Many know of the Railroad Commissioner, Governor, and Senator from Louisiana only through the fictional mirror of Robert Penn WarrenÕs Pulitzer Prize-winning All the KingÕs Men. Or the stage play. Or the Academy Award-winning movie. WarrenÕs Willie Stark is a tireless self-promoter, a man driven to accumulate power and fortune at the expense of all those around him, whose one contribution to the common good, a hospital, literally backfires when its director shoots him.
The Huey Long of T. Harry WilliamsÕs (again) Pulitzer Prize-winning biography shares all of StarkÕs qualities and more. The more being specifically the accomplishments and advances that Long brought to a state that, in his time as now, languished near the bottom of the nation not only geographically but in average income (thirty-ninth of forty-eight), farm property value (forty-third), and literacy (forty-seventh). In an era when Wisconsin had four millionaires, Louisiana had one, and if the general poverty of the state wasnÕt enough,