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Summary
Summary
Comparativists evaluate democratization by looking at regimes in the transition and consolidation phases of democracy without considering the essence of democracy. This book argues the need to consider democracy as a combination of rights and virtues, and that problems of democraticization are those of balance.
Author Notes
Howard Fast was born on November 11, 1914 in Manhattan. At the age of 17, he sold his first story to Amazing Stories magazine. The next year he sold his first novel, Two Villages, to the Dial Press for a $100 advance. During his lifetime, he wrote more than 80 books, including Conceived in Liberty, The Unvanquished, Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, April Morning, The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment, The Legacy, and Greenwich. He won the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1953.
A member of the Communist party, he served three months in a federal prison in 1950 for refusing to testify about his political activity. Blacklisted as a result, he founded his own publishing house, Blue Heron Press, which released his novel Spartacus in 1951. In 1957, he wrote a book about his political experiences entitled The Naked God. He also wrote a series of detective stories under the name E. V. Cunningham. He died on March 12, 2003 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Venerable writer Fast (The Immigrants), master of the heart-tugging historical drama, delivers a moving tale of tragedy, inner healing and absolution. Married only 11 days, pacifist American engineering student Scott Waring and his wife, Martha, are arrested by the Gestapo in May 1939, while watching a Nazi rally in Berlin, where Scott is imprudently carrying his grandfather's pistol. The Nazis wrongly suspect them of conspiring to assassinate Hitler, and Scott is forced to gaze through a one-way mirror as SS thugs beat Martha. Told that Martha will be killed unless he confesses, Scott concocts a confession, but, shortly thereafter, the Nazis murder her anyway. Chance gives Scott a chance to escape his captors, and the Jewish madam of a whorehouse facilitates his route to the American embassy, from where he returns to the U.S., devastated. When the narrative jumps forward 1951 and Scott's sessions with his New York psychiatrist, we learn of his guilt over Martha's death, which has left him sexually impotent; of his U.S. army service, in which he blew up German bridges; of his searing trip to Buchenwald after the concentration camp's liberation. Then Scott falls in love with Greenwich Village dancer and waitress Janet Goldman, a Holocaust survivor who had been raped and beaten by the Dachau camp commander. Eventually Scott finds that he is able to love again. Fast is anything but subtle, but he has written a solid, well-constructed novel that is both a forceful meditation on evil and a poignant love story. 50,000 first printing; $75,000 ad/promo. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The unsinkable Howard Fast returns, still profitably afloat after nearly five decades in the chancy swells and shallows of popular fiction (Seven Days in June, 1994, etc.). Again, as in this latest tale of a man wrestling with the death of his wife in Nazi Germany, there are--predictably: characters dwarfed or stereotyped by a sky-high Message; a Fast-moving plot spattered with violence; and that brisk, snap-brimmed narration that's netted a readership for the author's 80-plus novels since the days of Spartacus (1951). Here, the story concerns MIT engineering student Scott Waring and his bride, Martha, both from well-to-do families. Scott's father is an aviation consultant to FDR, and his grandfather--who presented him with a Webley automatic pistol on his 16th birthday--had a heavy military past. The newlyweds sail to France in 1939 on the Queen Mary (where a German official seems most interested in Scott's family), and then decide to go to Berlin to observe the ""crazy"" Nazis in situ. They're in a crowd listening to Hitler when Scott on an impulse (!) fingers the Webley, and true hell breaks loose. Martha is tortured to death, but Scott escapes with the help of Berthe, a Jewish brothel madam. His life at home, however, becomes an arid affair of guilt and grief. He even attempts to assume a Jewish identity, but a psychiatrist helps him overcome that. (""Stop being a horse's ass"" is the subtle advice.) Finally, at 35, Scott meets Janet Goldman, a young dancer who suffered unspeakable childhood abuse in a concentration camp. And, despite a visit to Scott's family (a tower of WASP clich‚s), the two will find a way to love. Once more, the message is broadcast at top volume, but Fast has his tolerant, steady following. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The latest feather in the cap of a prolific writer, this riveting new novel proclaims Fast's remarkable prowess for storytelling. The plot centers on Scott Waring, a privileged New Yorker with a blue-blood heritage and a brilliant future. Waring's perfect life is shattered when his lovely young bride is killed during their honeymoon in Berlin, at the hands of Hitler's Gestapo. Carrying the burden of guilt over his wife's death, Waring himself bears witness to the Holocaust during the ensuing war years. The demons that distance Waring from others are ultimately exorcised through psychotherapy, and in an unexpected twist, he finds love again with a survivor of Dachau. Fast's acutely rendered, riveting tale is sure to satisfy readers. --Alice Joyce
Library Journal Review
Scott Waring and his wife are privileged young Americans, but on their honeymoon trip to Berlin in 1939 they experience deadly Gestapo tactics. Some years later, as an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers, Scott helps to liberate Buchenwald concentration camp, suffering further psychic wounds. Trying to recover from these accumulated traumas, he sees a psychotherapist, undergoes a symbolic circumcision, and searches for more than a decade for someone to love. As an engineer during the war, Scott frequently demolished bridges, but now he labors to build connections among people. Fast (Seven Days in June, LJ 7/94) is a veteran novelist who provides skillful narration. In one key detail, however, his story may test the limits of credibility. That Scott would unthinkingly carry a revolver within yards of Adolf Hitler, casually fondle the gun inside his pocket, and hence be accused of trying to assassinate the Führer may seem implausible, but such events are crucial to Fast's entire plot. Recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/95.]Albert Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
