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 th
e finest writers working today, U.S.A. is a grand, kaleidoscopic portrait of a n
ation, 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 centu
ry. Slowly, in stories artfully spliced together, the lives and fortunes of five
characters unfold. Mac, Janey, Eleanor, Ward, and Charley are caught on the sto
rm track of this parallel and blown New Yorkward. As their lives cross and doubl
e back again, the likes of Eugene Debs, Thomas Edison, and Andrew Carnegie make
cameo appearances.
