Howard Fast

Howard Melvin Fast (11 November 1914, New York City - 12 March 2003, Old Greenwich, Connecticut) was a Jewish American novelist and television writer, who wrote also under the pen names E. V. Cunningham and Walter Ericson.

Biography

Early life

His mother, Ida (née Miller), was a British Jewish immigrant and his father, Barney Howard Fast, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. When his mother died in 1923 and his father became unemployed, Howard's youngest brother, Julius, went to live with relatives, while Howard and his older brother Jerome worked by selling newspapers. He credited his early voracious reading to his part-time job in the New York Public Library.

Young Howard began writing at an early age. While hitchhiking and riding railroads around the country to find odd jobs, he wrote. His first novel, Two Valleys, was published when he was 18, in 1933. His first popular work was Citizen Tom Paine, a fictional account of the life of Thomas Paine. Always interested in American history, he also wrote The Last Frontier, about an attempt by Cheyennes to return to their native land; and Freedom Road, about the lives of former slaves during Reconstruction.

Works

• Jews - Story of People (1982) ISBN 0-440-34444-1
• Peekskill USA: Inside the Infamous 1949 Riots (1951, reprinted 2006) ISBN 0-486-45296-4

Autobiography

• Being Red (1990)
• The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party (1957)

Novels

• Two Valleys (1933)
• Strange Yesterday (1934)
• Place in the City (1937)
• Conceived in Liberty; a novel of Valley Forge (1939)
• The Last Frontier (novel) (1941)
• The Unvanquished (1942)
• Citizen Tom Paine (1943)
• Freedom Road (1944)
• The American: A Middle Western Legend (1946)
• Clarkton (1947)
• The Children (1947)
• My Glorious Brothers (1948)
• The Proud and the Free (1950)
• Spartacus (1951) ISBN 1-56324-599-X
• The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti, a New England legend (1953)
• Silas Timberman (1954)
• The Story of Lola Gregg (1956)
• Moses, Prince of Egypt (1958)
• The Winston Affair (1959)
• The Golden River (1960)
• April Morning (1961)
• Power (1962)
• Agrippa's Daughter (1964)
• Torquemada (1966)
• Sally (1967)
• The Crossing (1971)
• The Hessian (1972)
• The Immigrants (1977)
• Second Generation (1978)
• The Establishment (1979)
• The Legacy (1981)
• Max (1982)
• The Outsider (1984)
• The Immigrant's Daughter (1985)
• The Dinner Party (1987)
• The Pledge (1988)
• The Confession of Joe Cullen (1989)
• The Trial of Abigail Goodman (1993)
• Seven Days in June (1994)
• The Bridge Builder's Story (1995)
• An Independent Woman (1997)
• Redemption (1999)
• Greenwich (2000) ISBN 0-15-100620-2
• Bunker Hill (2001)

The Masao Masuto Mysteries (as E. V. Cunningham)

• The Case of the Angry Actress (first titled Samantha 1967)
• The Case of the One-Penny Orange (1977)
• The Case of the Russian Diplomat (1978)
• The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs (1979)
• The Case of the Sliding Pool (1981)
• The Case of the Kidnapped Angel (1982)
• The Case of the Murdered Mackenzie (1984)

Short stories

• "The First Men" (1960)
• "Time & the Riddle" thirty-one zen stories (1975)

Film Scripts

• Mirage (film) 1965

External links

• Howard Fast at ISFDB
• trussel.com Howard Fast: Comprehensive Bibliography & Texts
• Template:WiredForBooks