{"product_id":"usa-penguin-modern-classics-9780141185811","title":"U.S.A. (Penguin Modern Classics)","description":"\u003cp\u003eMy literary hero is John Dos Passos - Adam Curtis (filmmaker)  Wonderful and extraordinary Robert McCrum  Observer  No novelist in America has written more sombrely of the dangers to individual integrity in a centrally controlled society Alfred Kazin  The Penguin Modern Classics edition of John Dos Passos U.S.A. is a groundbreaking work of experimental fiction which  with its unique melange of fact and fiction  creates a compelling  tragic vision of America at the dawn of the twentieth century.  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 builds up a composite picture of American society in the first quarter of the 20th century. Richly detailed and throbbing with vitality  U.S.A. vividly evokes that uncertain period when America  so full of ideas and potential  was slowly and painfully abandoning the great American Dream.  John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago  the son of an eminent lawyer. After graduating from Harvard he served in the US Army Medical Corps during the First World War  and dabbled in journalism before embarking on life as a writer. In 1925 he published Manhattan Transfer  his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style - a mixture of fact and fiction. His began a series of panoramic epics of American life with the U.S.A. trilogy  using the same technique and tracing  through interwoven biographies  the story of America from the early twentieth century to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45666297511989,"sku":"ByrdShop_0141185813","price":39.61,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780141185811.jpg?v=1782427413","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/usa-penguin-modern-classics-9780141185811","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}