Originally this book was a three-part profile in The New Yorker. It's a breezy portrait of the last 15 months of Earl Long's lusty career. Liebling believes that Governor Earl Long, brother of the flamboyant Huey, ranks as one of the last backwoods realists in American provincial politics and that he deserves more credit than blame. He sees this bumpkin Talleyrand as the only really effective liberal in the South. Long's political demise began with his efforts to push through a pro-integration measure, followed by his nervous breakdown and subsequent failure to regain the Governor's mansion. His death came during a nearly successful bid for a Congressional seat. Liebling writes of the colorful Long with instinctive feel for the world of real politics. Long, he thinks, was more in the tradition of 19th century politics -- combining its toughness and its colorfulness, than the current cool style of organization-men. It's a forceful and vital book and politically, more real than ll the King's Men.
