John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896 - 1970) was an American novelist and artist active in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He was well-traveled, visiting Europe and the Middle East, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I, he was a member of the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and in Italy, later joining the U.S. Army Medical Corps. An artist as well as a novelist, Dos Passos created his own cover art for his books, was influenced by the Modernist Movement in 1920s Paris and painted. In 1928, Dos Passos went to the Soviet Union to study socialism and later became a leading participator in the 1935 First American Writers Congress sponsored by the communist-leaning League of American Writers. He was in Spain in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, when the murder of his friend José Robles soured his attitude toward communism and led to severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway.