The novel stands as one of the most grimly honest portraits of World War I. This anti-war novel focuses on three soldiers— Fuselli, a store clerk from San Francisco; Chrisfield, a farm boy from Indiana; and Andrews, a musically gifted Harvard graduate from New York. Three Soldiers explores fear and ambition, conformity and rebellion, desertion and violence in the context of impossible circumstances. The book remains a towering testament to the brutal and dehumanizing effects of a regimented war machine on ordinary soldiers.

"At one blast Three Soldiers disposed of oceans of romance and blather. It changed the whole tone of American opinion about the war; it even changed the recollections of actual veterans of the war. They saw, no doubt, substantially what Dos Passos saw, but it took his bold realism to disentangle their recollections from the prevailing buncombe and sentimentality." -H.L. Mencken