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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Best Texas History Books To Dig Deeper
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If you listened to our six-part series on turning-point documents in Texas history, Gene and Scott now lay out a listener-friendly reading list with suggestions on what to pick up when you’re ready for deeper analysis and debate.
If you're looking to build your Texas history bookshelf, this episode is for you. We have a list of the books we discuss in the links below, but this is just the starting place. Other books by these authors are also worth reading, and exploring.
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Books:
Donald E. Chipman and Harriet Denise Joseph, Spanish Texas, 1519 - 1821, Revised
Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition
Alex Krieger, We Came Barefoot, Naked and Barefoot, The Journey of Cabeza Devaca across North America
Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
Stephen L. Hardin, Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution
Paul D. Lack, The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836
Sam W. Haynes, Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas
H. W. Brands, Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas
Andrew Torget's Seeds of Empire, Cotton Slavery and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands
Greg Cantrell, Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas
James Crisp, Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett's Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution
Carl Moneyhon, Texas After the Civil War: The Struggle of Reconstruction
Randolph B. Campbell, Grass Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865 to 1880.
James Smallwood, The Feud That Wasn't: The Taylor Ring, Bill Sutton, John Wesley Hardin, and Violence in Texas
Barry Crouch, The Freedmen's Bureau in Black Texas
Greg Cantrell, Feeding The Wolf: John B. Rayner and the Politics of Race, 1850 - 1918
Lewis Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era
Alwwn Barr, Reconstruction to Reform: Texas Politics, 1876 to 1906
Why We’re Sharing Book Lists
SPEAKER_01This podcast is not sponsored by and 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 past.
SPEAKER_00Welcome 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.
SPEAKER_01And I am Scott Sosby. Gene, we've been talking about documents uh in Texas history. Uh we presented a number of them, but we feel like we ought to move on to something else, shouldn't we?
SPEAKER_00Well, we should, but before we do that, so that that's a yes and a no, right? So before we do that That's the professor's answer. Uh let's let's talk about, and this is something we to we kind of talked about in some of the some of the episodes, but let's kind of just do an episode dedicated to the books that you might go to to find out more about each one of those topics. And so we'll go through the topics uh and the document that we use. I don't know if we need to go through the document, but we'll go through the the period that we went through, and then we're going to suggest uh a book or two, maybe more, on where you can start if you'd like more information. If you want to learn more about that topic.
SPEAKER_01If you're teaching uh Texas history and you want to maybe get some more background information for yourself, or you want to suggest something to a student uh that you may have assigned to listen to our podcast, you can exactly my thought is that you know, teachers may want to come, people professors, teachers may want to come on here and say, hey, these are some books that some student comes to me and says, Hey, I want to read more about that, you can direct them towards.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean I mean that that's always good. I mean, a lot of times, you know, we're just up here, you know, talking about the past, but you know, where do you start if you want more information? Because we're just skimming the surface, folks. Um, and so if you want more information, where do you go? And we're gonna provide some some suggestions on that. All right, you ready to get ready?
SPEAKER_01Let's get ready to do it.
SPEAKER_00All right.
Starting With Spanish Texas Sources
SPEAKER_00So the first topic we talked about, episode one in our series, was on who settled Texas. And we looked at the Caveza de Vaca. So, Scott, what do you think is a good book that you would suggest to someone to begin reading?
SPEAKER_01If I'm going to suggest to someone, the place I would say you'd want to do always is you want to get some sort of a survey, a book that covers an entire period, a book that can give you a lot of good factual narrative knowledge of a period that you can pull out and find an answer to almost anything. And for me, that book is to go to what I think is somewhat of the leading book in that regard about all of Spanish Texas, and the title of it is Spanish Texas, 1519 to 1821, by the esteemed professor Don Chipman. Uh, Dr. Chipman taught at the University of North Texas for 40 plus years. Um, then he retired and worked for the administration for a while. He's uh still with us, lives in Austin. Uh, I believe Don is 96 now. Uh and still out there kicking and going. That book's wonderful. It's an overview, but it gives you exactly what you need. If you're teaching a class and you say, I need to teach a unit on Spanish Texas, this is the one to go to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't think you can go wrong by looking at uh Don's book. It's it's excellent. And like you say, it's a good overview. And I think uh correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have it here in front of me. But um one of the questions people have is what route did Caveza DeVaca take? Right. And Don kind of goes through, I think there's like six of them, and he kind of like uh lays out all the uh arguments pro and against the various routes, right?
