Classics · ThoughtfulTwelve characters, newsreels and biographies map the United States before, during and after World War I
U.S.A.
Three novels and a collage of newsreels and biographies portray America from 1900 to the 1930s
Dos Passos published the three books as The 42nd Parallel (1930), Nineteen Nineteen (1932) and The Big Money (1936), and Modern Library issued them together as U.S.A. in 1937. The trilogy uses four modes: fictional narratives that follow twelve characters from childhood, 68 Newsreel sections of headlines, article fragments and song lyrics, autobiographical stream-of-consciousness Camera Eye passages, and biographies of public figures such as Woodrow Wilson and Henry Ford. The setting is the United States in the first three decades of the twentieth century, before, during and after World War I.
More about this book
Who
Twelve fictional characters, among them Mac, Janey Williams, J. Ward Moorehouse, Richard Ellsworth Savage, Mary French and Margo Dowling.
World
The United States, before, during and after World War I.
What makes it different
Fiction is mixed with Newsreel collages, Camera Eye passages and biographies of real people.
Feel
Panoramic and demanding.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- U.S.A.Wikipedia