From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an
assassin's bullet cut him down in 1935, Huey Long wielded all but
dictatorial control over the state of Louisiana. A man of shameless
ambition and ruthless vindictiveness, Long orchestrated elections,
hired and fired thousands at will, and deployed the state militia
as his personal police force. And yet, paradoxically, as governor
and later as senator, Long did more good for the state's poor and
uneducated than any politician before or since. Outrageous
demagogue or charismatic visionary? In this powerful new biography,
Richard D. White, Jr., brings Huey Long to life in all his blazing,
controversial glory.
White taps invaluable new source material to present a fresh, vivid
portrait of both the man and the Depression era that catapulted him
to fame. From his boyhood in dirt-poor Winn Parish, Long knew he
was destined for power-the problem was how to get it fast enough to
satisfy his insatiable appetite. With cunning and crudity unheard
of in Louisiana politics, Long crushed his opponents in the 1928
gubernatorial race, then immediately set about tightening his iron
grip. The press attacked him viciously, the oil companies howled
for his blood after he pushed through a controversial oil
processing tax, but Long had the adulation of the people. In 1930,
the Kingfish got himself elected senator, and then there was no
stopping him.
White's account of Long's heyday unfolds with the mesmerizing
intensity of a movie. Pegged by President Roosevelt as "one of the
two most dangerous men in the country," Long organized a radical
movement to redistribute money through his Share Our Wealth
Society-and his gospel of pensions for all, a shorter workweek, and
free college spread like wildfire. The Louisiana poor already
worshiped him for building thousands of miles of roads and funding
schools, hospitals, and universities; his outrageous antics on the
Senate floor gained him a growing national base. By 1935, despite a
barrage of corruption investigations, Huey Long announced that he
was running for president.
In the end, Long was a tragic hero-a power addict who squandered
his genius and came close to destroying the very foundation of
democratic rule. Kingfish is a balanced, lucid, and absolutely
spellbinding portrait of the life and times of the most incendiary
figure in the history of American politics.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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