SPEAKER_01Yes, and then he gives the one he thinks was the one that was taken, which I tend to agree with that comes over, and that's that DeVaca took a much more southerly rather than western route on this, and spent most of his time in what we would call Texas in in South Texans, which makes sense because it's obvious from his descriptions, he's among mostly the Cohel Tecan Indians, that's where they live. And then he enters and crosses the Rio Grande and gets down into Spanish uh settlements in Texas by the time the end of his march, which is in 1528, is that correct? Or something like that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, uh 15, yeah, 1528. And then uh by 36, he's already come back and writing it. And and speaking of which, and that's that's the other thing. Um, folks, I mean, I I don't know of any better way of learning what Caveza de Vaca said than reading Caveza de Vaca. The Relación, uh his story of and I'm I mean that's a Spanish title. That's one of the Spanish titles. The book's been reprinted by various publishers various times. I think Penguin uh has a good uh copy. Uh it's short, it's you know, not that long, but it's ah, I mean, it's it's it's it's it's an action-packed story. I mean, this is and it's not written uh, you know, to titillate, it's just written as a kind of a factual account of what they happened. But just reading the story of all the shipwrecks and all the the woes they encountered and then the struggle to interact with those indigenous people, um is it's it's really worth reading. And it's of you know any age could pick it up and read it.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And it is something, and that's something that you I would say if you're really interested in Devaca, do that. But then after you do that, for uh if you want to, uh fleshing out of that and maybe something that offers a little bit of an analysis on specifically Devaka, I'd recommend two books uh that are out there. The first one is by Alex Krieger. Uh, We Came Barefoot, Naked and Barefoot, The Journey of Cabeza Devaca across North America. Now, Krieger basically takes the L'Araceon diary and then adds to it, according to his research, of that, and and basically supplements all of uh Davaca's uh tales of when they're on uh on there and on his uh account of that. And and it really Craeger really does a good job of bringing in how the interaction with the Native Americans likely took place, uh what they encountered. And he also talks about the journeys, and he his way he says the journey took place is a little different than what we said Chipman's did. So that's that's one that's good. Related to that is Andres Racendez's book, uh A Land So Strange, The Epic Journey of Quebec to Tobacca. Now that's that is a Racendez's narrative of the journey that he uses a number of sources to do. Um he uh uses sources not just from Valeración, but he he went to the archivo in uh in Seville and and and looked at Spanish documents in there as well as the archivo in uh Mexico City and actually looked at many of those and pieced together the journey of DeBaco. Both those books plus Loracion, you're gonna get the idea of what Cabeza DeVaca went through, the journey made and
Reading Cabeza De Vaca Beyond Myths
SPEAKER_01how important it was.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Fascinating story. All right, let's move on to episode two. We talked about uh revolution in the Republic of Texas, and and we centered it around the Travis Letter. Now, Scott, this is something I'm sure there's a thousand books if there's one book. So what do you suggest if somebody wants to learn about uh the Texas Revolutionary Period? I mean, this is it's it's I mean, you cannot throw a stick without hitting something on the Texas Revolutionary Period, right?
