It's the holiday season, and nothing makes a better gift for the Texas History lover than a good book! In the spirit of holiday gift-giving, we share our favorite books, including our top picks. There are many great books, but this is a good place to start. This episode is your gateway to a treasure trove of Texas history, so buckle up and join our journey through books on Texas history!
It's the holiday season, and nothing makes a better gift for the Texas History lover than a good book! In the spirit of holiday gift-giving, we share our favorite books, including our top picks. There are many great books, but this is a good place to start. This episode is your gateway to a treasure trove of Texas history, so buckle up and join our journey through books on Texas history!
This podcast is not sponsored by. It does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Well, welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Price.
Speaker 1:I'm Scott Soseby.
Speaker 2:Scott, we're in the Christmas season, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday to you and yours.
Speaker 1:And to everybody out there hey, we ought to think about something, Gene gifts for people. How about we give people a list of gifts, and what do we like to give as gifts Besides ourselves? Besides ourselves, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's like. This joke I heard is somebody says how do you buy a gift for your wife when she already has you?
Speaker 1:Well, I got a presence from my brothers that said me being your brother is gift enough. But here's a month, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know Merry would agree with that assessment. But until she stops me, I'm going to go with it. Okay, there you go, that's right.
Speaker 1:But we do like to give things and we like to give probably books, right? Well, we do.
Speaker 2:That's always a fun gift to give and even better gift to receive. If you are interested in history, is a book, right?
Speaker 1:And what better way to think about what books should a person absolutely read if they want to learn about Texas history? Not not be not, you know, get a PhD. Don't delve into the academic stuff. Just these are the one. These are the basic books that you need to learn Texas history. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I get this question, I'm sure you do all the time is like if I want to learn about this, what book should I read, what? Where would you point me? And you know, and, to be honest, 95% of graduate school is building up this knowledge of where do you go to find the information?
Speaker 1:It's a historic graphic education, or at least it should be For sure, that's right. I mean good books.
Speaker 2:That's right, there are a lot of good books out there.
Speaker 1:I mean, we were just talking before we went on the air that we each have our bibliographies of Texas history, and I have one that I give my students. It's 57 pages long. So there are and that's not even close to all the books out there. So there's a lot of them, but we need to come up with a with a list of books that are just. This is what you have to go to. So I'm, why don't we start right there? Jean, if somebody said to you I need to learn a lot about Texas history, what's the first book you would point them to?
Speaker 2:You know, right now and there's several, to be honest, but right now I think the best most comprehensive survey overview of Texas history is Mike Campbell. The late great Mike Campbell's gone to Texas, I agree.
Speaker 1:It's number one on my list when you think about it. If you somebody wants to, hey, this is the book where you can get the full accounting of Texas history. That's the one to go to. Gone to Texas is the absolute number one. So the first book on the list has to be that. I like Campbell's book. One thing is because Campbell doesn't give short strip to something We've been harping on on this to the 20th century. Right. He has a good section on the 20th century and it's well balanced and his history is honest history. It includes the good things and the bad things.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, when you teach Texas history, when we do, you know, we often look at textbooks and textbooks aren't usually good books for the general public. For one thing they're priced a little bit higher than I like, but the other thing is their text bookie. But I've got to say, before Mike wrote that book, the one that I liked and I thought was the most comprehensive was the Richardson book that Kerry Wintz updated. Yes, I agree.
Speaker 1:And that's as far as a textbooky textbook that's, that's, that's a good one. You can get on and read that. So that would be, you wanted to dive into it. Secondly, I guess you could do that, yeah, but but Mike.
Speaker 2:Mike is the top of my list right now for a general survey of Texas. History has gone to Texas book, I agree, all right.
Speaker 1:So, gene, if you're thinking okay, so you, so you read, gone to Texas, all right, and you know you get your good overall stuff from now. You want to start listen. I want to start getting into some of it that's a little more Selective, that looks at maybe, let's say, groups of Texans that Deserve broader coverage, that maybe Mike was not able to go into. So Let me ask you, where would you go then? Let's say, what is your number one book on African Americans in Texas?
Speaker 2:Wow, now that's. That's really a good question, scott, and Simply because we've got a lot of good writers and a lot of good historians out there Who've been, who've been doing this, and you know when, when we were in graduate school, and which was in the 20th century folks when we were in graduate school the late 20th century, late 20s there there there weren't that many, to be honest.
