It's the beginning of a New Year! In this episode, we continue our journey through the rich tapestry of Texas history, guided by our book recommendations. From the Texas Revolution to Modern Texas, we reveal diverse perspectives that shaped this state. Join us as share notable books that cover important figures like Sam Houston and explore the development of West Texas. Hop on this riveting ride as we talk about books that will expand your knowledge about the Lone Star State. You won't be disappointed!
It's the beginning of a New Year! In this episode, we continue our journey through the rich tapestry of Texas history, guided by our book recommendations. From the Texas Revolution to Modern Texas, we reveal diverse perspectives that shaped this state. Join us as share notable books that cover important figures like Sam Houston and explore the development of West Texas. Hop on this riveting ride as we talk about books that will expand your knowledge about the Lone Star State. You won't be disappointed!
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. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Price, I'm Scott Sospin, scott. Last time we ended on a cliffhanger.
Speaker 1:That's right, that's what we did. That there you go. We thought it's a cliffhanger. We're just like Dallas who shot JR.
Speaker 2:That's right. That's what people like about podcasts or these enduring stories. So this is an enduring story and let's, let's, let's, keep it enduring. We've been talking about what books would we suggest if somebody came up and said I want to learn more about Texas history or a specific event in Texas history or specific topic or time period, and how far have we gotten?
Speaker 1:Scott, we got through this Texas revolution, I believe as far as we got.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we still have a ways to go. Let's see how far we can get in this episode, okay.
Speaker 1:I agree, let's do that, let's just get right into it. So we're in with Texas revolution. So how about we kick off something with? It's a book I don't know how many people know, but talk about one that's very well written, that did send to the when Texas came into the union. And we're talking about targets book last time, how it brought in all these broad cross-currents of American history. And this is one that does this better than anyone I think I know of, and that's the book I hope people are familiar with. Storm over Texas is the name of the book.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:It is such another book that is just so well written and explores this whole idea of when Texas was coming in, what the rest of the United States thought about it, and it is I mean, I would people read it Another one that will change your perspective of so many things. So Storm over Texas.
Speaker 2:Yeah that that is a good book. I'm going to go back to the old so so. So let me, before I go, before I say anything, let me clarify this. I don't understand why, scott, the period of the Republic Is woefully ignored. There aren't many books period On the Republic period, so that 10 years from the time we declared ourselves independent to the time that, you know, we joined the United States, there just isn't been a lot.
Speaker 2:And for a long time. The kind of go to book on that was by another Texas tech historian, paul Lack, one of all in bar students. A Texas revolutionary experience, the political and social history 1835 to 1836. And that, and you know, lack was the one who kind of pioneered writing about that, that period. And I just think for a long time nothing else was written and I'm not really sure why. So you know, a couple of years ago Keith Volanto and I started looking at when was Texas really annexed? Was it in 1846 or was it in 1845? And when we started looking at that I was just amazed. That's why I ran across that storm over Texas that you mentioned, but I didn't find much written on that period at all.
Speaker 1:I mean for so long. I guess you can say go through. It's also William Davis's Lone Star Rising on the Republic of Texas and it's a good book, but again, probably a topic that needs to be updated. We probably need to get somebody to give us something on the Republic of Texas again. Young scholars out there take that one up on the Republic of Texas. But what about the next period? You know what I'm talking about. You know, of course you know my bias will come along in this and that I don't care about the Civil War. I get tired of hearing about the Civil War. I'll just say you know there's a lot of books out there on the Civil War. Go get them and find out what there is. First off, you know Texas didn't participate in the Civil War as much as people said, and so the best one out there on that, I guess, is another anthology by Ken Howell and Charles Greer. Dark Corner of the Confederacy gives you a good idea of what Texas was like during the Civil War.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean there are some. You know, everybody loves the Civil War history. Everybody likes to read it. There's been a lot written on it. I was once as a as a my first, one of my first graduate classes on the Civil War. To highlight that, at San Marcos and Everett Swinney my professor said you know, there's 6,000 books on the Civil War. I never knew where he came from that number in 1990. And although I do, I've since found out where he got that number from. But he said, does there really need to be another? And of course the answer is yes, because of different interpretations, more recent scholarship and all that. But that was a really good question. There have been a lot written on the Civil War and, as you say, though, the rub for Texas historians is not much happened in Texas. A short book for the Texas State Historical Association on the Civil War in Texas, and that's a good little introduction. It's only about 100 pages, it does not take you very long. And there have been, you know, some on severe.
