Rating: 
Summary: My Great Grand Father
Review: This book was one of the best books, in my opinion, that my Great Grand Father, T. Harry Williams, ever wrote. He researched this topic, and it took him a many of years to compile it all on paper. This book covers all of the aspects of Huey Long in graphic detail, and I recomend it to any political historian.
Rating: 
Summary: Most Comprehensive Book on Huey Long ever.
Review: This is a fantastic book! It has more information, in one book, than any other on Huey Long. It goes from childhood to assassination and never ceases to be exciting. It leans Long. However, the book has a very interesting thesis and it should be bought with a complement: The Kingfish and His Realm by William Ivy Hair. Both together are fantastic starts to a Long library. There are plenty others to suggest. This truly is a great piece of writing and very deserving of the pulitzer prize. Personally, I enjoyed it more than McCullough's TRUMAN (and I awfully enjoyed TRUMAN) and think HUEY LONG is truly how a biography should be. Read it because of Huey Long or read it to enjoy it. Great book and worth the price. The best book I ever bought. Four stars because of the completeness and excellent writing. 1 star short of 5 because of William's bias. HOWEVER, BE WARNED: THERE ARE NO UNBIASED BIOGRAPHIES OF LONG, PERIOD. Hair's book is just as biased, in the opposite direction. It has to be left up to the reader to decide how relativistic morality is.
Rating:
Summary: Great Political Biography
Review: This is a fascinating book about a controversial political figure who is now probably largely forgotten. Huey Long was a politician from Louisiana. He initially trained as a lawyer and although young he had a remarkable record in that profession. He then won election to a regulatory commission and used it as a stepping stone to being governor of the state. Prior to Long the regulatory commission had done little but he attempted to use it as a means of increasing state revenue and controlling big companies. He was able to turn it into an effective body despite only being in his twenties when gaining a position on it.Long was seen at the time as a populist and a radical. The issues he fought for however would now seem main stream. He was elected on a platform of providing free schoolbooks to children and in surfacing the states roads. (At the time he was elected only some 600 miles of Louisiana's' roads were surfaced.) Other projects he was involved in were the construction of bridges in especially to allow commercial access to New Orleans the upgrading of its port and the provision of natural gas to city dwellers. In addition he also spent funds on education and opened a medical school to increase the number of available medical practitioners. One of his achievements was to expand University Placements in such a way that poorer students would have access to higher education. His interest in education extended to attempts to provide equality of opportunity in public schools. The quality of education varied from district to district and he set up an equalization fund in an attempt to overcome the problem. He also set up adult literacy classes and reduced adult literacy amongst both white and Afro-Americans substantially. During the depression he kept highway constructions projects going and these employed large numbers of people. He also personally intervened to protect banks from closing and Louisiana only lost seven banks in the period a very low number. A range of these projects required revenue. Louisiana was at the time when he became governor a state with a very small revenue base. Long started to expand the revenue base by using regulatory powers to tax mineral extraction and goods movement. His changes led to the richer paying more tax. Prior to his time most income came from a regressive property tax. During his period of government expenditure doubled as the state took on responsibility for infrastructure. As a result Long was strongly opposed by the political establishment of the state. During his first term he was the subject of an impeachment hearing. It also seemed that some business channeled large sums of money into the hands of his opponents. He was vilified in the press and subject to two inquires when he was elected to the senate. Often radical politicians know little about the reality of power and its dynamics. They are elected to power and have little understanding of the opposition that they will face and hope that the utterance of a few cliches will not lead to the passing of a program or solid achievement. They assume that decency will be met by decency and are often disappointed. Long however was an absolute realist and from the moment of starting a political career he realized that he had to create a power base and to destroy the old power structures of his state. Prior to Long Louisiana was part of the old democratic South. It was a one party state controlled basically by a wealthy elite in New Orleans. Their view of the role of government was keeping the Negro's out of the system and not taxing big companies. Long destroyed this group and built his own political machine. This was not easy and he had to fight every inch of the way against entrenched interests. He had amazing political toughness. Towards the end of his life he was elected to the senate and was attempting to develop a radical movement so that he could become president. His platform was "share out wealth". He wanted to limit individual personal wealth to $1m and to redistribute sums above that