For most young American writers the period following the First World War was one of supreme disillusionment. Many had served in the war enlisting in the hope that they were helping to build a better world. And when that world did not materialize they suffered the inevitable reaction rebelling instinctively against the horrors of war and all the things that went with it. In Three Soldiers John Dos Passos tells the story of such a man named John Andrews a highly sensitive young musician whose nature brought him in to inevitable conflict with the regimentation of army life. Like all armies before it the American expeditionary force of 1917 and 1918 was less concerned with the personalities of its soldiers than with the necessity of winning highly impersonal battles.

Writer: John Dos passos