Includes bibliographical references and index.

Class, Elite Pluralism, and Political Bosses -- Robert Penn Warren and Huey Long's Louisiana: 1928-1932 -- A Class Analysis of All the King's Men -- Edwin O'Connor and James Michael Curley's Boston: 1914-1950 -- A Class Analysis of The Last Hurrah -- Billie Lee Brammer and Lyndon Johnson's Texas in the1950s -- A Class Analysis of The Gay Place -- Conclusion.

"This book analyzes what many critics consider to be the three best examples of modern American political fiction-Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah, and Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place-to address a specific problem in American governance: how the intense competition for power among elite factions often results in their ignoring major groups of their constituents, thereby providing political bosses with a rationale to seize authoritarian control of the government in the name of constituent groups who feel ignored or neglected, promising them more democratic rule, but in the process, excluding other groups, so that the bosses themselves become elitist, ruling only for the sake of some constituents and not others"--

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