Book Review: A.J. Liebling – The Earl of Louisiana

Review of A.J. Liebling, The Earl of Louisiana (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961)

A colorful book by a colorful author. I read this as preparation for a work event in New Orleans, which I had not previously visited. Liebling was a journalist for The New Yorker who was assigned to write about Earl Long’s 1959 campaign for governor of Louisiana. Liebling’s enthusiasm for food and drink were legendary, and his accounts of his and his interviewees’ restaurant meals are almost unbelievable. Earl Long, the younger brother of the legendary Huey Long, had a mental breakdown during the campaign and was forcibly institutionalized in Texas for a time before returning to the campaign trail.

Liebling gives a vivid portrait of Long. But he paints an even more vivid portrait of Louisianan politics and culture. As CEI founder and Louisiana native Fred Smith likes to say, people in Louisiana don’t expect their politicians to be corrupt; they insist upon it. The people Liebling meets, whether high-ranking officials or ordinary man-in-the-street types, speak to this truth, often hilariously so. Liebling draws frequent parallels between Louisiana’s political system and Middle Eastern oil dictatorships. There are obvious differences, but also enough parallels to give one pause.