The scene is the end of the Gilded Age in New York City. Ellen Thatcher is a young girl who aspires to be an actress. Young Jimmy Herf returns after years abroad, and rejects business school, becoming a reporter. George Baldwin is a lawyer who wins a big case, but continues to struggle to grow his business, eventually entering politics. The novel weaves the lives of these characters together throughout the narrative.*Manhattan Transfer* also has a good number minor characters, some...

A portrait of New York City, drawn by describing the interconnected lives of dozens of people - bankers, chefs, bums, cabdrivers and others. Written in an impressionistic style, with vivid descriptions and bursts of overheard conversation, it has more in common with films than traditional novels.

‘Manhattan Transfer,’ considered by many to be John Dos Passos's greatest work, was first published in 1925. There are several separate stories that overlap one another. With these stories, the novel describes the development of urban life that took place in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. It is believed to be one of the most influential books of Dos Passos. The novel presents Manhattan as a place that is quite merciless, but it teems with activity and energy. The author...

For this history, Dos Passos returns to the American colonial period and early nationhood, exploring the personalities who won the nation’s independence from England: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Adams, and George Washington.Originally called “The World Turned Upside Down,” The Men Who Made the Nation covers the period from 1781 to Hamilton’s death in 1804. The work crystallizes the author’s fascination with the psychology of the colonial freedom fighter and pre...

Manhattan Transfer, considered to be one of Dos Passos' most important works, describes the development of urban life in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age as told through a series of overlapping individual stories, primarily, of four people living in Manhattan from the 1890s to the late 1920s. The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy and restlessness. The book shows ...

John Dos Passos's second novel, Three Soldiers, was published in 1921 after many rejections from publishers and censorship squabbles. The novel, which was hailed as a masterpiece on its original publication, stands as one of the most grimly honest portraits of World War I. This anti-war novel focuses on three soldiers- Fuselli, an Italian American store clerk from San Francisco; Chrisfield, a farm boy from Indiana; and Andrews, a musically gifted Harvard graduate from New York-who...

This gorgeous new paperback edition collects the three volumes of John Dos Passos’s acclaimed U.S.A. trilogy, a foundational work of 20th-century American literature named one of the best books of the twentieth century by the Modern Library, and a "linguistically adventurous national portrait for a precarious age—his, and ours" (The New Yorker).The U.S.A. trilogy, comprised of the novels The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big M...

John Roderigo Dos Passos (January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was a radical American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Chicago, Illinois and he went on to Harvard College, graduating in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and Italy, later joining the U.S. Army...

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 ...

John Dos Passos’ ground breaking novel Manhattan Transfer is a landmark literary achievement. The book attacks the consumerism and social indifference of contemporary American urban life, portraying a Manhattan that is merciless yet teeming with energy, restlessness, and possibilities that too few will ultimately share. Manhattan Transfer was inspired in part by James Joyce's Ulysses and T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. In it we meet a large ensemble cast of characters who are struggling, fai...

‘Manhattan Transfer,’ considered by many to be John Dos Passos's greatest work, was first published in 1925. There are several separate stories that overlap one another. With these stories, the novel describes the development of urban life that took place in New York City from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age. It is believed to be one of the most influential books of Dos Passos. The novel presents Manhattan as a place that is quite merciless, but it teems with activity and energy. The author...

"It is not simply that [Dos Passos] has a keen eye for people, but that he has a keen eye for so many different kinds of people."— The New York TimesMarking the end of "one of the most ambitious projects that an American novelist has ever undertaken" ( Time), The Big Money brings us back to America after the Great War, a nation on the upswing. Industrialism booms. The stock market surges. Lindbergh takes his solo flight. Henry Ford makes automobil...