John Dos Passos was born in Chicago in 1896 of Portuguese descent. His father was an eminent lawyer and he was educated at the Chaote School and then at Harvard, graduating in 1916. After the First World War - during which he served in the US Army Medical Corps - he was a freelance correspondent in Spain and the Near East before settling down to the writing of books.
In 1922 he published a volume of poetry and a collection of essays which explored the Spanish culture. In 1925 he published Manhattan Transfer, his first experimental novel in what was to become his peculiar style - a mixture of fact and fiction. He began his panoramic epics of American life with the USA trilogy written using the same technique Stand On, The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson, The Men Who Made This Nation and The Shackles of Power.
His most permanent home was his father's farm in Tidewater, Virginia. He died in 1970.
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