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Feb 17, 2011

Weinz rated it:

I finished this book on a plane. I was on a plane coming home from somewhere that I didn't belong and as we coasted onto the tarmac I felt a little like Jack Burden. He was never really comfortable in the shoes that he wore but was constantly striving to find the truth in things. He was looking for the truth while consistently doing the right even when it was hardest. Not to say that I am this all knowing altruistic seeker of truth in all things, quite the opposite, but coming from somewhere More...

8 comments like (12 people liked it)

May 01, 2008

Heather rated it:

Compelling, overstuffed, overplotted, sexist, labyrinthine, poetic, atmospheric. To me this book's status as The Great American Political Novel seems like a terrific bitter joke, because the author's vision of "politics" is comprised entirely of blackmail, physical intimidation, pork-barreling, rabble-rousing, nepotism, bribery, rigged elections, and hilariously contrived "family values" photo shoots. (I love the scene where a photographer and two aides attempt to wrestle a More...

1 comment like (17 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Andrew added it

All the King’s Men is often promoted as a novel about politics, occasionally even the quintessential novel of American politics. While I did enjoy the portrait of Willie Stark as an archetype political boss, more interesting, to me, is the struggle of the narrator, Jack Burden, to overcome his nihilistic doubts in the face of a world governed by power. Jack claims to overcome his nihilism (“the Great Twitch”) by coming to an understanding of the morality of his own life (the personal and inte More...

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

Feb 06, 2011

Kemper rated it:

At first glance, Willie Stark seems like he would have been the perfect Tea Party candidate. He uses fiery rhetoric to stir up crowds by claiming to be just like them and that he’s going to bust the heads of those evil ole politicians at the state house to force them the straighten up and do things the right way. But on the other hand, Willie actually knows something about government and uses his tactics to improve the lives of poor people by taxing the wealthy and using that money to do thing More...

2 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2008

Teresa rated it:

I first read this in Oct '06 and just re-read it for a discussion that was held in conjunction with this year's Louisiana Book Festival. It's amazing what one forgets in just 2 years, but what I didn't forget was Warren's lyrical way with words and structure, and the questioning, many times sardonic voice of his narrator, Jack Burden. It was a pleasure to read it again.

It took me so long to read this book in the first place because I thought it was going to be 'just' a fictionalized More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 26, 2008

Mister Jones rated it:

For my money, I think this is the greatest book in Southern Literature exceeding Faulkner. All the King's Men is much more than the usual purported centrality of Willie Stark's political motives and final demise, and the usual shallow analogies to Huey Long; if anything, the novel's narrator, Jack Bundren, is a cynical person whose life has unraveled. I think the one scene with Jack's father will always stay vivid as the epitome of Southern Grotesque. It is a multi-layer novel--with clarity and More...

3 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2009

Nate rated it:

This is one of my favorite novels - really, the book that helped me define what a novel even is. There's a real breadth to the action of this novel and characters that are real in ways I hadn't come across in a novel before. I found myself equally drawn to the quiet lyrical moments of this and the more declarative sections of action and character manipulation.

The overall plot - political intrigue in Louisiana politics - is so secondary to my enjoyment that I almost forget that is t More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 01, 2009

Greg rated it:

I try to hand out 5-star ratings to books that meet some minimum criteria. For one, it can’t be a 5-star in my rating system if offensive language is prolific. That is the reason I stepped this book down from a 5-star to s 4-star. I would just caution that the language used in many cases is raw with a lot of deity degradation.
I find myself wondering at times if I’m becoming desensitized. I realize that these characters are flawed and that they are probably not true represen More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jun 22, 2008

Brinda rated it:

This book was unlike anything I have ever read before and I doubt I will read many of its caliber ever again. It is an epic, biblical, human yet quintessentially American saga, disguised in the bizarre circumstances surrounding a particular brand of local Southern politics. In Willie Stark, Penn Warren has created the ultimate American antihero -- describing to the tee the populist circus the campaign trail becomes, with Willie playing off the parasitic needs of potential voters and staffers and More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 04, 2008

Coy rated it:

I can understand why people call this a classic. It sort of reminds me of the Great Gatsby, one of my favorite novels. I can also hear the narration at the end. It's deep, nostalgic, matter of fact and meloncholy-- like saying goodbye. That reminds me of A River Runs Through It. After all is said and done, however, I can't say that All the Kings Men, to me, was as good as a River Runs Through It or Gatsby.

