THE EARL OF LOUISIANA.

By A. J.Liebling '24. New York: Simon andSchuster, 1961. 252 pp. $3.95.

It must always be a temptation to a reviewer of one of Mr. Liebling's books to try to write as colorfully and as vividly as he does. The temptation should be resisted, as shown by several past reviews by those who succumbed to the lure. Few of us have the shrewdness of observation and the retentive memory, combined with the interest in food, drink, horse racing, and prize fighting, that are needed to produce the Liebling prose, decorated by similes as colorful as a Dead Diamond squaretail.

In this latest task Mr. Liebling is covering a stream he doesn't know very well, and does all right. Like many of us Yankees, he was surprised to find so many good places to eat in New Orleans - even the hotel coffee shops have the flair - and to turn up so much political chicanery south of Jersey City. (Rural touches like this always surprise the city slicker, but even in New Hampshire there are those who could instruct Tammany.) Somehow in much of all this he finds a resemblance to the Arab way of life; possibly it is so.

Like many of us, again, he went to Louisiana well conditioned against all Longs and found them not entirely bad. His reaction was to look at Earl as a Southern white hope, in spite of the fact that even in a Vermont hill town he would have been regarded as a character and even in Ward Eight as a politician of doubtful probity.

The story starts with Governor Earl Long off to a mental hospital and ends fifteen months later, after his unsuccessful attempt to retain his post, his successful campaign for the Congress, and his death. It is full of vivid pictures, of shrewd comments on the campaigns and on political life in Louisiana. Many of the best comments are made in passing, as on the influence of oil, the real worth of Huey Long, and the negro vote.

Sometime all this should be developed; there is real need for a full study of the Longs, and this book is not that, of course. It is intensely interesting, a pleasure to read, and it tells all that most of us need to know. Those who like politics - who doesn't? - must read it.

Mr. Liebling points out that for a filing fee of $210 anyone may run for governor in Louisiana, and adds wistfully that he knows nowhere else where a man can have so much fun for the money. He might like to know, as a Dartmouth alumnus, that he could come back to New Hampshire and have just as much for $100.