This book has been prepared for the benefit of people who want the real truth concerning Huey P. Long, which truth has been kept from the public by authors, journalists, and historians. No book on the life of Huey Long has been accurate. All books that have been published concerning this great man have either been published by his enemies, his cynical observers or ignorant historians who have built their books out of the newspaper morgues. This book is written by one knowledgeable concerning his greatness who loved him and respected him and dares, in this volume, to tell things that have never been told before. William Howard Taft, while Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said: "Huey P. Long is the most brilliant attorney to appear before me during my term as Chief Justice." Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith was with Mr. Long when he was shot. He was at his bedside when he died. He delivered the funeral oration over his grave.

In a region famous for its flamboyant politicians, Earl K. Long was one of the most flamboyant of them all. This first full-scale biography of the former Louisiana governor explores his controversial life-style and his strong family ties, his raw humor and his political savvy, his abuse of power and his accomplishments in the areas of civil rights and public services. Michael L. Kurtz and Morgan D. Peoples provide new information from recently declassified FBI files concerning Earl's ties with organized crime figures, give the first comprehensive account of his stays in mental institutions in 1959, and offer factual information about his notorious relationship with the stripper Blaze Star. Based on more than two decades of research in a variety of sources, this important biography fills a serious gap in the history of modern Louisiana politics.

In the first full-length biography of evangelist Gerald L. K. Smith (1898--1976), Glen Jeansonne traces the tempestuous career of this notorious bigot. A spellbinding speaker and brilliant organizer, Smith founded the reactionary hate sheet The Cross and the Flag as well as the anti-Semitic Christian Nationalist Crusade and ran for president three times.Exhaustively researched, this study contains information from Smith's FBI dossier, his personal papers, and Smith himself. Also included are compelling arguments concerning the causes of anti-Semitism in America, the role of demagogues, and the mentality of their loyal supporters.

Winner of the 2023 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal for US History From the acclaimed author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents and 1960: LJB vs JFK vs Nixon—The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies comes a dazzling panorama of presidential and political personalities, ambitions, plots, and counterplots; racism, anti-Semitism, anti-socialism, and anti-communism, and the landslide referendum on FDR’s New Deal policies in the 1936 presidential election. Award-winning historian David Pietrusza boldly steers clear of the pat narrative regarding Franklin Roosevelt’s unprecedented 1936 re-election landslide, weaving an enormously more intricate, ever more surprising tale of a polarized nation; of America’s most complex, calculating, and politically successful president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the very top of his Machiavellian game; and the unlocking of the puzzle of how our society, our politics, and our parties fitfully reinvented themselves. With in-depth examinations of rabble-rousing Democratic US Senator Huey Long and his assassination before he was able to challenge FDR in ’36; powerful, but widely hated, newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, who blasted FDR’s “Raw Deal”; wildly popular, radical radio commentator Father Coughlin; the steamrolled passage of Social Security and backlash against it; the era’s racism and anti-Semitism; American Socialism and Communism; and a Supreme Court seemingly bent on dismantling the New Deal altogether, Roosevelt Sweeps Nation is a vivid portrait of a dynamic Depression-Era America. Crafting his account from an impressive and unprecedented collection of primary and secondary sources, Pietrusza has produced an engrossing, original, and authoritative account of an election, a president, and a nation at the crossroads. The nation’s stakes were high . . . and the parallels hauntingly akin to today’s dangerously strife-ridden political and culture wars.

The study of two great demagogues in American history--Huey P. Long, a first-term United States Senator from the red-clay, piney-woods country of nothern Louisiana; and Charles E. Coughlin, a Catholic priest from an industrial suburb near Detroit. Award-winning historian Alan Brinkely describes their modest origins and their parallel rise together in the early years of the Great Depression to become the two most successful leaders of national political dissidence of their era. *Winner of the American Book Award for History*