"1919" is the sequel to "42nd Parallel", and takes Dos Passos's examination of early twentieth century America on to World War One. In fact, considering that this book is part two of the "USA" trilogy, it might seem strange that remarkably little of it is set in America.

Told in the same picaresque style as "42nd Parallel", with "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" sequences, most of the action takes place in England, France, Italy and a variety of other countries: for example, there's a section devoted to volunteer ambulance drivers in France and Italy which reminded me of Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms" (although Dos Passos's account is far better).

It could be argued that the location of the plot is not as important as the characters' attitudes to the war and America's role in it, and the post-war "settlement". Dos Passos's characters experience the futility and waste of war, culminating in the superb ending of "Newsreel 43/The Body of an American".

It seemed to me that Dos Passos was saying that for America, World War One was a double-edged sword in that (except for those who objected to US involvement on various grounds) it masked the socio-economic divisions in the country under a patina of patriotism. But it also heightened such tensions, both directly as the fighting men expected to return to a home in which their sacrifices would be rewarded, and indirectly through the revolutionary example set by events in Russia.

"1919" is a pessimistic novel, in that Dos Passos seems to state that the self-sacrifices were not really acknowledged, and the world did not turn out to be a more just or peaceful place. This extended to the personal level - none of the relationships between the characters in the novel really work - most end in bitter disappointment, and in the early parts of the novel sex is often experienced by way of unwelcome harassment.

G Rodgers

The first book of this series, 42nd parallel was simply amazing in the crosscutting technique mixing it up with news clippings and stream of consciousness rantings but in this book does Dos Passos finally find his real voice in his fury at "Mr Wilson's War". His hatred for the war crackles through every page, every sentence is filled with a fury that can't be described, he knows the war was wrong and he knows exactly why and with the patience of a master he sits there and points each of his ideas out and sets it before you and in the end you don't know what to do. The book is more intense than anything I've read before, pages just fly past as the character histories pile up, as the Newsreels and Camera Eyes (definitely at their best here, as he tells his own WWI experiences) flip past each other from one to the other with dizzying speed where you find yourself immsered in a world which you (probably) never knew. For once the workers rights stuff is pushed to the side, showing up mostly toward the end and the last fifty or so pages of the book are breathtakingly brilliant finally hitting the climax with the prosepoem "Body of an American" Dos Passos' own biography of the Unknown Soldier, standing for every American that died for his country without ever really know what he was dying for. The rage and the passion here alone makes it one of the best books of the century and a definite forgotten masterpiece, and coupled with his lyrical prose and sense of characterization you have something that is better than any history book, even if it makes no pretense of being objective and makes the reader think. Don't let this series be forgotten!

Maybe it was because of the (intentional or not) socialist undercurrent that runs throughout the novel and even the entire series (I'm halfway through the second book as if this writing) but this is definitely a book that deserves to be rediscovered by anyone interested in great American literature, not enough people speak of Dos Passos' name in the same breath as Hemingway and Fitzgerald and that has to change. Originally when I saw this series I figured it was just another take on early American life, showing some scenes and making subtle statements about them, nothing all that interesting, but boy was I wrong. This is like nothing you've ever read, Dos Passos keenly juxtaposes news clippings with his own views on writing the novel (the sporadically brilliant if sometimes incoherent "Camera Eye" sections) while dancing around with a cast of characters from all walks of life, showing America at this time with all its hopes and dreams, showing as these people strive to get what they want and more often than not overreach and fall back farther than when they started, only to get up and try again. Dos Passos definitely has a poor view of the American way and while he has great sympathy for his characters, most of them no matter what the background turn out to be unlucky in love and life, but it's interesting watching them try anyway. The next best thing to experiencing the early part of the century other than taking a time machine back there, this is something that deserves to be read and treasured, I haven't even gone into how Dos Passos has a lyrical way with every sentence, managing to capture the chatter and talk of the people without being all that obvious about it, you just fall into the rhythms and let the book carry you along. And the next book is supposed to be even better. Track all three books down and read them!

