Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (Paperback)

~ Richard White (Author)
Key Phrases: cane juice, community club, dimmed eyes and hungry souls, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Old Regulars (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The inspiration for Robert Penn Warren's demagogue in All the King's Men, Huey Long was Louisiana's governor, then U.S. senator and controlled virtually every aspect of the state government from 1929 until he was shot to death in 1935 at age 42. Long used the same skills he had honed as a charming traveling salesman for a lard substitute to appeal directly to potential voters and bypass the powerful political bosses. He filled the ranks of government employees with his own supporters, shamelessly appointing his brother as a tax collector even though he had promised to abolish the post and use the money for a TB hospital. Long may have started out as a populist with the admirable goal of providing free textbooks to schoolchildren, but squandering resources and lining his own pockets, he created Louisiana's first income tax.. Supposedly pro-labor, Long put the kibosh on pensions, unemployment insurance and a minimum wage. Crude and vindictive, Long had his eye on the presidency, influenced an Arkansas U.S. senate race and may have been killed by a "trigger-happy" bodyguard aiming at an attacker and not by an assassin's gun. LSU professor White's (Roosevelt the Reformer, etc.) latest is lively and well researched but isn't as groundbreaking as the biography by William Ivy Hair or as authoritative as Pulitzer-winner T. Harry Williams's. 16 pages of photos not seen by PW. (On sale Apr. 4)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The Washington Post

Huey Long was the most entertaining tyrant in American history. From 1928, when he became governor of Louisiana, to 1935, when he was assassinated, Long's flamboyant style and brazen deeds provided journalists and their readers with more good stories than most politicians pile up in a lifetime.

The Kingfish (a nickname he borrowed from a character on the "Amos 'n' Andy" radio show) cursed and bullied state lawmakers until they voted his way or were hounded out of office, sometimes in rigged elections. Vowing to help farmers and laborers of all races, Long forced the legislature to finance free textbooks for schoolchildren, build thousands of miles of new roads and slap a hefty tax on Standard Oil, whose Baton Rouge refinery was the largest in the world.

Meanwhile, Long, who sometimes wore green silk pajamas while greeting official visitors, treated himself to the bounty of his realm. He ordered convicts from the state penitentiary to tear down the antebellum governor's mansion and had a near-replica of the White House built in its place. He acted as virtual coach of the Louisiana State University football team and sometimes threw tantrums on the field when they lost. And he often gave his best speeches while drunk.

In 1930, Long won a seat in the U.S. Senate. Back in Baton Rouge, he installed as governor a smiling toady, felicitously named O.K. Allen. In Washington, Long demanded that Congress confiscate all earnings over $1 million a year and use the funds for medical care, college tuitions and other programs. When his fellow senators refused to endorse his "Share Our Wealth" plan, he called them "damned scoundrels" fit for hanging.

To serve his ends, Long could switch from color-blind altruism to smarmy bigotry. In 1935, the Kingfish unleashed a racist smear against a local judge in Louisiana, accusing him of having "coffee" or mulatto blood. In response, the judge's son-in-law, a young doctor, shot Long down in the halls of the state capitol. At his death, the Kingfish was only 42 years old. He had been planning to run for president as a populist, third-party candidate; if he'd lived, he might have been able to keep Franklin D. Roosevelt from winning reelection in 1936.

These and scores of other similarly engaging tales fill Richard D. White Jr.'s precise and effervescent new biography of Long. White, who teaches at LSU, adopts a tone of zestful disapproval toward his crude, headline-grabbing subject. He understands that millions of ordinary people in the state loved Long for humbling the old elite and making himself a national celebrity in the process. "During his first couple of years as governor," White allows, "Huey Long made significant improvements to the lives of many Louisianans." But the net effect of White's "have you heard this one" approach is to make Long seem more a buffoon than a reformer or a dictator. Voters, the author implies, should have banished this egomaniacal man-child from public life long before his blood spattered the marble corridors of the state capitol building.