Speaker 1:Jerry Thompson's books on South Texas during the Civil War. Still, my father, I like those books.
Speaker 2:I like those. In fact I was just mentioning to Mary she has a student in one of her classes who wanted to know on Civil War. They settled on one of Jerry Don's books and I said you know, he kind of wrote the books on Mexican American participation in the Civil War. Great, great, great research, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then there's the Sibley Expedition. Don Frazier's book Blood and Treasure on the Sibley Expedition Very good If that's something that you want to learn about.
Speaker 2:Well, that is one thing that is very important. One of the Texas angles on it All one bar you know he started writing on that was actually his dissertation topic was on the Civil War, so he wrote on that. There's a. I'm going to talk to you about a little book real quick that you may or may not be familiar with, but I think everybody who's taught it has read, and that's Sam Houston in the American Southwest.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, another Campbell book outstanding on the.
Speaker 2:Now, while not I mean focused on Sam Houston, and it of course talks about the Texas Revolution and what not to. But you know, Sam Houston was a governor of the state when Texas seceded from the Union and he was kicked out, and I think that that's good to find out his reasoning. And then, not everybody was of the same opinion during the Civil War.
Speaker 1:That's right. And of course you know Houston was a forgotten man for you know, 20, 30 years after the Civil War and was seen as a pariah in Texas history. So well, when you get through this and you know we're talking about, you know there's a lot of books on reconstruction in Texas. For example, carl Monahan has done quite a few, walter Binger, whatever. But I would say that those are more academic treatments of it and if you want to really dive deep, that'd be great. But if you were to say again, it's an older book, been out for a long time, again someone we've mentioned before, you want to talk about this period and get an idea of what it was like in Texas? I still say again, a book that's 50 years old now all in bars. Reconstruction to reform as a book. People should go out and get.
Speaker 2:That is a very detailed, good evaluation of the whole period and you know all uncovered a lot, of, a lot of miles. That book and that was that is a great, a great book. I'm going to suggest another person. We haven't talked to him about very much, but a person I really looked up to as a young historian. That's Barry Crouch. Barry taught at Gallaudet for a long time, but he was a reconstruction specialist. Now you mentioned Carl Moneyhahn earlier and Moneyhahn is, of course, the dean of.
Speaker 2:Texas Reconstruction History, although he lives in Arkansas. But Barry Crouch, the late Barry Crouch, the Freedman's Bureau and Black Taxes yes, was a great, great book.
Speaker 1:Absolutely and without the only treatment we have specifically on the Freedman's Bureau in Texas. Except I will say that I'm going to. I'm going to plug one of my graduates and so directed her her master's thesis on the Freedman's Bureau in Texas and she just did a fantastic job in writing that book. And here I am, I'm just. This is terrible that I cannot remember her name right now because I've done so many. She was a teacher out at Torino, so we'll cut this out of the original because I don't remember her name.
