Howard Fast

Gerald Sorin is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American and Jewish Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is author of Irving Howe: A Life of Passionate Dissent, winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award in History and The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880-1920 (IUP, 1985).

• Acknowledgments Introduction1 Paradise PostponedPublish or PerishPolitics Delayed2 The War Against FascismThe Fatal EmbraceThe Reds and the Blacks3 The Life of the PartyInnocent AbroadThe Road Not TakenThe Politics of Literature4 Cold War, Hot SeatThe Discouraged AmericanDown and Out in the USA5 Banned, Barred, and BeseigedIt Can't Happen HereWar and Peace6 The Myopia of American CommunismFoley Square FolliesWaltzing at the WaldorfApril in ParisThe Poison of Peekskill7 Literature and RealityHoward Fast: PrisonerGreat Expectations8 Free! But Not at Last9 Trials and TribulationsDespair, Distraction, and DefeatThe Push and Pull of PoliticsConfrontations Left and Right10 McCarthyism, Stalinism, and the World according to Fast11 Culture and the Cold WarTo Flee or not to FleeAn Even Brighter Star in the USSRSigns of Thaw in the Cold War?12 Things Fall Apart; the Left Doesn't Hold13 Fast Forward14 Life in the Fast LaneCalifornia to the New York IslandLooking Backward, Seeing Red15 Fast and LooseDisappointment and DespairFast in Pursuit16 Fall and DeclineNotes Index

"Sorin brings Fast's personality to life in a way that is both sympathetic and critical. The narrative is fluid and engaging."—Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York"An engaging account of Fast that pays attention not only to his politics but also to his writings. . . . It should stimulate discussion of the appeal of Communism for some American Jews in the mid-20th century."—Deborah Dash Moore, coeditor of Gender and Jewish History"Winner, 2012 National Jewish Book Awards, Biography, Autobiography, Memoir Silver Medal winner, Biography category, 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards"—"Fame-hungry, wealth-obsessed, with a voracious appetite for women, bestselling author Howard Fast rose from the hardscrabble streets of his 1920s New York childhood to become a popular author and, perhaps more improbably, 'the public face of the Communist Party in America.' In Sorin's intriguing if dense new biography, Fast's life becomes an excellent prism through which to view the history of leftist activity in the years straddling WWII, along with the anticommunism hysteria of the 1940s and '50s. . . . A notable study of a thorny protagonist whose life has much to reveal about the times in which he lived and about the interplay of political belief, personal identity, art, and ambition."—Publishers Weekly"Sorin . . . has written a heavily researched critical biography of Fast. . . The volume's strength is its explication and analysis of the complex social and political context of Fast's activism and creative work. . . . Sorin's lengthy critique of Fast's adherence to Communism long after most American writers and intellectuals had abandoned the party, and his shameful public silence on Stalin's crimes and Soviet anti-Semitism, are of significant import. . . . Recommended."—Choice"An intriguing biography, not least for its examination of how Fast interwove his political activism, his Jewishness and his art during the heyday of McCarthyism. Recommended."—Recorder (Melbourne)