"When he was summoned before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, Abraham Lincoln Polonsky was labeled "a very dangerous citizen" by Harold Velde, a congressman from Illinois. Lawyer, educator, novelist, labor organizer, radio and television scriptwriter, film director and screenwriter, wartime intelligence operative, and full-time radical romantic, Polonsky was blacklisted in Hollywood for refusing to be an informer.

The New York Times called his blacklisting the single greatest loss to American film during the McCarthy era, and his expressed admirers include Harry Belafonte, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, Warren Beatty, and Steven Spielberg. In this first critical and cultural biography of Abraham Polonsky, Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner present both an accomplished consideration of a remarkable survivor of America's cultural Cold War and a superb study of the Hollywood Left."--BOOK JACKET.