New York, NY — June 1, 2026 — On the hospital trains and ambulance routes of World War I, John Dos Passos encountered a world of shattered bodies, broken routines, and lives abruptly thrown against history; from that experience came a new kind of fiction, restless as city traffic and cut against the grain of older storytelling. Carlini Classics now presents a new series of editions devoted to Dos Passos, one of the major American modernists of the postwar generation, featuring One Man’s Initiation: 1917, Three Soldiers, Streets of Night, Manhattan Transfer, The 42nd Parallel, and Rosinante to the Road Again.
Born in Chicago in 1896 and educated at Harvard, Dos Passos belonged to the generation marked by the First World War and later became widely known for his radical critique of American society. His earliest fiction already shows the themes and techniques that would define his career: the moral absurdity of war, the alienation of city life, and the attempt to capture history not as a single story but as a swirl of simultaneous voices, fractured experience, and social pressure.
One Man’s Initiation: 1917, drawn from his wartime experience, follows an American ambulance driver through the chaos and spiritual dislocation of the Great War. Three Soldiers deepens that protest by presenting military life as dehumanizing machinery, while Streets of Night turns toward bohemian drift, frustrated ambition, and the uneasy energies of the postwar city. With Manhattan Transfer, Dos Passos reached a breakthrough, using overlapping lives and impressionistic narrative to capture the pace and atmosphere of New York, and Rosinante to the Road Again carried his modernist eye into Spain, blending travel, reflection, and cultural encounter.
The covers for this new Carlini Classics series were designed by Joshua Tucker, a graphic design student at Liberty University. Across the series, Tucker uses bold monochrome palettes, vertically stacked titling, and sharply theatrical photographic imagery to give each book a cinematic, poster-like intensity. A mounted Don Quixote dominates Rosinante to the Road Again in deep red; Streets of Night presents a solitary figure in cool blue against a brick wall; Three Soldiers uses green-toned toy soldiers to evoke mechanized war; One Man’s Initiation: 1917 centers on a pair of urgent flags against a violet field; and Manhattan Transfer frames a glamorous flapper silhouette before the city, capturing both modern spectacle and urban estrangement.
“John Dos Passos understood that the twentieth century had shattered the old way of telling stories,” said Charles Carlini, founder of Casa Carlini. “These books still feel electric because they register the noise, speed, violence, and loneliness of modern life with astonishing formal daring.”
More than early modernist landmarks, these works remain vivid records of a world learning to live with mass war, mass media, and mass urbanization. With this new Carlini Classics series, readers can return to Dos Passos at the point where American fiction began to sound unmistakably modern.
The John Dos Passos series from Carlini Classics is available now through Casa Carlini, major booksellers, and Amazon.
About Carlini Classics
Carlini Classics publishes thoughtfully designed editions of essential literary works, bringing enduring voices into conversation with contemporary readers.
About Casa Carlini
Casa Carlini is an independent publishing house devoted to literature, ideas, and culture across a range of imprints and genres.
Recommended Reading
0 comments