Dos Passos writes bitterly in this later book, compared to the frentic, sometimes irrationally exuberant tone in the U.S.A. Trilogy. From the start -- with the scathing portrayal of MacArthur as a "brass hat" and "the unready" whose popularity seems based on a realization in his early career that he had "a bad press" that he needed to combat with PRO -- reads like a an indictment of America that failed to achieve both the capitalist and the socialist utopia.

I should read more closely to understand Dos Passos' point of view better.