi-autobiographical novel, an American has a doomed affair with a younger woman, Elsa, in Cuba during World War II. The love story, in its happiest moments, parallels the idyllic life that author John Dos Passos had with his first wife, Katy. In Havana, Roland Lancaster relives his exciting years as a war correspondent, while trying to recapture his youth and his fame. The novel plots a key concern of the author''s in the 1950s America''s rise to global prominence during World War II, and its loss of power in the years following the peace.

Portrait of the period when the New Deal was at the cocktail party stage in Washington. The novel critiques the gargantuan growth of bureaucracy in Washington during the Great Depression and World War II. The satiric novel conveys the author’s frustration with federal overreach and the hollow rhetoric that sells it to the people.