amount to the poorer members of society. This was his means of dealing with the depression. He was assassinated in 1935 and if he had not been killed he might have either won the presidential election in 1936 or else split the vote ensuring a republican victory. The book is quite long being over 800 pages but is easy to read. Some of the material is hilarious. For example in the 30's it seemed that one of New Orleans major banks might collapse due to rumors about its financial status. Long organized a bail out package from President Roosevelt. The problem was that there would the time interval of a day before the money would arrive. Long decided that the only way out was to declare a holiday so that the bank could close for a day prior to the money arriving. The only problem was that the day in question the 4th of February was an unremarkable day in American History. He had historians from a local university up all night trying to find some event to celebrate on this proposed holiday. At last they found that President Wilson had broken diplomatic relations with Germany on that day some 17 years ago. The holiday was proclaimed and the bank was saved. The book is fascinating and it is about a remarkable figure who towered like a colossus in the history of his state. It is also a book about the reality of political power and is illustrative of how hard vested interests will fight to prevent political change.
Rating: 
Summary: detailed but fairly uncritical
Review: This lengthy tome is a fascinating read. Williams captures the Kingfish in all his colorful glory, from his early days as a salesman to his law career (championing, of course, underdogs), from his years on the Louisiana Railroad Commission through his governorship to his time in the U.S. Senate. Long was clearly a talented politician, and one gets the sense that he would have been a powerful figure in Louisiana even had the Depression not come. But Long was able to use the economic woes to increase his standing in the state, to flesh out a very progressive agenda, and to gain national prominence. There is at least mild reason to suspect that had he not been assassinated in September 1935, Long could have given FDR a run for his money in 1936. Williams overstates this case and understates the pure political savvy of Roosevelt, who played a nice game of "triangulation" by adopting some (though never all) of Long's positions and sapping some of his support. (Alan Brinkley demonstrates this brilliantly in his VOICES OF PROTEST.)
This points up one of the book's biggest (almost devasting) flaws: it is overly sympathetic to Long. Williams tells an amazing story, dropping just the right anecdote at just the right time, and he manages to explain the strange, arcane world of Louisiana politics. But too often, he refuses to cast a critical eye on the Kingfish. Sometimes, this takes the shape of the old ends justifying the means excuse: Huey might have resorted to undemocratic means, but it was mostly forgivable since he pursued noble causes that benefited the poor and downtrodden. Other times, Williams blames Long's opposition (which he paints as a bumbling bunch of conservative--though, of course, Democratic--fools) for Long's excesses: since his opponents usually put up weak resistance, if any at all, Long was justified in steamrolling over them. Until almost the very end, until the evidence becomes overwhelming, Williams refuses to criticize Long for his undemocratic methods. He makes the case that power corrupts, but Long became corrupt long before Williams admits he did.
Even so, this is the "classic" biography of Huey Long and very much worth a read for anyone interested in Long, Louisiana, or the Depression era.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This was one of the better biographies I've ever read. It was entertaining from start to finish and gave a detailed portrait of the man that was Huey Long, as well as of the world of Great Depression era Louisiana politics. Long was a flamboyant and interesting character. His politics while effective in most cases, were extremely divisive. He was among the first to take advantage of radio and ran extremely sophisticated political campaigns for his time. The book relies heavily on interviews with those who knew him and contains many highly entertaining stories about him. The one minor criticism of the book it that it doesn't talk much about the aftermath of his death. (Long was shot by the son-in-law of a political enemy shortly after he became a national figure and as he was preparing to challenge FDR for the presidency.) All in all, it is an excellent and entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This was one of the better biographies I've ever read. It was entertaining from start to finish and gave a detailed portrait of the man that was Huey Long, as well as of the world of Great Depression era Louisiana politics. Long was a flamboyant and interesting character. His politics while effective in most cases, were extremely divisive. He was among the first to take advantage of radio and ran extremely sophisticated political campaigns for his time. The book relies heavily on interviews with those who knew him and contains many highly entertaining stories about him. The one minor criticism of the book it that it doesn't talk much about the aftermath of his death. (Long was shot by the son-in-law of a political enemy shortly after he became a national figure and as he was preparing to challenge FDR for the presidency.) All in all, it is an excellent and entertaining read.
