First published in 1946, the novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 and was made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1949 and re-made in 2006 with an all-star cast All the King's Men is considered the finest novel ever written on American politics. Set in the 1930s, this book traces the rise and fall of Willie Stark, who resembles the real-life Huey 'Kingfish' Long of Louisiana. Stark begins his political career as an idealistic man of the people but soon becomes corrupted by success.