Speaker 2:It was an emerging field and I mean there were some out there who were writing good books. But I'm gonna say I'm gonna go back to the basics, and Not just because he was my professor, but because I think it's a good starting place. Others have gone much farther since then, but it's all when bars book black Texans.
Speaker 1:I agree, or are the companion one of that, a history of African Americans in Texas, and he's done both of them. Both those books, we're two for two. On agreeing on this, I do, although Allwin's book is gosh gene, 30, 35 years old now, probably long in the tooth and but.
Speaker 2:But you know the thing about allwin's book when he wrote it he was, he was on the cutting edge because not Anybody else had done much as far as a book length survey on blacks in Texas. And so I mean, in fact, this is the. We say black Texans, that's actually the the revised editions title. Before that it was called Negro Texans, and that just that should tell you something about when the book was first published and later on when it was updated. And Today I think I would choose a different book. But here's the here's. The catch is that is that many of the books that have come out since then are more specialized, more related to individual topics, and there's a lot of good ones out there.
Speaker 2:I mean talk about Campbell again. If you you know, his book on slavery in Texas is probably one of the best.
Speaker 1:But it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's very niche oriented right is it's to a specific time period. So I think that's a little bit different.
Speaker 1:But you know.
Speaker 2:I would say start it with all wins and then move forward move forward.
Speaker 1:That's right, but I think that's also indicative. You know what? Somebody probably needs to write a full survey of African-American history again to update that. So anybody out there who needs a good project once you get started with that. Well, moving on this, and I think I'll say so, see, let you see if we Can go three for three here, jean, when I when I tell you we're gonna talk about you, the best broad history of African-Americans for me, the best broad history out there on Mexican Americans, on Tejanos, on Latinos in Texas, is by the dean of Mexican American history in Texas, arnoldo de Leon, and it says the book is gives you an idea of what it is. Mexican Americans in Texas a brief history. I've used it as a textbook, but it's also very readable for people to learn about the broad survey of Mexican Americans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I will say this about that book it is a general survey, it's a very short book and it's kind of it was built to be used in classrooms. It is built as a textbook. Absolutely, I'm gonna go one better on this, scott. I'm gonna one up you on this. I'm gonna say anything by Arnoldo de Leon is a good book on Mexican American history. I like to teach his. Well, I don't teach it, but I I use it when I'm teaching on Mexican American history.
Speaker 1:Ethnicity in the Sun Belt love that book, love that books on my list because it's gets into particularly the 20th century Right history of Mexican American and and you know.
Speaker 2:But but in anything that guy wrote, they called them.
Speaker 1:They called them greasers. Oh my gosh, yes, you know that book is getting close to believe it or not, 40 being 40 years old, right, and it is still pertinent, and it is. It's just still spot-on About the early history of how people of Mexican descent were treated in Texas. Yeah, ronaldo, who's? Who's still with us, of course, I hope, I hope, or not. I would hear this podcast at some point, but I don't know whether he was or not.
Speaker 2:All one is too right, and we just had dinner, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just had. So they're still around and they're still doing. They're still doing. The things are not those still riding and so I'm still putting out stop.
Speaker 2:So yeah, he's got a new book coming out on things going on in the heart of Texas, in that Eden Brady area so that's coming out soon, I hope yep, and he just, he's still turning things out, even in his eighth decade of life. We're not going to date anybody.
Speaker 2:Right, you know both Alvin and Ronaldo and some of the other people are going to talk about. It's kind of the old adage that one of my grad school buddies once said of one of our professors, and back in when I was going to school at San Marcos he said you know, that guy's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know. And I think those are two good examples right off the bat of historians who are out there and whose body of scholarship is worth anybody taking some time to go out and look at.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. Well, we're moving on in groups and I'll move on to a good broad history and I'm going to give I'm probably going to it's probably cheating I'm going to give two books here on women's history. Okay, so I think it should be discussed, but in a broad survey. One of them is newer and it's a fairly new book came out in the last five years, I believe Angela Boswell's Women in Texas History is a very good survey book on this. But I think a companion of that is an edited anthology by Lisbeth Turner, stephanie Cole and Rebecca Sharpless Texas women, their histories, their lives, a series of essays. Both of those capture some of that very forgotten history that women have brought forth in Texas, have been responsible for, have been shapers of, something that quite often unless to be totally honest, for example, campbell's book doesn't address that much in the way that it's done. So I think that would be a companion to anything also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, angie's book is great and I've got to say this her birthday is in this time period.
