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