Frederick Schiller Faust is not a name many readers recognize but who does not know the name "Max Brand?" How many avid readers of Max Brand's western classics are familiar with the 18 other pseudonyms used by Faust? Or that the author of Destry Rides Again penned the Doctor Kildare series? Or that Faust worked as a screenwriter, often without credit, on numerous Hollywood films?

Or that Faust thought of himself as a poet, writing prose, as he put it, to "pay the bills?" Or that, to pay the bills, he constantly strove to surpass his record of some 20,000 publishable words a day - and that he sold 99 percent of the fiction he wrote? The Max Brand Companion serves to tell the reader about the man as well as the author, charts the history of Faust's work and its derivations, and presents works by Faust himself indicative of the scope and range of his imagination.

It is the essential guide to a major American author as well as one of the most popular writers of the 20th century.