Best Selling Books by John Dos Passos

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.

With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his \"vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America\" (Forum), lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope, but also for its groundbreaking style. Again, 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 modern life 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, a radical Jew, and we glimpse Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier.

John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896-1970) was an American novelist and artist. In 1912 he attended Harvard University. Following his graduation in 1916 he travelled to Spain to study art and architecture. With World War I raging in Europe and America not yet participating, Dos Passos volunteered in July 1917 for the S. S.U. 60 of the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps. He worked as a driver in Paris and in north-central Italy. By the late summer of 1918, he had completed a draft of his first novel. Considered one of the Lost Generation writers, Dos Passosa first novel, One Manas Initiation- 1917, was published in 1920. It was followed by an antiwar story, Three Soldiers (1921). His major work is the U. S.A. trilogy comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932), and The Big Money (1936). Between 1942 and 1945, Dos Passos worked as a journalist covering World War II. His other works include: A Pushcart at the Curb (1922), Streets of Night (1923) and Journeys Between Wars (1938).

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.

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.

With U.S.A. John Dos Passos is said to have written the great American novel. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway were cultivating their \"own little corners\

Considered by many to be John Dos Passos''s greatest work, Manhattan Transfer is an \"expressionistic picture of New York\" (New York Times) in the 1920s that reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike. From Fourteenth Street to the Bowery, Delmonico''s to the underbelly of the city waterfront, Dos Passos chronicles the lives of characters struggling to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it. \"A novel of the very first importance\" (Sinclair Lewis), Manhattan Transfer is a masterpiece of modern fiction and a lasting tribute to the dual-edged nature of the American dream.

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.”

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.

With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his \"vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America\" (Forum), lauded on publication of the first volume not only for its scope, but also for its groundbreaking style. Again, 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 modern life 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, a radical Jew, and we glimpse Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier. 1919 provides an incomparable portrait of America from the turn of the century to the Depression of 1929.