You will never read another book -- or series of books -- that can match the U.S.A. trilogy's characterization, scope, and power to make lives that ended a century ago seem as relevant as the latest news report. The 42nd Parallel might be the best of the three, and provides rare insights into a time long past, while creating memorable characters whose triumphs and tragedies are not easily forgotten.

With the U.S.A. trilogy, Many think John Dos Passos wrote the great American novel, and I'm one of them. This is a great book

I initially read the entire trilogy, U. S. A. by John Dos Passos, as a soldier in Vietnam, in June and July of 1969. Reading the two earlier volumes on America's lofty aims and actual experiences in World War One and the economic boom which followed it in the United States helped me try to imagine what my life would be like, as I faced growing old in a country which increasingly depended upon its global dominance for its style of life. Volume 3, THE BIG MONEY, ended this gigantic series with a political point of view that stuck with me more than any of the fictional parts of this novel. A look at the Contents in the sample pages gives some indication of the other tidbits in this trilogy, Newsreels, popular songs, and short bioographies, which make the composition of this trilogy unique.

Of the biographies, I would consider "The Bitter Drink" on Veblen the most intellectual item in THE BIG MONEY, and my best introduction to how Socrates ended up drinking the hemlock. Most biographies were about people who were so famous that they might still be remembered. "Tin Lizzie" is a life of Henry Ford. "Poor Little Rich Boy" was William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner whose father died in Washington, a senator, but who was only elected to the House of Representatives, where he justified his politics with, "you know where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn't it better that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied than have somebody else do it who might not have the same real property relations that I have?" However familiar this might sound today, Dos Passos wrote that "his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble borrowing a million dollars, and politically he was ratpoison." The biography of Hearst is at page 375 in the paperback which is currently available, a few pages after "The Camera Eye (50) they have clubbed us off the streets" (p. 371) which says:

America our nation has been beaten by strangers who have turned our language inside out who have taken the clean words our fathers spoke and made them slimy and foul

their hired men sit on the judge's bench they sit back with their feet on the tables under the dome of the State House they are ignorant of our beliefs they have the dollars the guns the armed forces the powerplants

they have built the electricchair and hired the executioner to throw the switch

The final nonfiction biography in THE BIG MONEY is called "Power Superpower" on page 420. Samuel Insull had been learning shorthand "and jotting down the speeches in PARLIAMENT for the papers" before he came to American in 1881 to be Edison's personal secretary. As president of Chicago Edison Company after 1892, "If anybody didn't like what Samuel Insull did he was a traitor." The part I liked best was after the stockmarket crash, when there were accounting problems involving a number of companies. "He held directorates in eightyfive companies, he was chairman of sixtyfive, president of eleven: it took him three hours to sign his resignations." When "Revolt against the moneymanipulators was in the air," he ran off and extradition proceedings involved at least four countries to bring him back to Chicago for a trial. So, "With voices choked with emotion headliners of Chicago business told from the witnessstand how much Insull had done for business in Chicago. There wasn't a dry eye in the jury." The result was different from the trial of Socrates in Athens a few thousand years earlier, and I think Insull had a better retirement than Socrates asked his friends to provide if they had to pay a fine for him. Maybe we are better off than some people. Read this book anyway.

The Big Money is a great work that exposes the American Dream as a destructive race towards an explosive jumping off point. Whichever way we make the money, it will end in devouring the part of us that was never mercenary. I'm a big fan of John Dos Passos, but I have to admit that if you aren't the type of reader who likes to visualize written images, his writing would be pretty wasted on you.

I have not read this book yet, but it won the 1999 Modern Language Association Prize for Independent Scholars, a great honor.

I think my mom's the best writer at Amazon.com. Everyone should buy this book!

Have you ever wondered why two people get together? Why does "true love", if there is such a thing, happen? That's the question posed and answered by this novel. When two people, any two people, fall in love, they bring together their history, their lives and everything and everyone they have ever been. That's what John Dos Passos has written. Not the love story itself. That happens but is not the central set of events in the book. Instead, he has brought together everything that has happened to the two lovers, their parents and their country, everything that has made them the people they are, that makes them, inevitably, lovers.