Speaker 1:I don't remember her name yeah, I don't remember her name. Well, you know, also get this period. Of course, movement West is another big topic during this period and Movement into West and there are a lot of books on the West in Texas. But I'm going to talk about one by our friend, ty Cashion, that his first book, a Texas Frontier, the Clear Fort Country in Fort Griffin that book is so does such a great job of detailing what that Western frontier in Texas was like and talk about dispelling some myths. Cashion really dispelled a lot of myths in that book, a great book that people should pick up and read.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a couple of books on the West on my list and I mean we cannot ignore the work of our Finnish friend Pekka Hemilain and his book Comanche Empire. That is an award-winning book on Comanches who saw their rise in the late 1800s and of course, by the time Texans are ready to move out there. They've kind of overcome the Apache and other tribes as being, as they were once called, the Lords of the High Plains.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pekka's book is great. It really is. You know, my hesitancy on that is it's very academic and maybe does not translate quite that well to the general public to read on this, but it is very good. You know, as long as we're talking about this and this goes past this but it covers on the peer because when we're talking about West Texas we're going to have to throw up a book that I am very fond of simply because I have a piece in it. But yeah, I think people should read it the book West Texas A History of the Giant Side of the State, edited by Bruce Glassroot and Paul Carlson Really good stuff in there, including both of us in that book. So there you go for people to go out and do that. But that is really good about getting an understanding of how West Texas has developed. That's this different part of the state.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there are some good books out there. What's the book written by Fred Rathgians?
Speaker 1:Fred Rathgians, and I think it's called the.
Speaker 2:Panhandle Plains yeah you know, and what a, what a gentleman and a nice fellow Well both me and Gary and all were. But you know that book because when I worked at the Southwest Collection of the Tech, we had to go through that book and I went through that book, cover to cover, several times, never in one sitting and never, you know, looking at different things. That was really a good book.
Speaker 1:That's really panhandle frontier yeah, texas Panhandle Frontier was the name of it.
Speaker 2:Yes, so if you're interested, I mean what. I was just talking to somebody from West Texas. I don't know what part of the go well past so I was like, is that really West Texas?
Speaker 1:South of Mexico.
Speaker 2:But you know that's a that there's, it's a whole, it's a whole half of the state, you know, and there's a lot out there and a lot of good work. Whether you're looking at Native American history ties into that. Mexican American borderlines history, all that ties into that. And so there's so many places to go and to start off with. And there's different regions, right there's the High Plains, the Southern Plains. There is you know, you want to talk about the Dust Bowl, although that's a little bit later on and all the way down to the mountains and basins region. So it's a lot to cover.
Speaker 1:It really is. As a person who has lived, was born and raised in West Texas and now has moved to East Texas, I can truly tell you they're like two different places. They're not the same type of place, they're not the same type of climate or anything, and their histories and development are different and we need to understand those nuances so well. Gee, there's also, as we're moving on and we really kind of get you know we I think we sometimes forget and we were reminded again by one of our friends who's always talked on this list before, with a fairly new book that's come out how important Texas was in the populist revolt at the end of the 20th century and how the populism shaped so much of even modern liberal thought. And that's Greg Cantrell's latest book the People's Revolt, texas Populist and the Roots of American Liberalism.
Speaker 1:Folks, this is a book you need to go out and get award-winning also when East Texas Historical Association's Book of the Year in 2022. Outstanding again. Greg is such a good writer, it's such a good narrative and when you finish this one of these books, when you finish, you go. You know what? Now I get it because he brings in so many cross currents of the broader American history and centers that in Texas. So that's one I would recommend everybody to go out and find.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the books that I always make my students read at this period is another book by Greg and it's really based upon his bigger work which he did his dissertation and I think his first book was on Kenneth and John Rayner. And this is just on John Rayner, who was born in Calvert, texas, grew up in Calvert, texas, a politician there was an early populist, but a black populist and it is a hopeful and yet imminently depressing story of the rise and fall of the populist movement and it's called Feeding the Wolf. It's short, it's extremely well written and that is a good. If you want a shorter book, that's a good one. But I gotta tell you this is some of my favorite topics.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go back to an old book, an old book 1933, roscoe Martins, the People's Party in Texas, which I thought was just fantastic. That kind of got me interested in that whole time period. And then I'm going to scooch forward a little bit and talk about progressives, because that dovetails into the progressive era and the one that I. I mean there's a lot of here that I like looking at a list, but I'm going to go to the standard Lewis Gould, formerly of UT Progressives and Prohibitionists, the Texas Democrats during the Wilson era.
