Easter Island: Island of Enigmas

Despite sickness in the final years of his life, Dos Passos presses on for adventure. He and his wife journey to Easter Island, where they explore the history behind the famous statues--called maois.

"When I was a small boy," Dos Passos says, "some kind person took me to the British Museum. There I saw a statue, a huge, rough, dark-gray statue with a] long, sad, dark-gray face. The statue stared back out of deep, sunken eyes. What was it trying to say? To this day I can remember the feeling it gave me of savage, brooding melancholy."

John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was born in Chicago and graduated from Harvard in 1916. His service as an ambulance driver in Europe at the end of World War I led him to write Three Soldiers in 1919. A prolific travel writer, biographer, playwright, and novelist, he is an American classic of the twentieth century. Dos Passos is the author of Manhattan Transfer, Three Soldiers, 1919, and many more.