Book summary

Robert Penn Warren's classic novel chronicles the rise and fall of a Southern politician of the 1930s who resembles the real-life demagogue Huey Long. The populism of the protagonist gradually becomes corrupted by his ambition, but he never completely loses his desire to serve the common people. The conflict between ambition and duty has rarely been portrayed so effectively.This edition of the novel restores cuts that were made in the original edition, adding nearly 100 pages of censored, deleted, or simply changed material.

Media reviews

"...[W]hen I entered Louisiana, my imagination was already trapped in speculation about the struggle for power in the world of politics--specifically in a Southern state....[I]f you were living in Louisiana, you knew you were living in history defining itself before your eyes. And you knew that you were not seeing a half-drunk hick buffoon performing an old routine, but were witnessing a drama which was a version of the world's drama, and the drama of history, too, the old drama of power and ethics....One of my duties was to teach a senior Shakespeare class, and in Shakespeare that question of power and ethics--and the question of determination in history--is frequent and vivid. I read Shakespeare, and many books about him, with a growing thought of Huey [Long]--who, behind his mask of idiotic or vulgar clowning, might suddenly be brilliant, inevitable, ruthless."