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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 ReconstructionIn the history of the United States, Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War when the southern states of the defeated Confederacy, which had seceded from the United States, were reintegrated into the Union. Laws and legislation Abraham.
Fast spent World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough working with the United States Office of War Information , writing for Voice of AmericaThe Voice of America (VOA) is the official broadcasting service of the United States government. It is one of the best-known stations in international broadcasting. VOA was organized in 1942 under the Office of Wartime Information with news programs aimed. But he had joined the American Communist Party in 1944Events World War II January January 4 The Battle of Monte Cassino begins. January 5 Murder of Danish playwright Kaj Munck January 17 British forces, in Italy, cross the Garigliano River. January 20 The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin;, and was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to disclose the names of contributors to a fund for a home for orphans of American veterans of the Spanish Civil WarTeruel, east of Madrid. For an article about the 1820-1823 civil war in Spain, see: Spanish Civil War, 1820-1823 The Spanish Civil War ( 1936 1939) was the result of complex political differences between the Republicans — supporters of the government of t (one of the contributors was Eleanor Roosevelt), and he was imprisoned in 1950 for contempt of Congress.
It was while he was in jail that he began writing his most famous work, Spartacus, the novel about an uprising among Roman slaves. Blacklisted for his Communist activities and his criminal record, Fast was forced to publish the novel by his own Blue Heron Press. Unable to publish under his own name, he used various pseudonyms, including E.V. Cunningham, under which he published a series of popular detective novels starring a Nisei detective with the Beverly Hills, California Police Department.
In 1952, Fast ran for Congress on the American Labor Party ticket. During the 1950s he also worked for the Communist Party newspaper, the Daily Worker. In 1953, he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize. But, later in the decade, Fast broke with the Party over issues of condition in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
In 1974, Fast and his family moved to California, where he wrote television scripts, including such television programs as How the West Was Won. In 1977, he published The Immigrants , the first of a six-part series of novels.
Fast's son Jonathan, himself a novelist, was the husband of novelist Erica Jong.