I think the three novels within are best read together. Though it adds up to around 1,240 pages, it is quite a page-turner. These novels reveal a side of America not widely discussed today, and I recommend them alongside something like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. This was a time of great opportunity and great upheavel, especially in the realm of ideas. To see how all the great societal powers formed and dissolved and how these wars played out in the lives of numerous individuals from all walks of life is fascinating.

Whatever their pedagogical utility, these novels stand alone on the strength of their scale, detail, and characterization. U.S.A is a window into the myriad lives and ways of living that existed in the early 20th century, and is as close to a time machine as I have found in print.