SPEAKER_01You cannot. You cannot, you cannot at all. And um you know, it's probably the most written about top, you know, I without a doubt. I mean, I don't think I've looked at the most written about period of of Texas history, uh, most written about chronicle of Texas history, and you know, you can't do any, I mean, wrong with going with two books. I would say if you want to start to learn about the Texas Revolution, just specific like we start in the same place somewhat we started with Chipman's book. You want to know what happened. You want to know what was going on. I think the first thing you do is you read Steve Hardin's Texian Iliad. Uh because that is a military history of Texas. Uh Hardin's book tells you this is where how the battle was fought, this is how the battles were uh were decided, this is who fought in the battle, and this is it's why these battles were fought, where they were fought, how and the strategy behind them. It's it's a straightforward military history, and it is a it's it it just describes the Texas Revolution from that sense better than anything else I've ever read. Related to that, then I would tell you to pick up Paul D. Lack's book, a good Texas Tech PhD, by the way. Uh The Texas Revolutionary Experience of Political and Social History, 1835 to 1836. Lacks book is, if you will, the behind-the-scenes book of Hardin's book. He tells you, you know, all the political machines uh what the governor was doing with the Provisional Council and then the interim president of Texas, you know, and how the how the people of Texas were taking it, what they were thinking behind going the revolution, all these very things. You put those two books together and you would have a good, solid knowledge of the Texas Revolution.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna suggest uh another book, and that is by Sam Haynes, H-A-Y-N-E-S. It is called Unsettled Land from Revolution to Republic. Now, Sam's uh The Struggle for Texas, Unsettled Land from Revolution to Republic, the struggle for Texas. Sam is taking a big picture point of view, looking at not only uh Texas Texas's struggle to join the United States for independence, uh, but he's starting in the early 1800s and he's looking at uh what Andrew Jackson and what the nation was doing, the United States was doing to try to get the Texas land, um what Native Americans in the area were doing and and and which side they tended to side with and what the what the change would mean and did mean for them. Um and he's looking at various groups, and I mean it it sounds I I don't know how he pulled together such and integrated that story, but he really did a fantastic job uh on that book. It's won awards uh and and it deserved to. It's it's well written, it's a great read, and if you're interested in that whole period and looking at it from the big picture point of view, unsettled land, you can't go wrong. Hardin's book, you're absolutely right. I loved reading Steve Hardin's book. Um not if if if for nothing else, you know, um he had a illustrator go in there and at the beginning of each chapter there's a drawing of somebody from the period, and then he kind of goes into you know what they were wearing. So it it it blends material history as well as documentary history and his his conclusion on why he has a great a great point on why he says Texas Texians won the revolution at San Jacento when they couldn't do it at San Antonio.
SPEAKER_01I agree, and that's that's one reason why I put Steve's book. And I'm gonna suggest another one. Sam's book, if I say a little thing about that, you're right, it's great. The good thing, the thing I love about Sam's book more than anything else, is because he accomplishes something that is extremely difficult to do. He writes a book in which it is it is scholarly and which it is well researched, and it you know, for the professors of us could read it and go, wow, wow. But at the same time, it's a it's a public, it's a it's a book for the public. It's a public history book in the sense that it is a popular history in which it is so well written, it's a got refault follows in a narrative format, uh, and it's easy to follow in that. And so anyone can pick up Sam's book and get the point of it. The one and related to that, that I would also say I think is worth people picking it up. It's in the same uh vein as Sam's book, that it in that it's very readable, very accessible is the word we like to use. That is H.W. Brands's book, Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas. Brands follows a lot of the same ground that Steve Harden did in Texi and Iliad. He's talking about a lot of the fighting. However, he somewhat combines what I said Lack does and Harden does, but he does it in a very accessible, very readable format. Um, it's good history to read, it's good history to glean from. You know, look, if you're writing a lecture and you want to write a lecture on the Texas Revolution, it's a great thing to steal from. Uh in that. Because you can really write a good lecture reading Bill Brands' book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know, he he he he's a good writer. He's at UT and or he has been at UT for a long time. And he still is. Still is. And um, yeah, he he he writes a very good, accessible book that anybody could start with. So yeah. So those, yeah, and like I said, you know, everybody writes about the Texas Revolutionary Period. So it was that six books we suggested.
The Go To Texas Revolution Books
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, and there's others that we could go on and on about. I mean, Andrew Torget's Seeds of Empire, Cotton Slavery and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, Greg Cantrell's Stephen F. Austin book. Any of those are really good. Jim Crist, his uh sleeping the Alamo book, which is fantastic.