Speaker 1:So give her a shout out. I think it is the day today, the day Recording this, so happy birthday to Angie Boswell.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that book is very good. And what was the other book you mentioned?
Speaker 1:Texas Women, their History, their Lives. It's an anthology by Lisbeth Turner, Stephanie Cole and Rebecca Sharpless.
Speaker 2:So there is another three, well four people, if you include Angie, if you're looking for good, solid scholarship on women in Texas. Those are four names that anything you find by them you're not going to go wrong with. And let me add one other, and that's our friend Debbie Lyles. I think Debbie's writing on women in ranching is very good.
Speaker 1:She's still your good dear, she's still your good venerable. She's still your venerable.
Speaker 2:That's where, together, on that, so we've got I mean, this is another thing as you were talking about. You know, when we were going to grad school there wasn't much, there were a few, but there wasn't much. And so we're starting to see, well, we've been seeing, I guess, for the past couple of decades, more and more really good solid scholarship on Texas women. And I'm going to go back to something our old friend, ty Cash, wrote about in Lone Star Mines, and you know he was talking about another author, whose name I won't mention, who wrote a lot about men, cowboys and their horses, and it's almost as if women didn't exist, and I think that was.
Speaker 2:You know, women have been so overlooked in history in general, mexican-american history, for example. I always tell students you know that was a thing that it's only more recently that we have some good women writers in doing Mexican-American history. And now I would also, you know, we would extend that to women in general in Texas. And so, yeah, both of those books are very good, the Texas Women book. There was also another one that Don Walker used to assign on Texas Women and it was Godly now I can't think of the name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you may be thinking of the one. It was the one we always said on Pauline Periwinkle oh, yes, Pauline Periwinkle, right on the Progressives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, but it's, you know, women's history is one of these things. We know a lot of people who, like you said, are writing a lot of good stuff now, a lot of good women historians writing these things today that 20 years ago we just didn't have that much up as an unfortunate side effect of how history has progressed. So that's a good thing. As we go on, well, gina, also have to mention, if we're going to talk about, you know, native Americans, and Texas is another group that's still woefully underrepresented in the literature.
Speaker 1:Again, recently more stuff is coming out. So if you're looking for one volume, I think, if you know, there's a lot of books on the Comanche and various tribes that you can dive into. A lot of those for the general public, I think, are a little too academic. But one that's very readable, I think, is F Codd Smith's From Dominance to Disappearance the Indians of Texas in the Near Southwest. I think that book's about 10 years old I may be off a little bit by that, but it's still very good and as a survey of Native American life in Texas, that's the one I would go to first.
Speaker 2:Excuse me. Okay, yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:There are so of all the Native American groups in Texas, and I don't like to use the word tribes, because that's a more modern appellation but of all the Native American groups in Texas, the ones that are recognized today are not even Native to Texas and there's a whole bunch associated with that. It's an interesting story. We tend to focus, I think, in classes on Native Americans prior to 1821. We ignore them and maybe bring them up again in the 1860s to the 1890s and then maybe touch on them a little bit in the 20th century. So you're right, we do miss a lot on Native American history.
Speaker 2:Now I'm going to say there are several good introductory books that I think the Texas Historical Commission, the Texas State Historical Association, came out with. They were with the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio and there's four of them, one on the Alabama Cachada, and those were good little books. I mean, they were made for kind of a grade school, not to. They weren't like elementary but they were made for like a high school level readership. But they're very good and you know, look at the different names and you'll be able to find them. As far as I want to say, there is a recent book by the Alabama Cachada. There's a couple of recent articles and books on the Alabama Cachada that I think are quite good, but there's an older book just called Indians in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the WWE Newcombe book, that Newcombe book Gosh, 60 years old. It was in the 60s right, it's from the 1960s.
Speaker 2:I think again, if you want to get started, that's not a bad place to start. Now. There's been significant revisions and updates to all that scholarship but I think if you want to get started, newcombe's book is a good baseline to start from.