Speaker 1:Yes, right Book, another one that you know getting old, what is it? That book's 40, 50 years old, but, man, it still covers particularly the progressive period so well, and one that I still go to it to do lectures and things. So if you're going to understand that period, that's the one to get, I think.
Speaker 2:What about World War I and post-World War I?
Speaker 1:Well, the one I would go to again. It's getting a little bit into politics and a colleague of Lewis Goulds and one of these deans that did pass away recently a book. But I just really love this little book. One thought, but it's not a little book, it's a big book but the title is so great. But if you're talking about that 1920s era, the one to get is Hood Bonnet and Little Brown Jug Texas politics 1921 to 1928, because it really does capture that period by Norman Brown.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that is on my list too. I will not argue with there. I'm going to talk about a couple of runners up though Merlene Petrie's, in struggle against Jim Crow.
Speaker 1:Lou.
Speaker 2:Ruby White and the NAACP. Now, that starts the 1900s, during the mid-century, but that's a good book and the other book and this is one that kind of was a path laying foundation of my early education, that's Guadalupe, san Miguel's. Let all of them take heed, mexican Americans and the campaign for education.
Speaker 1:Another.
Speaker 2:Absolutely I love that book, I love that book, but yeah, but Normans is the first go to, I think.
Speaker 1:I agree with you, normans, is the one to do. And then, related to that, if you're just going to move on a little bit more and again, it's a little like politics, but one that was very important to me when I was writing my master's thesis on, and that's George Norris Green's the establishment of politics, the primitive years 1938, 1957. Yeah, I mean talk about setting the foundation for Texas politics at the time, but also giving us an idea of you know what Texas politics hasn't changed a whole great lot, and a lot of the ideas they had then they're still around and they're still guiding us.
Speaker 2:Okay. So when we were in grad school together at Tech, under Don Walker, I think, walker issued a challenge. He says find a revision of George's thesis. And you know, I've been looking at the time since then. I can't find one. I think he was spot on.
Speaker 1:He was, and I took up on my master's thesis and what work on the first words I've ever done was the conservative liberal split, the Texas Democratic Party during the same period 1930s to 1950s, and I undertook that project. I took on Don's challenge what there's no one out there. I'll write a revision of George's book and I'll see if he's right. And I started researching that and I started doing it and you know what I found out he's exactly right. And then you put in there it's exactly right. And it was this whole guiding Texas politics by these reactionary elements in the state on race, making sure that we continue what's priority, and then anti-unionism and that and keeping that establishment in power. Again, another book. Maybe we're showing our age. Another book, 40 or 50 years old, still pertinent, still speaks to everybody.
Speaker 2:All right, scott, let's get into the more modern period, post-World War II or even World War II. What do we do here?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, first off, as we've lamented many times that we don't have a, we need more during this period. We haven't written on this this period of time but and a lot of what's been written is on politics, because that's kind of the easiest thing to do. You know, and who is the central figure in politics at that time in Texas politics, who strode across Texas politics to strode a word that's a good word, like a Colossus.
Speaker 2:Lyndon Johnson that is the word.
Speaker 1:And so you know what are the biographies of Lyndon Johnson and that give you. And you know Carol gets a lot. You know Robert Carroll gets a lot of press and a lot of ink for his stuff and they're good, they're okay.
Speaker 2:They're good reads.
