Born in New York City, the son of Barney and Ida Miller Fast, Howard Melville Fast attended George Washington High School and the National Academy of Design. On 6 June 1937, he married Bette Cohen. They had two children, Rachel and Jonathan. Fast served on the overseas staff of the U.S. Office of War Information, with a special Signal Corps unit from 1942 to 1944, became a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater in 1944-1945, and was a foreign correspondent for Esquire and Coronet during 1945. Fast also has been an indefatigable writer, lecturer, and political activist.

His long and prolific career may be divided into three periods, reflecting crucial shifts in his political alignment that also affected his approach to fiction. During his first decade as a novelist, Fast was a fervent liberal committed to exploring America's heritage of freedom. Focusing primarily on the Revolutionary War period, his early work can...