Showing results by author "Howard Fast" in All Categories

Here is Fast’s powerful denunciation of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, and a remarkable historical document of Spain’s fight for freedom from governmental oppression. Howard Fast was a longtime proponent of the antifascist movement in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, Fast supported a hospital for Popular Front forces, and in 1950 he was sentenced to three months in jail for refusing to give the names of other supporters of that hospital to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Howard Fast began to formally practice Zen meditation after turning away from communism in 1956. The Art of Zen Meditation, originally published by the antiwar political collective Peace Press, in 1977, is the fruit of Fast’s study: a brief and instructive history of Zen Buddhism and its tenets, written with a simplicity that is emblematic of the philosophy itself. Fast’s study of Zen also inspired his popular Masao Masuto mystery series about a Zen Buddhist detective in Beverly Hills.