Helpful Score: 4
One of the most brilliant American novels ever written---a must read if you're interested in politics, the South, racism, the populist movement, or the relationship between Christianity and guilt. This amazing book is a thinly veiled biography of Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, but it is so much more in its broad, encompassing themes. It will make you ask yourself, "What is true morality? What is right action?" If you weren't forced to read it in high school, you should have been. This would be Ideal for a book club with a lively membership. Finally, let me add this: the prose absolutely sings---vivid characterizations and passages that make me weep with their evocation of human emotions. If you only saw the movie, and haven't read the book, you were robbed.
Helpful Score: 3
This book was one that I felt I should read. It is great. I wish that I had read it sooner.
Helpful Score: 1
I enjoyed it... but felt like it wandered around inside Jack Burden's head a little too much. I know that's part of the beauty, but I'm more into the story than the philosophy.... which defeats the purpose of reading this book.
Sean Penn did not do Willie Stark justice
Pulitzer prize winner.
Wow! This is one of the best books I've ever read. All the King's Men is a book about politics in the early 20th century, but it is also about so much more. It is about relationships, self worth, choices and consequences, means and ends, love and hate, destiny and chaos. I loved Robert Penn Warren's writing style. He uses rich detailed creative descriptions, which require a lot of words, but at the same time invite and compel the reader to devour each and every one of them. This story is a saga which approaches the scale, complexity, and depth of Steinbeck's East of Eden. I loved this book. It really is one of the best I've read. 5 stars.
Well-written but kind of long!
Brand new book, found duplicates in my house. Different cover, great writing!!!