SPEAKER_00That's the one I assigned my students to read.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I have too on occasion. And they're all they're all good. You can't go wrong with them, really and truly.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, so many good books. I mean, we could do a whole episode on just the Texas Revolution. Write that down. Maybe we will. Let's talk about another very storied uh incident in Texas, and that's the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Now, we were really kind of looking at that whole Reconstruction period, um, and we looked at the document we looked at was John H. Reagan's uh letter from the Fort Warren Prison. Uh so this is another area where there's been a lot of good writing. And I'm gonna tell you you cannot go wrong by reading any book by Carl Moneyhan. Carl Moneyhan is at uh he's in Arkansas. He's I think he's retired now. Uh but but he has written he has written numerous books on the Texas uh period uh in Reconstruction. And um uh golly, let me let me think of let me think of a good one um to to suggest.
SPEAKER_01Well the best one is Republicanism in Reconstruction in Texas.
SPEAKER_00That's very good.
SPEAKER_01I think that's the middle one. He kind of wrote a uh a trilogy series uh on Reconstruction. Yeah. And I believe that's the middle one, and it's it's his best, if you ask me. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um Texas after the Civil War is another good one, the struggle for reconstruction. Um and then he just came out with one on E.J. Davis, who was the Texas governor uh after it's uh it's just called Edmund J. Davis of Texas. Edmund J. Davis of Texas, Texas uh Civil War general, Republican leader, reconstruction governor. Uh and that came out just a couple of years ago. Very good. But yeah, I mean he is he is really dedicated his life and his professional career to writing about Reconstruction, Texas.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he Carl's a Carl's an excellent historian and a good and a good person, uh uh, of course. And yeah, you can't go on. I would say another one I would get that's about that, and I would like you, that's really what Reagan was talking about. I would I would focus on Reconstruction.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is by the late Randolph B. Campbell, uh, probably the dean of you know of 19th century Texas historians, certainly maybe written almost more in various things about him. He's written about slavery, he wrote about Sam Houston. But this book is Grassroots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865 to 1880.
SPEAKER_00Fantastic book.
SPEAKER_01It is a it's an excellent book. It's great for the classroom. Students can read it, but it's academic, it gets to the heart of the matter. Uh uh Mike Campbell is he spends most of his time talking about East Texas and it's the the core of this, he said, which makes sense. That was the that was the center of slavery uh in Texas. A lot of Harrison County in this book, of course. But he gets to what's my love about it is certainly we know the policy of Reconstruction, but he also gets to this is what the people of Texas thought about Reconstruction and what did they want from Reconstruction and what they didn't want from Reconstruction. Great book, and I would say that would be the one to go along with uh for sure anything from Money Hand. Gene, also very important about anything in Reconstruction, I think, would be looking at the experiences of African Americans during Reconstruction. And on that, and there's a couple of books I would get to
Reconstruction Scholarship That Changes Perspectives
SPEAKER_01to do that. And the the first one I would do is it's a book, it's hard to find. Uh, it's been out of print for years, and buying it, a lot of libraries don't have it, but if you look hard enough, you can find it. That's a book by the late James Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair, Black Texans during Reconstruction. It's an older book, it was written back in the early 70s, but it so aptly captures the African American experience in Texas during Reconstruction. I love that title. Time of Hope, Time of Despair. Because when Reconstruction began, it was a a time of great hope for African Americans. This was going to change everything. Uh, they were going to finally get the rights that they had, they were not going to be under the shackles of slavery anymore. They were going to participate in the political process. And in those early years of Reconstruction, they did. But then, it's like the proverbial Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football. They got yanked away from them. And that was a time of despair. By the end of Reconstruction, they understood we're about to go under the yoke of Jim Crow. We're about to be back to being the press class again. Uh, and so, you know, it's kind of a downer ending there, but great to do it. It really captures that experience very well.
