Chosen Country

by John Dos Passos

This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection

Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

John Dos Passos was a prominent American novelist, artist, and political thinker best known for his U.S.A. trilogy—The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money—a groundbreaking work of modernist fiction that employed experimental narrative techniques to depict the complexities of early 20th-century American life. Born in Chicago in 1896, he was educated at Harvard and served as an ambulance driver during World War I, experiences that deeply influenced his early literary themes. His first novel, One Man’s Initiation: 1917, and the antiwar Three Soldiers drew on his wartime observations and marked him as a major voice among the Lost Generation.
Dos Passos’s 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer brought him widespread recognition and introduced stylistic innovations that would define his later work. His U.S.A. trilogy fused fiction, biography, newsreel-style reportage, and autobiographical “Camera Eye” sections to explore the impact of capitalism, war, and political disillusionment on the American psyche. Once aligned with leftist politics, Dos Passos grew increasingly disillusioned with Communism, especially after the murder of his friend José Robles during the Spanish Civil War—a turning point that led to a break with Ernest Hemingway and a sharp turn toward conservatism.
Throughout his career, Dos Passos remained politically engaged, writing essays, journalism, and historical studies while also campaigning for right-leaning figures like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the 1960s. He contributed to publications such as American Heritage, National Review, and The Freeman, and published over forty books including biographies and historical reflections. Despite political shifts, his commitment to liberty and skepticism of authoritarianism remained central themes.
Also a visual artist, Dos Passos created cover art and illustrations for many of his own books, exhibiting a style influenced by modernist European art. Though less acclaimed for his painting, he remained artistically active throughout his life. His multidisciplinary approach and innovations in narrative structure influenced numerous writers and filmmakers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Norman Mailer and Adam Curtis.
Later recognized with the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize for literature in 1967, Dos Passos’s legacy endures through his literary innovations and sharp commentary on American identity. He died in 1970, leaving behind a vast and diverse body of work that continues to shape the landscape of American fiction.

Reviews

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know how you read and read a long book thinking you’ll never get through it and then when you finally get to the end, you miss it? That’s how this book was for me. It’s tough reading, densely written, with sections in French and more characters than anyone could keep tract of without a spreadsheet, but the writing is so rich, the stories so startlingly real that I persisted. Dos Passos seems to me ahead of his time. The action in this book takes place mostly between 1910 and 1920. While the characters are dealing with WWI, communism, women’s suffrage, and prohibition, they also get into child abuse, abortion, venereal disease, racism and other issues one might not expect to read in a book from this era. Those who have studied Dos Passos’ work say this is one of his more conservative novels. It’s difficult to describe the plot. The two main stories center on Jay Pignatelli, who grew up mostly in Europe and goes back there as an ambulance driver during the war, and Lulie Harrington, an orphan who chooses career over marriage. There are many other threads, some going back to before the Civil War. More than a single story, Dos Passos captures a group of young people seeking their place in the world in a country that is trying to do the same. It’s a heavy book, but worth the effort.

[Geoffrey Benn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “USA” trilogy is John Dos Passo’s best known work and is also one of my favorite books of all time. It weaves a web of interconnected stories about Americans from many walks of life during the first 30 years of the 20th century – in doing so it captures the rise and fall of radical politics and the birth of modern America. “Chosen Country,” written by Dos Passos 20 years after “USA” revisits this same time period, using many of the same approaches. The book focuses on Jay Pignatelli, the bastard son a prominent lawyer, as he tries to make his way in the world, first as an ambulance driver in World War One, then as a journalist, and finally as a lawyer. As with “USA,” “Chosen Country” excels at character dialogue and creating a sense of time and place, however it is politically a very different novel. Unlike in “USA,” the leftists in “Chosen Country” are generally presented in an unfavorable light, reflecting Dos Passos’ rightward shift in the two decades after writing “USA.” Overall, I found “Chosen Country” to be a well-executed and entertaining historical fiction, albeit one lacking the historical sweep and political coherence of “USA.”

[J. Trott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of John Dos Passos. He is the american prosist of the first half of the twentieth century most concerned with social injustice, and the question of how to fight it. He wrote one of the best anti-war novels of all time, in "Three Soldiers." The book telling demonstrates the dehumanizing and soul crushing effects of the military on three different men.

This book spans a few generations telling the story of quite a few americans, but the ultimate characters are a couple of young people. The character Lulie struck me as one of the most realistic and endearing portraits of a girl whose got charm. One of the hardest parts of finishing was the realization I wasn't going to get to spend any more time with her.

This has less social struggle than most of his novels, but there is an extended story about a lawyer for a striking union, which is very gripping. I recommend it!

[Sara]

It was an okay book. I'm glad I read it. But the last 150 pages or so were agonizingly boring and seemed rather off track. In addition, I found it a little boring that so many of the characters were fictionalized versions of individuals Dos Passos actually knew.

[Rob Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warmhearted and wonderful. Stuffed with vivid character sketches. I don't think I'll ever get tired of reading Dos Passos. His prose just smoothly pulls you along from one moment to the next.

[Unclemark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great epic book,totally different from Manhattan Transfer and Streets of night.....

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth the read. Somethingof an apology for letie youth climaxed with new dedication to USA: "chosen country." Wid panorma: Europe in WWII to upstate Michigan to Chicago, etc. A novel wrestling anyway.