Veteran Hollywood actor Kirk Douglas has a new eBook coming out about making the film Spartacus from digital publisher Open Road.

In I Am Spartacus! Making a Film, Breaking the Blacklist, Douglas tells the story of making the historic 1960 Stanley Kubrick film, in which he stars in as the rebellious slave Spartacus who rebels against the Roman politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, which is played by Laurence Olivier. The film helped break Hollywood’s black list ban against suspected Communists.

Douglas stated: “The blacklist was a witch hunt, destroying lives and careers without regard for the truth of the allegations. I made Spartacus with a blacklisted writer, Dalton Trumbo, who had to hide behind a pseudonym—Sam Jackson for Spartacus—in order to find work. I was making a film about freedom at a time when freedom in America was in jeopardy. There are parallels to today’s political climate, and I thought it was timely to set down my recollections about the making of the film.”

George Clooney wrote the foreword for the title, which comes out June 12th.