Book summary

Winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize and heavily inspired by the life of Governor Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana, ALL THE KING'S MAN chronicles the career of Willie Stark, an extremely charismatic but corrupt populist Southern politician, as narrated by his considerably more conscience-ridden publicity man, Jack Burden. Considered a landmark book in American literature, the novel was adapted for a 1958 TV film as well as a 2005 movie starring Sean Penn as Willie and Jude Law as Jack.

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."