"[A] fine biography . . . Sorin traces the shifts and turns in a life that wound up creating one of America's most thoughtful leftists." — The Washington PostA New York Times "Notable Book of the Year"Winner of the 2003 National Jewish Book Award for HistoryDeeply passionate, committed to social reform and secular Jewishness, ardently devoted to ...

A biography of the Jewish American, left-wing author of Spartacus that explores his identity, his work, and his politics.Howard Fast's life, from a rough-and-tumble Jewish New York street kid to the rich and famous author of close to one hundred books, rivals the Horatio Alger myth. Author of bestsellers such as Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, My Glorious Brothers, and Spartacus, Fast joined the American Communist Party ...

Saul Bellow: "I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer" offers a fresh and original perspective on the life and works of Saul Bellow, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature in 1976. Author Gerald Sorin emphasizes Bellow's Jewish identity as fundamental to his being and the content and meaning of his fiction. Bellow's work from the 1940s to 2000, when he wrote his last novel at the age of 84, centers on the command in Deuteronomy to "Choose life" as distinct from nihilistic withdrawa...