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All The King's Men by Warren Robert…
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All The King's Men (original 1946; edition 1963)

by Warren Robert Penn

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7,3061291,248 (4.11)392
Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.

.
Member:pharcyde33
Title:All The King's Men
Authors:Warren Robert Penn
Info:New York Time Inc. 1963. (1963), Edition: Reprint Edition, Paperback
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All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946)

1940s (203)
AP Lit (277)
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English (127)  Spanish (1)  Hebrew (1)  All languages (129)
Showing 1-5 of 127 (next | show all)
Truly a masterpiece... Plot, characters, . language. A book truly worthy of the Pulitzer . Still relevant in the21st century. ( )
  Chrissylou62 | Apr 11, 2024 |
This is a book from my bucket list.

It's always a bit mind-boggling to read a book from a hundred years ago and recognize that nothing has really changed except fashion. It happened when I read [b:Arrowsmith|11389|Arrowsmith|Sinclair Lewis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328006651l/11389._SY75_.jpg|1446230] and realized that nothing has changed in the world of pharmaceuticals and physicians. All the King's Men lays out the idea that power and money is central to politics, and corrupts all politicians, no matter humble and full of good will they are in the beginning. Human nature doesn't change one bit. It's incredibly depressing. ( )
  rabbit-stew | Dec 31, 2023 |
This is impressive, and it's clear why it won the Pulitzer for fiction. The prose flows beautifully, and the banter and schemes and relationships are captivating and infuriating ( )
  KallieGrace | Nov 29, 2023 |
650 pages of poetry. I'm sure it is the masterpiece it is said to be, but for me it was a real slog. ( )
  nogomu | Oct 19, 2023 |
As good as I remember ( )
  emmby | Oct 4, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 127 (next | show all)
Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" is magnificently vital reading, a book so charged with dramatic tension it almost crackles with blue sparks, a book so drenched with fierce emotion, narrative pace and poetic imagery that its stature as a "readin' book," as some of its characters would call it, dwarfs that of most current publications. Here, my lords and ladies, is no book to curl up with in a hammock, but a book to read until 3 o'clock in the morning, a book to read on trains and subways, while waiting for street cars and appointments, while riding elevators or elephants.
 

» Add other authors (20 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Warren, Robert Pennprimary authorall editionsconfirmed
Emerson, MichaelNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Koskinen, JuhaniTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde.

—La Divina Commedia, Purgatorio, III
Dedication
To Justine and David Mitchell Clay
First words
MASON CITY.

To get there you follow Highway 58, going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it.
Quotations
It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean and pick it up, but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel like there's an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you from miles and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little foetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what's in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know it, too. But the clammy, sad little foetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn't want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing. The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him. There's the cold in your stomach, but you open the envelope, you have to open the envelope, for the end of man is to know.
It was not so much any one example, any one event, which I recollected which was important, but the flow, the texture of the events, for meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event.  Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself.  The meaning.  But we cannot do that.  For it is the motion which is important.
So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you.  The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis.  But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them.
The creation of man whom God in His foreknowledge knew doomed to sin was the awful index of God's omnipotence.  For it would have been a thing of trifling and contemptible ease for Perfection to create mere perfection.  To do so would, to speak truth, be not creation but extension.  Separateness is identity and the only way for God to create, truly create, man was to make him separate from God Himself,and to be separate from God is to be sinful.  The creation of evil is therefore the index of God's glory and His power.
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Wikipedia in English (2)

Classic Literature. Fiction. Literature. HTML:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this classic book is generally regarded as the finest novel ever written on American politics. It describes the career of Willie Stark, a back-country lawyer whose idealism is overcome by his lust for power.

.

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary
The rise and fall of

a demagogue, based somewhat

on a real statesman.

(legallypuzzled)

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