Speaker 1:I absolutely agree. Without a doubt, newcombe can start there. What I like about Todd's book is that it does do exactly what you were talking about. We're done do. He goes from the very beginning before European contact, and then his history goes all the way until they're essentially pushed out of the state or reserved in other reservations to that. So that's what it does, and those are again. It's another topic that we probably should have more work done on than we have gotten done. So let's say, you've read all these books about the overview of Texas history and now we want to get deeper into a certain period, so I would go back.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. Do you want to just start like say at Spanish Texas, who you would?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I thought, that's what I would start and that's what I would start with with Don Chipman's Spanish Texas would be the book that I would tell people to actually read, to go through, because one of the best, best thing about Don's book in my mind is anybody can sit down and read that book. It's not, it's not overly, it's not a delicious, it's. It's not a pendantic, it's a straightforward narrative that just gives you a great overview of how the Spanish actually functioned as an empire in Texas. I always teased on that because you know he only mentioned Nacodotus on two pages and he should have mentioned a little more being at the oldest town in Texas. But it's a great place to start. So that's where I would say to start for people in exploring Spanish Texas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm. I agree that is a very good book. Let me let me. The person that really kind of got me interested in that time period is no longer with us, and that's he was at SMU, david Weber.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And he was, you know, did a lot on Borderlands while he was active and his book the Spanish Frontier in North America, I thought was just top notch. It really interested me a lot in that area. But I'm going to bring up another name, and this is a person who's done a lot of and these are more specialized, topical books, and that's Robert Weddle.
Speaker 1:That's right. Bob Weddle is a great you know and great lesson for all of us in that Bob Weddle not a trained professional historian. He would call a lay historian, but man, as far as particularly the French in Texas, nobody knew more than I know of it. So then, then, bob Weddle there, bob's got what three or four books out there that you could go to it. All of them are outstanding.
Speaker 2:Right, right, and you know, it's kind of like you know Don's book, don, I think Don's you know. And the other thing about Don's book it's easy to read. I mean he writes in a very conversational tone and I mean man, you know, there's another person talking about who's been with us a long time. What is 90, 91?
Speaker 1:95.
Speaker 2:95. He may just have 96. Oh my gosh, and still active.
Speaker 1:Still very active and everything still I wouldn't say I guess it's been over a year since I talked to Don. I need to talk to him again, I need to go see. He's in Austin now and I need to go see. I certainly do. Well, I guess the next period, if you want to move on, gene, tell me how about you know an early period of of of Anglos in Texas, the beginnings of leading up to the revolution, and my choice for that might be a little unconventional. I think it's so good for just it's a biography, but it gives you know, it actually gives what's going on in Texas at that time so well. And that's Greg Cantrell, stephen F Austin, impresario of Texas. The big book, yeah, lots of pages. It's been a long time but it is first off.
Speaker 1:Greg is a fantastic writer and it is outstanding outstanding and that's where I would go for tell somebody to go for.
Speaker 2:I'm going to. I agree with you, but I'm going to go with a little more recent book.
Speaker 1:I know where you're going because it's on my list.
Speaker 2:And that is an. You know, you can't see this. Well, you can't see it either because my I can see it because I hear, let me, let me grab it, because I have it right here.
Speaker 1:How about we're holding up the same book? Yeah, sam.
Speaker 2:Haines unsettled land and you know, and I think the real triumph of that and look, this is a revolutionary period and I don't think that's something we do very well in our classes is the Anglo settlers who came in from mostly the American South with Stephen F Austin and some of the other infestado girls who were working at that time. They saw themselves, rightly so, as children of the American Revolution and they were bringing in that. And what Haines does is he says look, that wasn't just an American thought. There were a lot of Mexican political officials who had also been educated in the United States or Europe who also embrace that revolutionary thought and won and did believe in changes in the government and that, for Mexico, led to a lot of unsettlement. But you know, he does a magnificent job, I think, of covering that, looking at how Native Americans, what they were concerned about in that early period, during that early revolutionary period.
Speaker 2:Now Sam goes on beyond that, but it is a good book. Greg is also your right, he is a great, great writer and both of these guys are and I think that in that period they are. I'm going to suggest, however, one other book and it's actually by and maybe this is just my own biases is by a tech graduate, one of our famous tech people, and that is Andres Tijerina Tejanos and Texans under the Mexican flag, 1821 through 1836. Outstanding book, outstanding.
