Description

When All of the King's Men was initially published in 1946, Sinclair Lewis pronounced it "huge, remarkable,among our several national galleries of personality." Diana Trilling, researching it for the Country, wrote, "For sheer virtuosity, for the continual push of its writing, for the pace and the evenness of its pacing, for its accuracy of vocabulary,I doubt indeed whether it could be coordinated in American fiction." The Washington Post reported, "When the sport of identifying the Truly Amazing American Novel continues to be being performed everywhere, Warren's All of the King's Men might quickly create the ultimate rounds." Set in the 1930s, this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel traces the rise and fall of demagogue Willie Stark, a fantastic character who resembles the actual-life Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career being an idealistic man of the folks but quickly becomes damaged by achievement and captured between an insatiable lust for power and desires of support. As pertinent today because it was significantly more than fifty years back, All of the King's Men is among the classics of American literature.