Dos Passos: USA (The 32nd Parallel; 1919; The Big Money) (Library of America series, No. 85)

Dos Passos, John

ISBN 10: 1883011140 / ISBN 13: 9781883011147

Published by Library of America, New York, NY, USA, 1996

About this Item

Reprint. Ruby red cloth-covered boards, with matching silk ribbon marker bound in. 8vo. Volume and dust jacket both in as new condition: still in publisher's original shrink wrap. Starting in 1979, The Library of America was founded as a not-for-profit organisation with the explicit intention of preserving the literary heritage of the United States by keeping permanently in print the best of American literature. The series includes over 300 volumes, all authoritative editions averaging over 1000pp and featuring cloth covers, sewn bindings and ribbon markers. All are printed on premium acid-free paper that will not tan over time. We have many titles from this fine series of quality produced books in stock and can offer generous discounts to those ordering more than one title at a time - please inquire.

Seller Inventory # 043868

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dos Passos: USA (The 32nd Parallel; 1919; The Big Money) (Library of America series, No. 85)
• Publisher: Library of America, New York, NY, USA
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1883011140
• ISBN 13: 9781883011147
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: As New
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Series Books
  • Fiction - General

About this title

Synopsis

Unique among American books for its epic scope and panoramic social sweep, U.S.A. has long been acknowledged as a monument of modern fiction. Now The Library of America presents an exclusive one-volume edition of this enduring masterwork by John Dos Passos, including for the first time detailed notes and a chronicle of the world events that serve as a backdrop.

In the novels that make up the trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—Dos Passos creates an unforgettable collective portrait of America, shot through with sardonic comedy and brilliant social observation. He interweaves the careers of his characters and the events of their time with a narrative verve and breathtaking technical skill that make U.S.A. among the most compulsively readable of modern classics.

A startling range of experimental devices captures the textures and background noises of twentieth-century life: “Newsreels” with blaring headlines; autobiographical “Camera Eye” sections with poetic stream-of-consciousness; “biographies” evoking emblematic historical figures like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, John Reed, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thorstein Veblen, and the Unknown Soldier. Holding everything together is sheer storytelling power, tracing dozens of characters from the Spanish-American War to the onset of the Depression.

The U.S.A. trilogy is filled with American speech: labor radicals and advertising executives, sailors and stenographers, interior decorators and movie stars. Their crisscrossing destinies take in wars and revolutions, desperate love affairs and harrowing family crises, corrupt public triumphs and private catastrophes, in settings that include the trenches of World War I, insurgent Mexico, Hollywood studios in the silent era, Wall Street boardrooms, and the tumultuous streets of Boston just before the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

The volume contains newly researched chronologies of Dos Passos’s life and of world events cited in U.S.A., notes, and an essay on textual selection.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

About the Authors

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.

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.