by Howard Fast

Born in New York City in 1914, Howard Melvin Fast was the son of immigrant parents: his father was from the Ukraine; his mother from Lithuania. Educated at George Washington High School and the National Academy of Design, Fast dropped out of the latter after a year, when he sold a story to a sciencefiction magazine. In 1933 Fast published his first novel Two Valleys, which was favorably received; his second novel, Strange Yesterday (1934) was less successful. After a brief slump, Fast's literary career regained momentum with the 1937 printing of his short story "The Children" in Story magazine. A string of successful novels followed— Conceived in Liberty (1939), The Last Frontier (1941), The Unvanquished (1942), and Citizen Tom Paine (1944). During the Second World War, Fast served first on the overseas staff of the U.S. Office of War Information (1942-44), then worked as a war correspondent in the...