All the King's Men - Winner, Fiction, 1947

All the King's Men

By: Robert Penn Warren

Harcourt Brace and Company, 1946

Well, I did finally get through one book (Pulitzer book, that is. I've read five or six books related to the history of American libraries in the last month...). Thanks to the modern miracle of free online audiobooks that can be checked out through various libraries, I was able to listen to All the King's Men while working. Warren's book, not to be confused with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's 1974 investigation into Watergate - All the President's Men, is the story of the political rise and fall of the fictional governor Willie Stark, loosely based on Huey Long, former governor and U.S. Senator from Louisiana.

Warren creates an interesting story that definitely brought to mind images of the rampant political corruption in Louisiana in the first half of the 1900s (and arguably even later) that I learned about in history class. He also show, I believe, his incredible literary skills by simply keeping his story straight. Warren makes extensive use of the "flashback" literary tool to the point that the reader tends to lose all sense of past and present. While I'm sure this is effective when reading the actual book, it caused me some problems as I listened. I often had trouble remembering where we were in time, especially after pausing to go home for the night.

For this reason I definitely recommend reading the actual printed book. Something else that helped me to follow along generally was the fact that I had watched the Academy award-winning movie adaptation recently. While the movie leaves out multiple story lines and deviates from the plot of the book, seeing the movie helped me to envision what was going on in the book and anticipate the time-jumping. Warren did claim that he did not intend for this book to be a political story, but I feel that it and the movie are both important commentaries on how power can corrupt. If you have a chance, read the book and/or watch the movie.

The image above is Huey P. Long.

Again, I will continue to take a "break" from reading until the beginning of December. I am currently listening to another book and will blog about it when I get a chance.

Just a brief vacation...

...well, maybe vacation isn't the word for it, but I will, unfortunately, have to take a little break from blogging about my books. For those who don't know me, I am working on my Masters in Library Science and this semester my classes are very heavy on the reading. I will continue to read as I can and listen to books that are available in audio form. As I finish those, I will blog about them, but it will probably be pretty irregular. Don't give up on me! I'm not giving up, just trying to get things under control :)

Admiral of the Ocean Sea - Winner, Biography, 1943

Admiral of the Ocean Sea
By: Samuel Eliot Morison
Little, Brown, and Company, 1942

In Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Morison gives a comprehensive biography of the life of Christopher Columbus. Apparently, Morison (who was a prolific author of the time and would win the Pulitzer again in 1960) was well known for the authority and readability of this books. I would emphasize the authority over the readability for this book.

Morison was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and was, therefore, probably so familiar with maritime history that I believe it would have been impossible for him to completely bring it down to layman's terms. I was able to follow generally, but was often lost in his descriptions of boat and ringings and winds and such. There were also a large number of references to names and places that I was unfamiliar with. To be fair, I did listen to a recording of this book and think that was a big source of the problems I had in following along. It would have helped greatly to have a map in front of me.

Morison did an excellent job of describing what are commonly thought to be Columbus's routes of travel. To research for the book he chartered a boat and actually sailed these routes himself. Interestingly, there is an overlay of the narrative of this trip on top of the story of Columbus's life. I would recommend this book to any reader interested in the history of explorers but would definitely suggest reading a physical copy instead of listening to the audio!

Gone With The Wind - Winner, Novel, 1937

Gone With The Wind

By: Margaret Mitchell

Macmillan, 1936

I don't know what else to say except that I LOVED Gone With the Wind. Earlier this year I purchased a copy for $5 at an antique store and am so glad that I will have it to reread again in the future. As a student of history, Mitchell's descriptions of life in the Deep South before, during and after the Civil War drew me in. So often the victor determines the story of a war, and so I found a long and detailed story from the side of the losers to be quite interesting. The Civil War and Reconstruction were so complicated that it helps to read about them through the lens of a story. I was often so caught up in the story of it all that I would completely forget that I was also learning about an important part of the history of our country from a perspective that I only knew about superficially. Clearly, Gone With the Wind is fiction and much must be taken with a grain of salt, but Margaret Mitchell spent tireless months checking her facts and so it is safe to say that one can at least derive a general sense of what the era was like for those living in and around Atlanta (based on knowledge from the 1930s).

