1919 (USA)
The middle panel of the U.S.A. trilogy carries Dos Passos's fragmented method from World War I through the Red Scare and into the boom years. The same four narrative modes—fiction, biography, newsreel, and Camera Eye—continue, now trained on a country trying to convince itself that prosperity is the same as virtue. The effect is documentary, judgmental, and occasionally exhausting.Signet's edition keeps the volume small and companionable with the other two, the kind of paperback trilogy readers used to buy one piece at a time from drugstore racks, hoping the next installment would match the first. For anyone who believes American history makes more sense when it is broken into pieces and reassembled under pressure, this is the installment that does the most damage.
