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John Dos Passos. (credit: Courtesy of the National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

(born Jan. 14, 1896, Chicago, Ill., U.S. — died Sept. 28, 1970, Baltimore, Md.) U.S. writer. Son of a wealthy lawyer, Dos Passos attended Harvard University. His wartime service as an ambulance driver and later work as a journalist led him to see the U.S. as "two nations," one for the rich and one for the poor. His reputation as social historian, radical critic of American life, and major novelist of the postwar "lost generation" rests primarily on his powerful U.S.A. trilogy, comprising The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936).

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