Manhattan Transfer

When Manhattan Transfer first appeared in 1925, Sinclair Lewis described it as "a novel of the very first importance; a book which the idle reader can devour yet which the literary analyst must take as possibly inaugurating, at long last, the vast and blazing dawn we have awaited. It may be the foundation of a whole new school of novel-writing."

Manhattan Transfer is a story that unfolds against the backdrop of towering skyscrapers and filthy tenements, over meals at the Waldorf and nights in boxcars. In this passionate novel, Dos Passos reveals the lives of wealthy power brokers and struggling immigrants alike, and documents their struggles to become a part of modernity before they are destroyed by it.

Jean-Paul Sartre referred to John Dos Passos (1896—1970) as "the best novelist of our time." He was the author of dozens of books, including the classic U.S.A. trilogy. Arthur Mizener once noted that "Dos Passos is the only major American novelist . . . who has had the desire and power to surround the lives of his characters with what Lionel Trilling once called 'the buzz of history.'" Manhattan Transfer is one of Dos Passos's finest works.

Cover illustration and design, George Salter Courtesy of the John M. Wing Foundation. The Newberry Library