From Library Journal
In honor of his centennial, Dos Passos is being drafted into the prestigious Library of America collection with his greatest work. This volume gathers the three novels known generically as USA?The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), The Big Money (1933)?along with scholarly notes and a chronology of the author's life. The Library of America edition of USA is undoubtedly among the finest ever published. Dos Passos couldn't have received a better birthday present. For all fiction collections.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Unique for its epic scale and panoramic social sweep, Dos Passos' masterpiece comprises three novels--"The 42nd Parallel," "1919," and "The Big Money"--which create an unforgettable collective portrait of modern America. This one-volume edition includes detailed notes and a chronicle of the world events which serve as a backdrop.


From the Publisher
The Library of America is an award-winning, nonprofit program dedicated to publishing America's best and most significant writing in handsome, enduring volumes, featuring authoritative texts. Hailed as "the most important book-publishing project in the nation's history" (Newsweek), this acclaimed series is restoring America's literary heritage in "the finest-looking, longest-lasting edition ever made" (New Republic).


About the Author
Editors of this volume are 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, Emeritus Professor of English at Harvard University and a founder of The Library of America.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Unique among American novels for its epic scope and panoramic and social sweep, John Dos Passos' U.S.A. has long been acknowledged as a monument of modern fiction. In the novels that make up the trilogy—The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936)—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. In his prologue Dos Passos writes: U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil...But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.

The trilogy is filled with American speech: labor radicals and advertising executives, sailors and stenographers, interior decorators and movie stars.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

In honor of his centennial, Dos Passos is being drafted into the prestigious Library of America collection with his greatest work. This volume gathers the three novels known generically as U.S.A.; The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), The Big Money (1933) along with scholarly notes and a chronology of the author's life. The Library of America edition of U.S.A. is undoubtedly among the finest ever published. Dos Passos couldn't have received a better birthday present. For all fiction collections.

Library Journal