I was a bit unsure when I began reading the book because I did not enjoy the movie. But, as I began to read, I realized that there are so many things in the book that just couldn't have made it into the movie that help the reader understand the characters and their drama much more fully. For example, throughout the book there are many things that go on internally for Scarlett that could not be portrayed in the movie format but made her a fully dimensional character in the book. There are many emotions that are felt and not expressed that I imagine the filmmakers truly struggled with. I do plan on watching the movie again, from my new perspective this time. I do recommend Gone With the Wind - especially to those who have not lived in the South. Regardless of ones opinions of the South and its attitudes during that era, at least one can learn to appreciate the time, place, and culture they were coming from.

[Photo Credit: Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara]

The People's Choice - Winner, Non-Fiction, 1934

The People's Choice
By: Herbert Agar
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933

Herbert Agar's The People's Choice really took me by surprise. I haven't had the best experiences with the politically oriented non-fiction Pulitzer winners, but Agar's book really drew me in.

His point in the book is that the first twenty-nine presidents of the United States, from George Washington to Warren Harding, can be divided into three eras. He claims that the first six presidents, from Washington to J.Q. Adams, were not democratic at all - they created an oligarchy, or rule by the wealthy. Not only were each of these men of the upper class, but Agar thinks that each also felt that only the upper classes were fit to rule.

The election of Andrew Jackson issued in the next era of actual democratic rule. For the most part the presidents from Jackson to Lincoln (Agar also included Jefferson Davis) came from the lower or middle classes and worked their way up to the presidency from nothing. This represents a time of expansion and growth in actual rule of the people.

The third era that Agar identifies began during the years of discouragement after the Civil War and continued until the election of William McKinley. He characterizes it as a plutocracy, where the wealthy tended to have more political power and social mobility was limited.

While Agar's view of American history might be a little dated, it did cause me to consider the presidencies of these men different way. He also provides a really useful summary of the administrations and issues of each of our presidents until after the first World War. Agar lived until 1980 and I would be interested to see if, in his later works, he continued his evaluation of the trends in the American presidency.

The Store - Winner, Novel, 1933

The Store
By: T.S. Stribling
Doubleday, 1932

I couldn't do it. I tried and tried to finish The Store and I just couldn't. I realized about halfway through that I just didn't care at all what happened to Colonel Miltiades Vaiden and his fellow citizens of Florence, Alabama. I know I should have persevered, but I just felt like I was wasting valuable time. Please don't judge me - this is the first Pulitzer Prize winner in the Fiction category that I have not finished. I promise I will try not to make it too much of a habit.

I discovered, after reading a good chunk of the book, that The Store is actually the second book in a trilogy by Stribling about the Vaiden family in the post-Reconstruction South. That in itself explained some of the problem I was having connecting with the characters - they had been developed in a previous volume and, therefore, Stribling felt we could skip the preliminaries that might have given me some sort of attachment. I was just so disappointed because when I started the book I had such high hopes for something different in the Pulitzer winners for fiction. This book was clearly no love story. It addresses issues that were prevalent in the South in the decades after the Civil War. What place did the former slave have in society? Where were ruined plantation owners to turn for employment when they could not function without slaves? How would the South rise up above the ruins after the War and Reconstruction? Who would be their voice in government? These issues are vaguely touched on, but mostly the story focus on things that I found to be insignificant and petty. I also did not enjoy the story enough to be willing to put up with the excessive (though culturally common at the time) use of the "N" word and derogatory comments about freed slaves. I won't rail any longer. I simply did not enjoy this book.

John Hay - From Poetry to Politics - Winner, Biography, 1934

John Hay - From Poetry to Politics

By: Tyler Dennett

Dodd, Mead & Company, 1933

John Hay is another of those political figures (that I often run into in my readings of the Pulitzer winners) whose name was familiar to me, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was that he was known for. I remembered mentions of his name in the biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Walt Whitman plus a few mentions in different NPR programs I had listened to. So, I had a general idea of when he was involved in politics but nothing else. Tyler Dennett's biography of Hay proved surprisingly interesting reading for a political biography (or, heaven forbid, I'm just getting used to the endless talk of this policy and that).

Hay worked in political administrations in various capacities from Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt. From Illinois, Hay came to Washington, DC as a secretary with Lincoln and his entourage. He followed this by stints as military representative and ambassador in various places in Europe, but the position that he is best known for was Secretary of State. While you may not be familiar with his name, issues that you might be familiar with that Hay played a key role in were the Open Door Policy with China, negotiations concerning the United States' building of the Panama Canal, negotiations concerning the Alaskan border with Canada, and many treaties with foreign nations as the United States emerged as a world power.

I'm not sure who I could say would be interested in reading this biography, but I could recommend it for anyone interested in the history of the rise in power of the United States in the world, as Hay was instrumental in this transition time.