Join us at Macy's on State Street for a signing of "American Populist: Huey Long of Louisiana" by Thomas E. Patterson

We kindly request that if you would like your book signed, it must be purchased at Barbara’s Bookstore. To ensure a smooth and efficient signing process, please present your receipt as proof of purchase. ABOUT THE BOOK Image “In American Populist, Thomas E. Patterson provides a much-needed corrective to most of what has been written about Huey Long. Patterson takes seriously the Kingfish’s own words and shows Long to be less of a manipulative, power-hungry, end-justify-the-means demagogue and more of a politician driven by a real concern for those who lacked power and the creator of a viable alternative politics for his time.”—Michael S. Martin, author of Russell Long: A Life in Politics “Patterson’s American Populist is a fresh and intriguing biography of Louisiana’s most consequential political leader. The author’s exhaustive examination of Huey Long’s life and career will be contro- versial, but his appraisal of the Kingfish is worthy of our consideration.”—Robert Mann, author of Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU Thomas E. Patterson’s monumental biography of Huey Long is a profound reevaluation of his life and legacy, recognizing him as an inspirational progressive thinker, populist hero, and radical influence on the New Deal before an assassin’s bullet ended his life in 1935. First as governor and then as U.S. senator, Long transformed the politics of Louisi- ana by standing for the interests of citizens whom state officials had historically ignored. He eased suffrage restrictions so that more people could vote, and voters endorsed his program of more robust government services and shifting the tax burden to those better able to pay. In the United States Senate, during the darkest days of the Great Depression, he advocated loudly and ceaselessly for the redistribution of wealth, expanding public works, increasing the money supply, insuring bank deposits, paying old-age pensions and veterans’ benefits, delivering a minimum income for families, and funding college and vocational education. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, along with other politicians and pundits, dismissed Long’s proposals as nonsense put forth by a reckless demagogue in search of votes. Despite several biographies, acclaimed novels, and historical studies in the years since Long’s death, his reputation today is mostly caricature: a spellbinding speaker, a dictator, a populist firebrand who was unprincipled and corrupt. Using previously untapped personal papers of Long and his son Russell, other primary sources, recent scholarship, and his ex- perience as a lawyer, Patterson provides a necessary corrective as he analyzes the contours of Long’s career, deconstructs the elements of his success, undercuts several myths related to his time in office, and explains the circumstances that led to his ultimate downfall. The result is the most comprehensive, balanced, and analytical study of the Kingfish to date. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Image Thomas E. Patterson is a lawyer in Chicago, where he practiced as a Law Clerk for an Illinois Supreme Court Judge, as a partner in one of the largest law firms there, and then founded the Patterson Law Firm in 2000. In 2009, Patterson wrote a 600-page book for lawyers: Handling the Business Emergency: Temporary Restraining Orders and Preliminary Injunctions, peer-reviewed and published by the American Bar Association. Having read Robert Penn Warren’s book, All the King’s Men, and T. Harry Williams’s biography of Huey Long in 1970, he kept abreast of later biographies and other studies that disagreed with Williams or thought that Long was a nostalgic politician in the twilight of a losing struggle to regain an economy that had disappeared. In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-09 and Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), it became apparent that Long’s advocacy of increased taxes on the wealthy had been resurrected or resuscitated. Even without these events, Long is a fascinating character. He inspired at least six novels, several movies based on those novels, two nonfiction movies, a play, an opera, and a Ken Burns documentary. Yet most of his personal papers and none of the papers of his son, U.S. Senator Russell Long, had been tapped by prior writers. Using these and other primary sources, recent scholarship, and his experience as a lawyer, Patterson has resolved disputes among historians, added previously unknown facts, destroyed several myths, and provided a fresh new perspective—warts and all--on the Kingfish. In 2022, Patterson’s article, “Mastering the Senate Maze: Mr. Long Goes to Washington,” Louisiana History 63, No. 3 (2022):321-72, reconsidered Long’s first four months in the US Senate, concluding—contrary to all prior writers—that Long was a responsible advocate for progressive tax policies and willing to take considerable risks to advance them. The book is timely, given the resurgence of populism around the globe, the ethical questions related to obtaining and using power, the concern about increasing inequality, and the process of change in a democracy. The book, in short, considers the intersections of power, populism, and the American political landscape, past, present, and future.