Prichard -- known for his dazzling wit and photographic memory, as well as for being careless and crude -- fell victim to the hubris that had helped to make him great. In 1948 he stuffed a ballot box in a Senate primary race. J. Edgar Hoover made sure Prichard was prosecuted, and so many of the people on the Supreme Court were his friends that there were not enough justices to hear Prichard's appeal. So the man Roosevelt's advisors had called the boy wonder of the New Deal went to jail.

Prichard's meteoric rise and fall is essentially a Greek tragedy set on the stage of American politics. Pardoned by President Truman, Prichard spent the next twenty-five years working his way out of political exile. Gradually he became a trusted advisor to governors and legislators. During the last decade of his life, Prichard emerged as his home state's chief voice for education reform, finally regaining the respect and esteem he had lost so many years before.