Description

Published 1970: Softcover / Very Good Condition

Pictorial stiff card covers. 252 very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on covers consistent with age.

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In the summer of 1959, A. J. Liebling, veteran writer for the New Yorker, came to Louisiana to cover a series of bizarre events which began when Governor Earl K. Long was committed to a mental institution. Captivated by his subject, Liebling remained to write the fascinating yet tragic story of Uncle Earl's final year in politics. First published in 1961, The Earl of Louisiana recreates a stormy era of Louisiana politics and captures the style and personality of one of the most colorful and paradoxical figures in the state's history.

Reviews:
"Longism" was the populist, pragmatic and corrupt political idea that dominated Louisiana politics from the mid 1920s through 1960. Established by Huey Long, whose assassination in 1935 prevented it from going national, and kept alive in Louisiana by his brother Earl, Longism did much to elevate the lives of poor people—while lining the pockets of well-connected elites—and made the state weirdly progressive in an era of reactionary dominance in the South.

A.J. Liebling’s The Earl of Louisiana, chronicles the end of Longism through the story of the 1959 Louisiana governor’s election. It is arguably among the best accounts ever written about any episode of American political history. Liebling, the preeminent American political reporter of his era, made his reputation as a World War II correspondent. He also wrote about boxing and dining—his reports from Paris introduced American readers to French haute cuisine. His reporting on American and world politics as a staff writer for New Yorker magazine gave him the freedom to cover any story, anywhere in the world. In 1959, attracted by the story of Governor Earl Long, he chose Louisiana.

Uncle Earl, as his supporters called him, had just gone through an bizarre odyssey: Committed to a federal mental institution in Texas by his wife, having his allies transfer him to a state facility in Louisiana, and finally, still as sitting governor, pulling strings to get himself released. His enemies took solace in the fact that his tenure would end within a year. Until the end of the 20th century, Louisiana governors could not succeed themselves and were required to sit out a term if they wanted to run again. Uncle Earl had finished the term of a resigned governor in 1939-1940, was elected in his own right from 1948-1952 and again for a third term that began in 1956 and would end in 1960. Or so everyone thought; Uncle Earl had something else in mind.

After escaping the mental institutions, he announced that he would be candidate in 1959 for the term beginning 1960 and intended, if elected, to resign a day before taking office. After all, the Louisiana Constitution only stipulated that a governor could only not succeed himself. That piqued Liebling’s interest to find out more about the man and the state. As he soon learned, "Maneuvers like Earl’s scheme to succeed himself immediately enrage the Longs’ opponents because they never think of them first."

Liebling’s first stop was New Orleans to get a primer on Louisiana politics. When he met Larry Comiskey who, along with his brother Joe, controlled the Old Regulars, the Democratic machine that ran much of the city, he got a profound lesson on politics and patronage: "It’s better to get a hundred little jobs for a hundred little fellows dan one big one big job for a big fella, because den you got a hundred you can count on to work for ya, instead of one dat might likely cut your throat in da bargain."

Liebling’s real revelation, however, was that he really wasn’t in the United States. Instead, he had landed in the "the westernmost of the Arab states." This was a place of tribal intrigue made up of complex, agile factions, political pashas and an Imam named Earl K. Long. It resembled Lebanon rather than anything he had seen in the United States. And the heat and humidity were much worse than the Middle East. There was New Orleans, where urban Catholicism, mixed with a mélange of ethnicities, clashed with the oil-based economy south of the city that was run by authoritarian political bosses like Leander Perez, who used his wealth and iron hand to maintain his racist, rural fiefdom. Add in the Cajun areas in southwestern and south central Louisiana to the hard-line pro-segregation, Protestant areas of the north with the incessant poverty that characterized each region and parts of the Middle East seemed tame to Liebling.

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