Nineteen Nineteen

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 , said Edmund Wilson, Dos Passos was taking on the world. Counted among the best novels of the century by the Modern Library and by some of the finest writers working today, U.S.A. is being talked about, studied, and read again, not just by students of modernism but by readers of all ages both here and abroad. Here is a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation, buzzing with history and life on every page. 1919 is literally what so many novels are erroneously called: a ‘slice of life’ (Chicago Tribune). America and the world are at war. A low-caste sailor, a minister’s daughter, a young poet, a radical Jew, and a wide-eyed Texas girl are thrown into the snarl.