This I write much to the dismay of my girlfriend, who not only loves All More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 14, 2008

matt rated it:

This book grabbed me by the collar and pulled me in when I picked it up at the bookstore and I couldn't breath until I finished it.

This is exactly what American politics, in the essential or fundamental sense, are about. Innocense gets you into the game, experience gets you further, ruthlessness gets you ahead.

Its narrated with zest and sarcasm and this particular version is great because it throws in all of Warren's original extras- references, allusions, extra pl More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2009

Joanna rated it:

Whew, I finally made it! I thoroughly enjoyed this story, although I have to confess I don't think audiobooks are really my bag. I kept spacing out while listening, and had to replay the same passages over and over. Which I loved, because I can never get enough of Michael Emerson's voice and the impossibly cute way he has of saying words that begin with "wh," but it did drag a 12-hour audio into a five week experience.

I just loved the character of Jack Burden and his rando More...

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 21, 2011

Dlee rated it:

I didn't really see this as Willie Stark's story. It was about Jack Burden (aptly named) and his travel from innocence to corruption. He learned it at Willie's knee but ultimately the story was his. I wish I had known before that the politic would take such a back seat. I would have picked this book up years ago and have read it 3 times by now. I loved the language, the description and the imagery that Warren invoked.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 22, 2007

Emma rated it:

This is one of my favorite books. In addition to writing novels, Robert Penn Warren was a poet laureate. When I was first introduced to this book I was told that it was a lyrical novel, which I assume means that its prose have rhythm and tempo. In addition to being a captivating story, the style of the book is constantly engaging. I love the description at the beginning of the novel when the characters are driving down a highway road in Mississippi at night. The author sets the tempo of the m More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

Winner of the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, All the King s Men has been touted as the best book written on American politics because of the portrayal of Willie Stark, the politician whose life and career resemble that of Huey Long of Louisiana. But after reading the book, it seems to me that it is much more the story of the personal journey of Jack Burden, one-time reporter and long-time aide to Willie, told by Jack himself as he records the different stages of his personal pain as his rela More...

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Jan 05, 2012

Mike rated it:

Read this passage:

A woman only laughs that way a few times in her life. A woman only laughs that way when something has touched her way down in the very quick of her being and the happiness just wells out as natural as breath and the first jonquils and mountain brooks. When a woman laughs that way it always does something to you. It does not matter what kind of a face she has got either. You hear that laugh and feel that you have grasped a clean and beautiful truth. You feel that way b More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 01, 2011

Liz rated it:

Reading up on this book before decided to read it, hurt my mood towards it quite a bit.
The book was thought to be a biography of the late u.s senator Huey P. Long. Of which I immediately started to regret picking up the book.
As it turns out, the author, Robert Warren, quoted this to Modern Library."The difference between the person Huey P. Long and the fiction Willie Stark, may be indicated by the fact that in the verse play [Proud Flesh] the name of the politician was Talos More...

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Nov 22, 2011

Shaun rated it:

For God and Nothing have a lot in common
This book is a classic. I read it at a very hectic time and couldn’t quite give it the attention it deserves, therefore I look forward to rereading it, but here’s the thing. This is American story telling at its finest. In the tradition of Hemmingway, McCarthy, and other great American story tellers, this is a story where much (most) is unspoken and oh so much is happening. The protagonist is fascinating, as are several of the main characters. S More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Aug 07, 2011

Ensiform rated it:

Jack Burden, tough-talking former reporter, chronicles his work for Willie Stark, a Louisiana politician in the 1930s who metamorphoses from idealistic sap to well-meaning demagogue to corrupt, and corrupting, center of the machine. As he relates the Boss’s rise and fall in the pool halls and back rooms of Mason City, he also tells of the ennui that took him away from his doctoral thesis; his friendship that developed into love for Anne Stanton, who drifted apart from him because of his aimless More...

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Jul 18, 2011

Lyn rated it:

Robert Penn Warren, All the Kings Men- Winner of the 1947 Pulitzer prize, this could also have won that prize in the next three years.　 Is this 400 pages of poetic prose or a great epic prosaic poem? This work would make a great primer for college English lit majors, I think Warren used every literary device and may have made up some ...more.　 And like so many master performances of art or sport, he makes it look effortless, he makes it look easy. This was like watching Joe DiMaggio glide across More...

