Set in the 1930s, it describes the dramatic rise to power, as state governor, of Willie Stark, a one-time radical attorney.

Warren brilliantly portrays the transformation of Willie from naive lawyer to a ruthless political machine who employs blackmail, bribery, and bullying to secure his power and propel his ambitions.Cass and his brother were on the side of the Confederacy in the civil war, but where Gilbert, the elder brother, is a conscienceless slave-owner, driven by his desire for wealth and power, Cass is a man who may be flawed in more ways than one, but has a strong moral compass. Joyce Carol Oates, "The New York Review of Books" PRAISE FOR"ALL THE KING'S MEN" "Over the course of more than two centuries of vivid political history, there is perhaps only one full-blooded American novel of politics that plunges deep into the hearts of its characters and therefore into the hearts of its readers, thus rising to the top ranks of American fiction. For example, the events in Chapter One take place in 1936 and show Willie Stark to be a man who gets along with the common people, but they also show that he is a man who can be ruthless in dealing with his enemies.

When Willie reawakens he has transformed in to ‘The Boss’ and depends on alcohol to function, drinking before all his public speeches to vitalise himself. This complacency is not Burden’s, but the author’s — just as the novel’s lack of interest in the black people who serve the main characters their meals and drinks is a blindness not only of the characters, but of the author too.

In studying this fragment of Civil War–era history, Jack begins to suspect (but cannot yet bring himself to accept) the idea that every event has unforeseen and unknowable implications, and that all actions and all persons are connected to other actions and other persons. Politics merely provided the framework story in which the deeper concerns, whatever their final significance, might work themselves out. And once you’ve used and abused everyone, including your family, who is there left that you can trust? The film won three Oscars that year: Best Picture, Best Actor ( Broderick Crawford), and Best Supporting Actress ( Mercedes McCambridge). That Noel Polk should make a project of ‘restoring’ a text in this way, and that this text should be published to compete with the author-approved text, is unconscionable, unethical, and indefensible.

If his supporters refuse to, The Boss concludes they can ‘…hand me the hammer and I’ll do it with my own hand’. Jack also grapples with his troubled romantic relationship with Anne Stanton, who becomes Willie's mistress, complicating Jack’s personal and professional life further. Jack starts his story by taking us back in time to three years’ earlier, in 1936, to a day when Willie and his entourage visit his father in the house where Willie grew up. Warren is equally great at presenting a sense of blood in the air, and the paranoia rife throughout the state, particularly at The Boss’ rallies.After making contact with Dansey in 1942, Dericourt was recruited to SOE as the man desperately needed to organize top-secret flights in and out of occupied French territory. Upon re-reading two of these key symbols of corruption I noticed was alcohol and sexuality, ever-present in showcasing Willie’s seduction by power. We’ll see how the already cynical Jack found himself fascinated by the naive idealism of Willie, and that allows us to understand how, through all the years and despite all the corruption, Jack still sees Willie as a man who genuinely wants to improve the lives of his people. Robert Penn Warren’s great novel is at once a political tragedy, a study of individual corruption, and a compelling southern drama with a long afterlife.