As the "Great War" inspired much great poetry, including that of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, so did it inspire compelling prose. John Dos Passos volunteered to drive an ambulance in France during the First World War. The brutality of his experiences turned him against not only war, but capitalism and inspired him to write One Man's Initiation: 1917.

Author Biography

John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896 - 1970) was an American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art and architecture. During World War I, he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and in Italy, later joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps. In 1920 Dos Passos' first novel, One Man's Initiation: 1917 was published and in 1925 his novel, Manhattan Transfer, became a commercial success. In 1928, he went to the Soviet Union to study socialism and later became a leading participant in the 1935 First American Writers Congress sponsored by the communist-leaning League of American Writers. He was in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, when the murder of his friend Jose Robles soured his attitude toward communism and led to severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway.