Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > Louisiana History > Item 124
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Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas
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by James L. Haley
Sales Rank: 272118
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List Price: $35.00
$25.55
At Amazon
on 8-4-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 656 pages
Published by: Free Press April 11, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0684862913
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0684862910
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
Weighs: 1.8 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Texas native Haley (Sam Houston: A Life) does an outstanding job of narrating the outsized and dramatic history of the Lone Star State. John Steinbeck observed, "Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by, facts." Cognizant of this, Haley takes pains to separate folklore from fact. He's a good storyteller, but then it's hard to go wrong with the colorful characters he has to work with: pioneer nationalists Sam Houston and Davy Crockett, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, a wagonload of liquored-up turn-of-the-century oilmen and such latter-day heroes as Lyndon Johnson, John Connally and Janis Joplin. Importantly, Haley goes beyond the basic themes in Texas history—politics, finance, civil rights and natural disasters—to study the dusty byroads of Texas culture. A particularly engaging chapter documents one of the all-time great trios of American regional literature—J. Frank Dobie, Walter Prescott Webb and Roy Bedichek—while also appraising such Texas-born literary icons as Katherine Anne Porter, Horton Foote and Fred Gipson (Old Yeller). With this rich and entertaining history, Haley adds his name, indelibly, to this list of native writers his state should be rightfully proud of. 16 pages of black and white photos, maps, not seen by PW. (Apr. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Haley, who has written frequently about Texas' past, here surveys the Lone Star State's five centuries of history. Texas is one of the most politically weighty states in the Union, and its interludes of independence endow it with a uniquely developed sense of importance and historical pride. Texas was nominally ruled for 300 years by the Spanish empire, and Mexico's attempt to tighten its hold ignited the Republic of Texas drama with which history readers are acquainted. Haley, after dispensing with Texas' part in the Confederacy and the Civil War, covers the resistance to Reconstruction, which re-suppressed the black population for the ensuing century. Devoting the intervening decades to politics and economics, Haley populates his narrative with the outsize characters Texas seems to produce so readily. LBJ is here, as is genially corrupt governor "Ma" Ferguson of the 1930s. The first general history of Texas to appear in forty years, Haley's work bears both human-interest immediacy and collection-development significance. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
This is standard fare: Spanish and Mexican settlement, The Alamo, the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, Austin, Houston and Lamar. OK, let's think about this for a minute. Texas is the second most populous and second largest state in the country. It has a wonderfully rich cultural history derived from remarkable ethnic diversity. It contains two of the country's largest metropolitan areas, continuing to expand. Two of our most recent Presidents, our personal feeling aside, have come from here. Music. Literature. Exceptionally wealthy universities propped up with oil money. Sports. Architecture. Film. Theatre. Can someone PLEASE write a cultural history of this state? I mean, is it established in the state constitution that every history ever told of Texas MUST be political? This book, well written as it is, is just a revision of previous political histories. And you know what? Just as with those, it basically stops with oil in 1901. It's as if there's nothing really good to tell after Spindletop. It's a good book, but it doesn't really add anything new to Texas history, that we haven't read a hundred times in other books. GONE TO TEXAS, by Randolph Campbell, is a much better, more comprehensive study.
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Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas
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Price: $25.55
Updated on 8-4-2008.
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