John Roderigo Dos Passos was born in Chicago on this day in 1896. His father was a wealthy lawyer of Portuguese descent and his mother was from Virginia. Passos attended Harvard University, graduating in 1916.

During World War I, Passos volunteered as an ambulance driver in Europe. It was his experiences during the war that led him to publish Three Soldiers in 1921, an antiwar novel that was one of his first literary works.

Passos published the U.S.A. trilogy in the 1930s, which consisted of The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money. The trilogy tells the story of historical events in America during the early 1900s. The Modern Library, a publishing company located in New York City, ranked the trilogy set 23rd on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

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