Nanney is able to dissect the personality of Dos Passos extraordinarily well. In addition, her writing style has become a favorite of mine. I highly recommend this book to those who are interested in Dos Passos, as well as those who are interested in American Studies in general.

It seems almost impossible that John Dos Passos has slid into anonymity--his considerable literary reputation once rivaled that of his close friend and drinking buddy, Ernest Hemingway--but few readers today recognize him at all. Part of a trilogy that he published in 1932, entitled, "USA," ("The 42nd Parallel," and "The Big Money") "Nineteen Nineteen" is a novel of extraordinary historical sweep and stylistic craft. Dos Passos was influenced by the great experimental genius of James Joyce's "Ulysses," a novel that revolutionized fictional narration. Using several experimental techniques, fictional and non-fictional biographies, a poetic, stream of conscious voice entitled, "The Camera Eye," and a cinematic-montage technique that Dos Passos called, "Newsreels," this novel sweeps a decade's events from 1910 to 1919. The middle novel of the trilogy, "Nineteen Nineteen" traces historical events, particularly the devastating results of World War I, and individuals caught-up in the gigantic forces that reshaped the 20th Century. His historical portraits, or biographies, of Henry Ford, J.P. Morgan, Joe Hill, and Woodrow Wilson combine with his stunning fictional, almost Dickensian, characters like a sailor named, Joe Williams, a rich, Harvard kid, named Richard Ellsworth Savage, or an idealistic woman, Eveline Hutchins, who finds the inexorable forces of war and economic power inescapable and ruinous. These accounts are told with a tone of satiric irony and bittersweet fatalism. The novel remains, despite its neglected status, one of the great achievements of American literature despite its flawed politics. Dos Passos began a devoted socialist, convinced that capitalism had both caused and profited from the war. Later in his career, particularly in a 1950's trilogy entitled, "Mid-Century," Dos Passos repudiated his left-wing sympathies for a turn to the political right. In spite of these ideological trappings, he remains, along with William Faulkner, one of the most significant exponents of experimental fiction in America over the past millenium.

"42nd Parallel" is set in the USA in the early twentieth century, and leads up to America's involvement in World War One. The novel is written in a picaresque style, the author switching between a number of different characters, developing their stories at distinct paces, and gradually entwining their fates.

I felt that Dos Passos was trying to give snap-shots of the American society of the time, a society greatly uneasy with itself, in which labour unrest, racism and social divisions seemed to be very stark. For example, Dos Passos accords socialist ideas a greater prominence than I had anticipated, which I found very interesting.

Dos Passos's prose style is spare and uncomplicated, reminding me at times of Hemingway. But, whereas I'm not fond of Hemingway's writing, I was carried along by Dos Passos. It's difficult to say why, but perhaps his observational eye and command of dialogue felt more convincing, more authentic. Added to that of course is Dos Passos's frequent use of "The Camera Eye" and "Newsreel" sequences, which change the reader's perception, giving a kaleidoscopic effect, evoking the time at both a personal and "headline" level. I suppose that people perceive and experience their environments through a mixture of different senses and media: it seemed to me that Dos Passos was trying to recreate that feeling for the reader.

A stimulating and absorbing read.

G Rodgers

A politically divided America, under the constant threat of terrorist violence, responds to tragedy with a spontaneous outburst of patriotism and volunteerism. The events, attitudes, and emotions of 2001 are presaged in Dos Passos's description of America 1900-14. The novel follows the intersecting lives of several characters, whom you will find surprisingly modern in their attitudes and morals (or lack of them). Their world is also surprisingly like ours: Anarchists wage a campaign of terrorism that leaves citizens feeling unsafe in public places; technology changes lifestyles and breaks down social barriers. The 42nd Parallel is easy to read--even hard to put down at times. More importantly, it gives a sense of place and perspective that helps us understand our own time a little better.

It took me a bit to get into the flow of the novel. There are three levels of narrative in the book, and two of them - The Camera Eye and Newsreel - are positively Joycean. On top of that, the narratives about individual characters - the most detailed of the three levels - are written so that once you get to know a character, Dos Passos introduces a new character (there are 4 total) in a new narrative. It can be a little exhausting at times.

