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  • Published: 15 January 2002
  • ISBN: 9780141185811
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1184
  • RRP: $50.00

U.S.a.




In this experimental trilogy, Dos Passos uses \"camera eye\" and \"newsreel\" sections to create a fragmented atmosphere. Through the testimony of numerous characters, both fictional and historical figures, he buids up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century.

  • Published: 15 January 2002
  • ISBN: 9780141185811
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1184
  • RRP: $50.00

About the author

John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) was born in Chicago and graduated from Harvard in 1916. His service as an ambulance driver in Europe at the end of World War I led him to write Three Soldiers in 1919, the first in a series of works that established him as one of the most prolific, inventive, and influential American writers of the twentieth century. This volume was edited by Townsend Ludington, Cary C. Boshamer Professor of English and American Studies at the University of North Carolina and author of John Dos Passos: A Twentieth Century Odyssey, and Daniel Aaron (1912-2016), Victor S. Thomas Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University and a founder of The Library of America.
Over his long career, Dos Passos wrote 42 novels, as well as numerous poems, essays, and plays, and created more than 400 pieces of art.

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Praise for U.S.a.

The biggest influence was a novel my father gave me to read at the age of about 13, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos. At that age, it just got me. You can trace back everything I do to that novel because it's all about the relationship between grand history and individual experience. And it's a collage with quotes from newsreels, cinema, and newspapers-a collage of history. That's where I get it all from.

Adam Curtis (filmmaker)
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