Speaker 2:That is a good book and I think that that is a good, a good place to start and I think what he and Sam did is, you know, andres was looking at Mexicans and Texans and Sam adds Native Americans into the mix and so, you know, they build upon each other a little bit and then they expand and I think those are three good books. Greg's book on Stephen F Austin, you know that really changed my mind about how Stephen F Austin operate and the fact that he you know, stephen F Austin didn't want to do it. This was his dad's idea. He wanted to go to a law school, be a lawyer.
Speaker 2:He was in New Orleans, just, you know, happy, even after they had lost a lot of family, lost a lot of money during the 1819 collapse, economic collapse, wanted to go to law school. His dad said, hey, I've got this great idea. He didn't really want to have to do it. But on his dad's death bed wish he says, I'll take it up, brought in the old 300. And you know he never made much money off of it.
Speaker 1:Probably died. Basically a dad, basically a pauper. He didn't really have anything Right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think I think that really changed the way I looked at Stephen F Austin and what he did and what he was about.
Speaker 1:I agree, and that's one thing that's so good about kids. No, before Greg's book, you know the you know most authoritative one was Barker's book on on Stephen F Austin, which is good but it, you know, leans a little bit into the old myth of Texas nationalism and kind of makes Austin into one of these larger than large Figures, which is the one of the best thing about Cantrell's book is that he doesn't do that and he, we see, we see Austin as human and that is just, and I've had my students read it and they all love it and everything. So, yeah, that's one where I go, I would add on this for talking about this period and one that goes past it. But I want, I want to bring up we talked about Campbell's Empire for slavery, earlier, and that's very good about getting this, but one that sort of takes Campbell's ideas and go a little further and gets us more into this. This is what is going on in a broader sense in Texas and makes it what I like to say, puts Texas in this period, this, this, this anti-bellum period, more in an American concept, and that's Andrew Torgett's seeds of Empire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one, all kinds of awards, and it is a very readable book Again, one he worked for a long time on, and it is so good about Presenting how Texas fits into the larger American mosaic. In fact it does. Something that we've been needing to do, I say, for a long time, is that we got to put Texas in In 1830s. Into this larger context of what's happening in the United States is the crystallization of the pro and anti-slavery Argument is coming about and how that affects things, and we've had politics, society, culture. Torgett's book does such a great job of doing that, so I would recommend people to sure to pick up seeds of Empire by Andrew Torgett and Scott.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna add one other book to this list and and Maybe we want to talk about it again Well, actually, all these books we could talk about in several different of our divisions, but we're running out of time for this episode. I think we need to extend this because we're not absolutely, I mean scratch the surface, but I'm gonna add one other book and that's Jim Crisp sleuthing the Alamo.
Speaker 1:I've got that too, for example, water talk about one students love. It's a great book.
Speaker 2:It is a. You know I Hesitate to teach and I've said this before to teach the Alamo because there's so much out there on the Alamo Do they really need my opinion or my informed opinion? But I, you know Jim Chris book. When I read that it was like this is a well-written, it's a great book. It's a. It's published by Oxford University Press, just like Gone to Texas, my Campbell's book, and they picked good books, got good editors and that book I assigned to my students. It cuts through a lot of the BS Surrounding the Alamo. A Lot of what people know about the Alamo is informed by John Wayne movies.
Speaker 1:That's right you know, I read solution the Alamo when I was in graduate school for the first time and, yeah, it really began to change. But, oh my gosh, I've been thinking about this all wrong and it changed my whole perspective of the Texas Revolution and, more than that, the way we know and learn history. Because, of course, the best thing about Chris book and it says you know Everything. You think you know about something that even historians think they know about some might not be true, as he says, look, you've got to really go deeper into looking at the sources to figure out what it really is.
Speaker 2:It's a great teaching book.
Speaker 1:Yes, again, another giant that's still around with us in Jim's book. Well, you're right, gene, we haven't. We scratch in the surface all we do. We got extended, so maybe our next episode will be our extension of this. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I. We always ask people what's the one thing you know? And, scott, I, you are right, I know that.
Speaker 1:That we have to do this again. That's what we know right now.
Speaker 2:So we'll talk to you next episode. Thanks for listening everybody. Join us again next time for the conclusion of this on talking Texas history. Bye, everybody.