Howard Fast, hyper-prolific novelist and activist member of the Communist Party for most of the mid-twentieth century, charmed me into believing every word of his must-read autobiography, Being Red. I fairly fell in love with the man. Do read Being Red. Enjoy it, learn a lot, and then read Gerald Sorin's recent, meticulously researched biography of Fast, Life and Literature in the Left Lane. Sorin's account demonstrates that much of Fast's rendering of his own life is at least hyperbolic and at best apocryphal. In tandem they make a fascinating study of a complex, entirely self-created man.