Speaker 1:Yeah, carol doesn't really capture Johnson like he really was, it's more of a kid. But by the time he finishes Carol has constructed a caricature of Lyndon Johnson. It's an accurate picture. So in my mind it's a two volume work, but the ones on Johnson are the Robert Daleks two works works on him with a subtitle, of Lyndon Johnson and his times. But the first one is Lone Star Rising Lyndon Johnson's time from 1908 to 1960, and then his final volume, flaw Giant Lyndon Johnson's times 1960 through 1973. That captures Johnson but also it captures Texas and national politics at the time and how Johnson was interested in that. So I would say they're both about 500 pages, big volume for readems. They actually capture the man like he should. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I remember running into Dalek several times at the LBJ Library and Archives. I was a graduate student and he was writing and I didn't dare talk to him. I think I said hi to him once, or twice, but he was a very nice man.
Speaker 1:I've met him since then and he's just a very nice man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yes, when people ask me about Carol, I'm going to say this and this is what I tell them great reading, bad history. A lot of his historical methods have not. They don't stand up to examination. He writes a lot of hearsay and rumor and that's okay. It makes for an entertaining story, but Daleks is the history book. There's another book that I want to recommend that and again, people have done much more since then but a great read is Don Carlton. Red Scare, right Wing Hysteria, 50s Phenanocism and their Legacy in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yep, great book, I agree with you. Very good book and Don's an also very good nice guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and of course George Green's book travels up to that and there's a couple of other ones. There's other ones, but but let's. What about more recent Texas history, like from the 70s, 80s onward?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to be a little bit self-serving here when I say this, because one thing about Texas, as we move into this latter part of the 20th century and the early 21st century, that I have come to say that if you want to understand Texas and how it works, how it functions as a society, as a culture, as a political entity, as an economic entity, what you have to understand Texas is a suburban state and it is governed by a suburb. So you know what I'm going to tell people. It won't make me that much money. Go out and get Lone Star suburbs Life on the Texas Metropolitan Frontier by my colleague Paul Sandel and I. I really do. We start our idea was to start the conversation about suburban history in Texas. We're waiting for somebody to pick that up, but I think it gives us a great overview of what Texas has become. So that's the one I'm going to say for this period.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's right Now. Here's my caveat on modern, like late 20th century history is that a lot of it really isn't history. A lot of it is stuff written by journalists or people who were maybe involved, personal viewpoints, and you don't have much historical analysis, much historical perspective. So, for example, if I were going to talk about a recent book, so recent project that I was involved with, that was Laura Kovacis' memoirs, kenyanya remembers and Kenyanya's journey. Both of those books are looking at the first Mexican American president of Texas Tech University who went on to become Reagan and later George Bush's secretary of education. A lot of Texas history in that, a lot of good, because he's born of the King Ranch, so there's a lot of history in that. But again it's a memoir. Now I brought in some history and David Murrah helped him on the first one. I mean, there's history in there, but again, those are biographies. And so, yes, your book on urbanization. True, there's stuff on Ann Richards, there's stuff on Bill Clemens, but a lot of that is not history.
Speaker 1:Now one, that is, it gets in this and it's a very good book and I've assigned it and it gets an idea. So it's Kenneth Bridges' Twilight of the Texas Democrats that essentially documents the election of Bill Clemens in 1978 and this ushering in of the Republicans coming to dominate Texas politics gives a great snapshot of what's going on in Texas politics and society during that time and that's a great example that you could add to that for that latter part of the history.
Speaker 2:What do you think about blue country?
Speaker 1:I like it. I like it a lot and Max Krogemaul is a fine historian. My, it's not a problem. My caveat with blue country a little bit is it isn't. I'm not sure it's it's history, because it could. My ending of it was kind of like okay, this might be correct. You'll have to see whether you know everything in that is going to come to pass to what his suppositions are about. Yes, it's documents many of the political changes and social changes in Texas during the period, but I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether it is. We can say, all right, this is how. This is a good interpretation at this point, because I think we have to a lot of it. We have to wait and see whether that's the case.
Speaker 2:What about cowboy conservatism by Sean Cunningham?