Once I got past that, the richness of the language and brilliance of the story became evident. His style is simple, somewhat similar to Steinbeck's, and reflects the "common man" quality of the people he has created. But his scope is far greater than that of any of his contemporaries. It is truly a work of genius. Dos Passos, through 1000 pages (of all 3 volumes) and a dozen main characters, has managed to accruately tell the story of a coming-of-age United States in a human, compelling way.

I love this book/trilogy. It's probably my favorite book I've read so far. I would recommend this book to people whom in the past were put off by older literature. This book, although set in the early 20th century, seems fresh and alive. You may have difficulty at first with some of the more experimental sections, like "The Camera Eye", but I wouldn't let that discourage myself from recommending this book. Those sections tend to be rather on the short side anyway. I wish Dos Passos was more thought of today than he is, because he's an excellent writer. I often couldn't believe how many pages I had read in a session, as I got lost in the book completely. Read this book!

This is the true American Epic.

Dos Passos wrote this trilogy almost as a documentary. It is a history lesson, with newspaper articles, biographical sketches, beautiful train of thought prose poems, and, in the midst of it all, fictional but brutally realistic characters who each experience the times through a unique set of eyes.

Since I have read this book it has become one of my favorites, and there are few titles with more meaning to me than _U.S.A_.

As an author of a debut novel in its initial release, I find myself amazed by these three books by John Dos Passos. 42nd PARALLEL, 1919, and BIG MONEY tell the tale of the growth of America into the greatest and most powerful nation in the history of the world. Mr. Dos Passos pulls out all the stops with experimental techniques as well as traditional story telling. Each time I read one of these books in this trilogy, I realize what a masterful writer Mr. Dos Passos was. These are his best works. No question about it. They may be the best three novels, taken as a trilogy, ever written by an American.

Within the first few pages, it becomes apparent quickly that Manhattan Transfer is not a traditional novel. Dos Passos presents a collage of New York City in the 1920's that even 75 years later describes well the modern city. His technique of jumping from character to character as they interact with each other within the city as some succeed and others fail provides a bleak, yet at the same time oddly wonderful reading. His injection of newspaper ads, songs, and advertisements captures so well the bustle of large cities. I can only wonder why he is often left out of the "canon" of American Modernists. It does take adjustment to read Manhattan Transfer, but you will be more than rewarded for your efforts.

This book is really one of the best American novels. Its style is unique. You will not "read" this book, but you are going to
smell New York, hear New York, see New York, walk around Manhattan on your own sore feet. It is also a fascinating work because different stories run in parallel in it. It may take you a while to find your way through the book, but then, it will give you a panoramic impression about NY at Dos Passos' time. This book is also a somewhat sceptical, even resigned or pessimistic book. Certainly, it reflects some of Dos Passos' own experiences, and life is not always happy-ended. Don't blame that on the book. This book is inimitable. Even Dos Passos himself did not succeed to create another work which is as uniform in style, compelling, impressive and impressionistic as this one. The USA trilogy is far more diconnected, harder to read, and the unique stlye of Manhattan Transfer turns into mere mannerism in the later trilogy. However, in "Manhattan Transfer", everything is perfectly at balance, the style fits the objective perfectly, and there is no arbitrariness. Be patient when reading this book. It does not "tell a story" in straightforward way, so the fun of reading this book is not following a well-knit plot, but the fun lies rather in the process of reading itself, enjoying the style, cherishing every single line. A must read.

The prose style presented in Manhattan Transfer is fresh and unorthodox, two characteristics that all great literature must contain.

The narrator of the novel is an eavesdropper who chooses his subjects at will. You are able to spend three pages with a subject, then not hear from the subject until scores of pages later, if at all.

Manhattan Transfer serves as a history book, but not the standard type. You actually get to feel, hear, taste and smell what it was like to be in NYC during the early half of the 20th century. Most history books cite landmark events, but Manhattan Transfer records the life of the people living rather than the events the people were involved in.

John Dos Passos is one of the most overlooked, underappreciated American writers of the 20th century. I highly recommend this book to everyone. You must visit NYC to fully appreciate the book, though.