Although his book is a pleasure to read, White has the misfortune of having to meet a higher standard than does the typical biographer of a state politician who died fairly young and never got to campaign for national office. More than three decades ago, T. Harry Williams, another LSU professor, published a vivid, Pulitzer Prize-winning study of Long's life that included most of the same stories that White tells, usually at greater length and with the help of interviews with many of Long's cronies and enemies. Williams also took the time to explain how the corrupt political culture of Louisiana could produce a man like Long and could persuade ordinary people to overlook his thuggish flaws. If that opus wasn't competition enough, White also has to contend with the dazzling portrait-à-clef that Robert Penn Warren drew of Long, or "Willie Stark," in his novel All the King's Men. (Broderick Crawford gave a brilliant rendition of that character in the 1949 film; a remake st!

arring Sean Penn is set to come out this fall.)

Unfortunately, White adds nothing significant to these memorable works. Nor does he make much of an effort to explain why Long, toward the end of his life, was able to build a national following with broadcast speeches and a mushrooming network of Share Our Wealth Clubs that boasted a membership of millions.

The answer is as contradictory as the man. Long flouted the law, drank excessively and bragged that he violently intimidated his rivals. But in the pit of the Great Depression, he also tapped into a deep vein of anger against the rich and a longing for political redemption. Even after his death, the magic of the Long name enabled Huey's brother, son and other family members to get elected time and again to state and federal offices. For Louisiana voters, memories of Long as the champion of ordinary folks beset by adversity trumped the image of him as a tyrant, making him what one fellow senator called "the smartest lunatic I ever saw in my whole life." Perhaps it's not surprising that, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina debacle, a certain nostalgia for the Kingfish has been stirring in the state he once ruled.

Reviewed by Michael Kazin
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (September 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812973836
• ISBN-13: 978-0812973839
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #271,379 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kingfish - Louisiana's first dictator, April 17, 2006

By	Robert Hines (Denham Springs, La) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed "Kingfish." White provides a wonderfully written and marvelously concise book that reads more like a novel than some dreary historical tome. The story of Huey Long, Louisiana's power-hungry governer and senator, is fast paced, to the point, and refreshingly free of long-winded academic analysis and ten-dollar words. White does not fall into the trap of attempting a psyco-history where he tries to "channel" Huey and read his thoughts. He also doesn't speculate about Huey's real killer or whether or not he was a great democrat or a great dictator. Instead, he uses solid research lay Huey bare and expose his many strengths and weaknesses. For the most part, White steps back and lets the colorful Kingfish tell his own story through his own purple words and scrappy behavior. And what a story it is. Long was loved by thousands and hated by thousands more and did more good - and more harm - to an American state than any leader in our history. Every American should know the story of Huey Long, our country's most outrageous and dangerous politician. For those who know little of the turbulent Kingfish, White's solid biography is the place to start.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Introduction To Louisiana's Politics, April 14, 2006

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (Hardcover)

Mr. White has written for the causal reader an introduction to the political career of Huey Long. Focusing on his nine years of domination of Louisiana's politics, the biography forgoes an analysis of his formative years to joining the story when Mr. Long was already in his early 30's. The good Mr. Long did early in his career by breaking the power of the corrupt, entrenched power structure in Baton Rouge was undone by his metamorphose into the very evil he had crushed.

This is not the definitive life of Huey Long -- that honor goes to the nearly 1,000 page account by T. Harry Williams nearly a generation ago. And "Kingfish" lacks the poetic license of "All The King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren. But for the reader who desires a readable story and wants the controversial aspects of Huey Long's life laid out, this book will do.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but not Great, July 3, 2006

By	S. Conner (Burke, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Kingfish: The Reign of Huey P. Long (Hardcover)

Mr. White's book is a solid condensation of the saga of Huey Long, but as I read this book I couldn't shake the feeling that the book was often just a Cliff Notes version of T. Harry Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning opus. The details that White omits for brevity sake are what makes Williams' book great. Mr. White includes all the major information, but he omits the color that illuminates the players around Huey and by doing so diminishes Huey Long's strengths and weaknesses.

I was not impressed by Mr. White taking a shot at Mr. Williams in the booknotes section...unnecessary and tasteless.

Good but not great. Read this, then go read T. Harry Williams book.