Huey Long by T. Harry Williams

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Huey Long by T. Harry Williams

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning book entitled Huey Long by T. Harry Williams, the reader is given an interesting perspective into perhaps the most controversial American politician of the 20th century. The book is lengthy and wordy, but still a very easy read and very informative. For a larger than life kind of guy like Huey Long, a man that cannot be confined to just pages in a book, the questions arises if Williams strips away the myth surrounding Huey, or does he further add to the mythical quality of a politician whom many people still chose sides over to this day. Some of the most ambitious plan for Louisiana were laid out under the Long administration, but was Long really for the people as he said, or was there a more personal drive behind his plans. Is Williams’s biography of Long at all bias, or is it a fair account that lets the reader decide who Long was. In a book that’s about 800 pages, one would need much more space to write review of Williams’ book, but I hope to touch on each topic mentioned above.

The book starts off mentioning the state of the State of Louisiana at the time when Huey Long was rising to power. Louisiana was at the bottom of the list for income, literacy, and property value in the 1920’s. According to Williams, “Educational and other services were poor for the additional reason that the ruling hierarchy was little interested in using what resources the state had available to provide services and was even less interested in employing the power of the state to create new resources so that more services could be supported…” The poor people of Louisiana were the ones that Long reached out to and identified with. There is no argument that from the beginning, Long had his eyes set on the Presidency. Long knew that to get that far he need the support of the people. Long was able to gain that support he needed with the ambitious “share our wealth” campaign. Long also took on Standard Oil, the biggest companies in the South. To the poor folks of Louisiana, Long was a hero who stood up for them, but to many of the States wealthy, he had started to make many enemies.

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