A record of his childhood, young adulthood, and twenties, The Best Times is a collage of cherished memories. He reflects on the joys of an itinerant life enriched by new and diverse friendships, customs, cultures, and cuisines.

Luminary personalities and landscapes abound in the 1920s literary world Dos Passos loved. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, Gerald and Sara Murphy, Horsley Gantt—they are his beloved friends. Spain, the French Riviera, Paris, Persia, the Caucasus—they are his beloved footpaths.

The Atlantic Monthly reviews The Best Times: “In portraying his old friends with both their flaws and their virtues, regarding them not as heroes or villains or competitors but talented colleagues, he gives us the best ‘album’ I know of the literary figures of the twenties. He does not attempt to do full-scale portraits of them, any more than he does of himself but sharp, deft sketches that convey a real sense of the person.”