Books: From Rebellion to Doubt

THE GRAND DESIGN (440 pp.)—John Dos Passos—Houghton Mifflln ($3.50).

The Grand Design is one of those books that can be read by itself, as a slow movement of a symphony can be played by itself, but will be best understood by those who know what went on before it. With The Grand Design, Dos Passes returns to a series of novels he began ten years ago.

He was then a first-rank U.S. literary hero. Leftish intellectuals and young people distressed by the depression saw his massive and radical trilogy, U.S.A., as a powerful plea for America's underprivileged. Written at a time when social...