Speaker 1:Well, sean's book a friend of ours, a chair of the Texas Tech History Department, does capture that 1980s Reagan takeover of Texas politics very well and captures that. It's on. You know, it's on the cutting edge when it came out of letting us know how Texas politics I would say it completes twilight of the Texas Democrats. And then Sean read that and then Sean's book and you have the complete takeover of conservative politics in Texas. Although, as Sean's book really talks about, conservatism and Texas politics is not new. All it is. All we did was change what we called it as we got into the 80s and the 90s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to bring up another book this is again another anthology, but I think it's really a good read and that's Greg Cantrell's and Elizabeth Turner's Lone Star Pass Memory and History in Texas. I think that is a good overview of some important topics in more recent American history.
Speaker 1:I grabbed my grad students just finished reading that book and it was the basis for much of my the classes. I did it on Texas myth and nationalism, this, this period and and their discussions. They would agree with both of us. It is such a great anthology that introduces us to how myth and memory in Texas governs so much of what we think we know and how and how much of the history that we see in this state has been tarnished. Is that the right word by the so-called memory in Texas nationalism? They're kind of this kind of the first one to actually I mean that book also getting close to 20 years old to really come out and talk about this and it's kind of this is what we need to actually talk about in Texas history right now.
Speaker 2:So, you know, as we come to a close to things, scott, it is the new year, so I want to wish everybody a happy new year stuck with us. As long as we've been making this show which is longer than I thought we were going to make this year and a half we made it a year and a half on this. But the other thing I want to to say is one thing is go back and look over these two shows that we've done there. Go back to the one of the things I said earlier. You know there's 6,000 books on Do we Need Another Book, do we? Often, we often hear this Do we need another book on Texas history? And one of the things that I think we've been discussing is there are still a lot of avenues, a lot of areas and a lot of topics that haven't been covered very broadly.
Speaker 1:I agree there's so much. I mean, the slate is wide open for young scholars to pick up the mantle now and start doing all these things. There remains a lot to be done with myth and memory in Texas history and how it's come to dominate things. We really need someone to write a good, strong, social history of post-World War II Texas, one that's maybe a broad overview of someone to look at how Texas Texas has become a very bellwether state for the rest of the nation. A lot of times you know when you look at what Texas is doing. That's how you know, kind of a hair-bringer of what's going on in many parts of the United States. It's, you know, kind of the leading red state, as they say. Now we need to understand how Texas got there and what that means for us. So lots of things left to be done, particularly in 20th century history and hey, we're in 2023. We start writing about the 21st century now if we want to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I've got to tell you one thing that you keep saying and we've been saying is you know, good writing and I think we need young people, younger people and ourselves to keep in mind is we want scholarship that is not just written for an academic audience but that anybody can read. Get rid of the jargon write the way I wouldn't say write the way we talk, but write in a conversational manner.
Speaker 1:I agree, gosh. This is the argument that you know I have with our peers and colleagues and stuff like that who are we writing for? Who are we going to have to write for? And we need to write for the general public, we need to not write for each other. I think that gets us into a lot of trouble and I like to think a lot of the books we brought up. That's why I brought them up, because they are ones that everybody can read.
Speaker 2:Right, right. I think we just need to keep that kind of stuff in mind and you know, write about a topic, that and write well. Write about a topic and write well. I think is the best advice we can give.
Speaker 1:That's right, and the advice is you know what I know it a lot of people don't agree, but a narrative is still the best way to get it across, if you ask me. That's how we were trained and I think that's the best way to go about it. Write those narrative histories and write honest history. Folks write honest history.
Speaker 2:Well, scott, we're into another year, it's 2024, and we're well on our way. We've got some other shows We've got planned. If you've got ideas, let us know.
Speaker 1:Let us know, we'll do it. We're open for anything, we're easy.
Speaker 2:So thank you for joining us for another edition of Talking Texas History.
Speaker 1:Have a good new year. Have a great new year. Supervisionist.