Rating:
Summary: Far and away the best political biography!
Review: Williams did heavy research on Long, digging up old newspaper articles, etc. (see footnotes at end of each chapter) and it shows--this is far and away the best political biography I have ever read. Williams somehow manages to tell the story of Long in chronological order in an exciting way, mixing Long's personal feelings with the accounts of others. There is also great coverage of Long's political antics, and the reasons behind them. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in politics and history.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Correction
Review: Williams does much to correct misrepresentations of Huey Long. To label Long a 'dictator' and thus compare him to Stalin, Hitler, Castro or countless others is a joke. Unfortunately, Long has been popularized by Penn's book and Hollywood's "All the King's Men." Consider those largely fictional accounts that bent Long's life to fit a narrative arch and moral: the politician rises to power and inevitably becomes corrupted. In actuality, isn't it possible Huey was a fighter for the people until he was assassinated? That conclusion would render quite a different moral, indeed, about American politics and power and those who challenge it. While Long grasped relentlessly for power, how did his tactics differ from FDR's Supreme Court packing or Chicago Mayor Daley's election frauds? No doubt Huey wasn't always clean, but has any politician (e.g. LBJ, Slick Willie) who successfully changed the system entirely played by the rules? He also shamefully engaged in 'Willie Horton' type tactics to win the day. But do not disregard that Long's powerful enemies left him little choice if he wanted to achieve anything like social justice in Louisiana. Huey used the ambiguity in the law to his advantage. And, yes, he became too willing to squash opposition as witnessed by his intimidation of LSU student journalists. But he ran the state little more than GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson ran Wisconsin with his line item veto & micro-management of who received state contracts. Long was, in fact, nearly impeached for taking on Standard Oil. His chances of becoming President were small, and he was only viewed as 'dangerous' by those who wanted to make more than $1MM a year or inherit more than $5MM in 1930s dollars. In reality he would have been marginalized like any other 3rd party candidate. Only his murder places him in the annals of American history. Long was exceptional in that he called for the deconcentration of wealth & power to protect the free market system Americans believe is at the center of their way of life. Seventy years later, Bill Gates has more personal wealth than the entire GDP of many nations ($80B), and 200 people receive most of the annual economic gains on the planet. Was Long really a 'dangerous' man or just the wind in the desert? The biography is not too PRO-Long. His biggest abuse was that he managed to put the local governments under the thumb of the state. No other state governor has matched this level of control. But did Long fundamentally change the American system? Dream on. Not possible for such a radical to undermine the influence of wealth on our national politics. A satisfying read, especially about Long's transformation from salesman to lawyer to politician. Tireseome in the mechanics of the state legislature, but the biography makes up for that in destroying the myth of Long as demogogue and its thorough research. It's only failing, as noted, is that it deals little with the man's legacy.
Rating:
Summary: The classic portrait of an American enigma.
Review: Williams has sustained much criticism for his seeming endorsement of Long's philosophy, which simply goes to show how controversial the man's legacy still is. While Williams' book is, in fact, slanted towards the pro-Long camp, it is one of the best political biographies to the written in the last fifty years. This compelling portrait of a man who was considered a fascist by some and a communist by others provides a sense of time, place, and character that is not seen often enough in current political biography.
Rating:
Summary: Best biography I have ever read
Review: Williams presents a fair and un-prejudiced view of one of the most interesting political characters in American history. Williams challenges the stereotypical view of Long and shows that he wasn't simply a redneck fascist that many in the "establishment" claim he was. Well worth your time and money.
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