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Jul 17, 2011

Patsy rated it:

I started this book about 3 years ago and put it down pretty quick. The language (use of the n-word and 1930's slang) put me off and the long sentences and 661 pages of the book made reading it more work than pleasure. I started it again about a week ago. The beginning still put me off but I stuck to it. It was definitely worth it. Eventually I caught on to the slang and Warren's style of writing. He does go one sometimes. There was on sentence that was almost an entire page long. But then who a More...

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Jul 07, 2011

Carrie rated it:

Earthy but high-faluting at the same time. Only a very skilled writer could pull that off. Some other things only a very skilled writer could pull off, and did in this book: a mid-book frolicking detour about the protagonist's long-lost ancestor who died in an army hospital in Atlanta during the Civil War, which has nothing much to do with story at hand but which the protagonist had researched for his PhD many long years before he got involved with Willie Talos (Stark); a protagonist named Jack More...

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Apr 27, 2011

Keith rated it:

Now here is story you can really get your teeth into. It’s about politics… and in my opinion it should be required readings for all politicians and possibly all voters. It’s not just about getting elected to office but rather it’s about the motives for and trading done for the body politic; good intentions that become obsessions, sharing that becomes greed, love that becomes indifference and decidedly it’s about power. Power can be handled as a blunt instrument or as deftly as a surgeon’s sca More...

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Jan 14, 2011

Jim rated it:

http://www.jamesrament.com/book-review�...

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989); published 1946

Robert Penn Warren, America’s first Poet Laureate, won a Pulitzer Prize for this 600- page novel, considered by many as one of the greatest works by any American author. Set in the 1930’s, it traces the rise and fall of a dictatorial demagogue loosely based on Huey “Kingfish” Long, governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1931. Long was loved by his supporters and hated by h More...

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Nov 12, 2010

Rachel rated it:

All the King's Men is a classic Roman a Clef - in this case, telling the story of Huey P. Long, one of Louisiana's most famous (and corrupt) governors. I began this book right as a I began teaching in August 2006, and it felt like Penn Warren's intricate, lyric prose clung to me just as much as my damp clothes in the sleepy summer heat.

So rather than a review, I share a bit of that experience. What follows is something I wrote at the time, scrawled on a piece of printer paper (now go More...

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Aug 05, 2010

Denerick rated it:

This was a chunky one.

I've always been a fan of the West Wing. There is something about the optimism of that show, it re-affirms what is good about American politics. Its anti cynical. All the Kings Men, on the other hand, is an antidote to that optimism.

It is relentlessly cynical.

The story is narrated by Jack Burden, a political hack (Shades of Alastair Cambell) who does the bidding of the Governor of Louisiana in 1930s America. Willie Stark, the would be governor, More...

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Jun 08, 2010

Rowland rated it:

All the King's Men focuses on the lives of Willie Stark, an upstart farm boy who rises through sheer force of will to become Governor of an unnamed Southern state during the 1930s, and Jack Burden, the novel's narrator, a cynical scion of the state's political aristocracy who uses his abilities as a historical researcher to help Willie blackmail and control his enemies. The novel deals with the large question of the responsibility individuals bear for their actions within the turmoil of history, More...

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Jun 07, 2010

Patrick rated it:

I just re-read this classic book that we were all forced to read in high school or college. It turns out that, like most things, it was much more enjoyable when I did it because I wanted to and not because someone told me to.

All the King's Men is nothing that I traditionally like in a book, yet I'm now convinced that it's one of the best books ever written. I like short chapters, this book has really long chapters. I like lots of absurd humor, this book is deadly serious. I like More...

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Apr 03, 2010

Ted rated it:

I recently re-read Robert Penn Warren's "All The King's Men" after seeing the needless 2006 film remake starring Sean Penn, curious to see how well the tale had worn now that we're in the serious business of considering which way the country will go. I enjoyed nearly as much as when I first came across it during a course while in college. I had read Robert Penn Warren as a poet and critic of the Fugitive Group, and I was never convinced even as an impressionable, nee gullible romantic More...

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Apr 01, 2010

Matthew rated it:

This book sat on my shelf for a couple months before I even opened it. Originally getting it because it was a bargain book on Amazon, I initially didn't think much of it. I attempted reading it twice and wasn't quite ready for it. It took an English professor in college who recommended I read it to get past the first twenty pages. What I first found to be boring pretty language transformed into something transcendent. After completing the novel I found that Robert Penn Warren was the only person More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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