New video, “John Dos Passos in the Steamboat Era,” from the John Dos Passos Institute! American author John Dos Passos, the inspiration for the John Dos Passos Institute, was a boy in Virginia’s Northern Neck during the height of the steamboat era. At the turn of the 20th century, Dos Passos was cruising the Chesapeake Bay on paddlewheels like Mark Twain did on the Mississippi.