One of the most striking parts of Robert Penn Warren's novel All the King's Men is Chapter 4, in which narrator Jack Burden tells the story of his distant relative Cass Mastern. A Confederate soldier, Mastern betrays his best friend by falling in love with the man's wife and then out of guilt tries repeatedly to get killed in battle but ironically becomes a hero for his daring, before finally attaining a mortal wound. In The Cass Mastern Material, James A. Perkins fully explores how this episode supplies the crucial piece to a puzzle surrounding Warren's novel, tracing the story's...