Based loosely on the rise and fall of Louisiana-legend Huey "The Kingfish" Long, Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning narrative matches the best kind of political drama with incisive existential meditations on loyalty, love and the human condition. Jack Burden, southern lit.'s answer to Nick Carraway, is an ex-newspaperman tuned political muckraker in the service of demagogue Governor Willie Stark. The book careers with him through through Stark's populist administration as he bears witness to the corrosive nature of power, bad things done for the right reasons and "the price of doing business," in old Dixie machine-Boss politics. Stylistically like more-accessible Faulkner, I'm not sure it gets much better than this one.