With 1919, the second volume of his U.S.A. trilogy, John Dos Passos continues his "vigorous and sweeping panorama of twentieth-century America" (Forum). The characters in this book are living through America and the first World War. In this tale, we follow a ministers' daughter from Chicago, a naive Texas girl, a young poet, a radical Jew, and we get to see side stories of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Unknown Soldier.

John Dos Passos uses different narrative techniques to evoke the emotions of the reader in this experimental series.  The twelve characters in the trilogy are introduced via fictional narratives telling their life stories, newspaper clippings, song lyrics, short biographies of figures from the public eye, and the characters' own autobiographical stream of consciousness writing.