In a career spanning over sixty five years, Howard Fast wrote over seventy-five books. Among his bestknown novels are the Academy Award winning SPARTACUS, CITIZEN TOM PAINE, FREEDOM ROAD, APRIL MORNING and THE LAST FRONTIER.

With the production of THE CROSSING for A&E Networks, their most successfully original programmed movie ever, Fast returned to the arena where he received his greatest acclaim: works of historical fiction. A revolutionary war saga centering on General Washington and the historical crossing of the Delaware river for the march on Trenton, a deciding battle in the fight for independence. This is told with patriotism and compassion for the struggle for freedom. General Washington is the ultimate war hero, brave, unyielding in his conviction and desire for victory.

SPARTACUS, was one of Fast’s best-known novels, was made into an Academy award winning movie by director Stanley Kubrick, starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. He is also well known for his best-selling Lavette family saga: THE IMMIGRANTS (1977), SECOND GENERATION (1978), THE ESTABLISHMENT (1979), THE LEGACY (1981), THE IMMIGRANT’S DAUGHTER (1985), and AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN (1997) the long awaited conclusion to the bestselling Immigrants saga. The former was made into a wildly successful miniseries.

Fast was blacklisted for being a member of the American Communist Party, and in May 1952 The New York Times reported intimidation of librarians across the nation by Legionnaires, by Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, by Minutemen in Texas and California. School texts showing city slums, UNESCO material, all books by such threats to the free world as Howard Fast, were purged from school libraries. CITIZEN TOM PAINE, formerly used as a school text, was banned from use in NYC schools. In 1956, he broke with the Communist Party, and published his rationale in 1957 as THE NAKED GOD. His 1990 memoir BEING RED goes more deeply into the issue.

As a result of being blacklisted, Fast also wrote under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham, garnering great success with mystery novels, including FALLEN ANGELS, which was made into the feature MIRAGE for Universal, science-fiction, innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, short stories, plays, screenplays and poetry.

His first published story was WRATH OF THE PURPLE, which appeared in AMAZING STORIES magazine in October, 1932. You can read Fast’s angry responses to the injustices of the McCarthy era in his own CRISIS PAPERS (1951), modeled after those of Tom Paine: Crisis No. 1, Crisis No. 2, Crisis No. 3, his call to march in May Day – 1951, and his poetic eulogy, NEVER TO FORGET. Sadly, Mr. Fast passed just prior to the commencement of photography for the remake of SPARTACUS, and is survived by his second wife, Mimi.