SPEAKER_00One of the other uh I mean, small Smallwood was very good on that whole genre of uh looking at the uh the pain and the promise of the Reconstruction period and and the shattered hopes. Um another book that I found uh that he wrote that was just uh I mean I couldn't put it down was The Feud That Wasn't. And he's looking so you know, people talk about great feuds in history, and a lot of times they forget that there were feuds in Texas, uh in central Texas, and uh certainly in southeast Texas, and a lot of them were over Reconstruction period, over um you know the the idea of black police officers and black law enforcement officers. And so he's looking at the Taylor-Sutton ring uh feud. Uh John Wesley Harden comes in there, so you get wet some Western history, and he's looking at violence of the Reconstruction period. That's really kind of what Jim kind of specialized in was the violence of the Reconstruction period, because up until he was writing, people had kind of overlooked that and they'd kind of seen that, you know, oh, Reconstruction, we all kind of got along. And he he was one of the one of those historians that said, no, Reconstruction was not just, you know, hey, you know, I was shooting at you last week, but now we're brothers again, let's go have a beer.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And yeah, Jim and Jim understood that. Related to that, I think I have to throw in because it was a big part of Reconstruction, and it's such a well-done book, is buried Crouch and Donnelly Bryce's book, The Governor's Hounds, the state pol uh Texas State Police 1870, 1873. Uh, Texas State Police very controversial because Edmund J. Davis, who we previously uh mentioned, had organized those. They made it, he made it directly answerable to the governor. And about half of the uh officers in the Texas State Police were African American. Yes. And that really stoked a lot of resentment. Uh Amongst the population of Texas, so much so that, and the book does a great job of showing that, that quite often a lot of cities in Texas shielded criminals, outlaws, from the police simply because the criminals were white and the police officers were black. And so they did famous Texan, John Wesley Harden. That's how he really gets his start. He kills a Texas state policeman, uh, shoots him in the back, and that's where he, I guess, begins his life of crime. Right. Pretty much he was uh he was but he was also involved, you know what? He's also involved in the feud that that that Jimmy Smallwood w wrote about. Right. Uh the the Taylor Sutton feud there. So, or the feud that wasn't to some extent, as it was more than that. So all those really, really good books on the Reconstruction period, you know, Civil War and Reconstruction Reconstruction is one of those things that you know, there's so many books on the Civil War. That Reconstruction kind of gets overshadowed, but Reconstruction in many ways is more important than even the Civil War because it shaped so much what became modern Texas, and all these books uh feed into that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and Crouch, uh, I mean, his book, uh The Freedman's Bureau and Black Texans was excellent. And and Crouch and Smallwood good friends, and they were the ones um who really kind of changed the emphasis to look more at Reconstruction. So yeah, Crouch didn't get to write as much as he wanted because he did a lot of administrative, he wrote plenty, but he did a lot of administrative work in Gala Deb.
SPEAKER_01And um so um Yeah, he wrote the he wrote another good book of the period, though, the Freedmen's Bureau in Black Texas. Yeah. That's a very crap book. That's very good. Outstanding best book on the Freedmen's Bureau there, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so uh I I will say a shout out to my mentor, who is Alwyn Barr, uh, and one of his early books, I mean he wrote on the Civil War, um, but he also wrote uh Reconstruction to Reform Texas Politics 1876 to 1906. Uh a great I mean it's a little bit longer, but it's a great book looking at the political changes that happened. And the other one that I want to say, um, and this is actually gonna tie into the next topic, uh, is Greg Cantrell, and we've mentioned him before already, but his uh this was part of his dissertation. Uh and it was a little book, uh, I I think it's still in print. Uh it's called John Feeding the Wolf. Right. Feeding the Wolf, John B. Raynor and the Politics of Race 1815 to 1918. And that is gonna take us into our next topic, and that is the populist movement. And I'm gonna say, you know, uh Cantrell Cantrell has been doing a lot of good stuff. There's another topic uh that had not been uh discussed very much. I mean, and and a lot of it starts here in Texas. That whole farmers movement was very strong here in Texas. A lot of the leaders were Texans, and the Southern Alliance was headquartered for a while in Texas. And I'm gonna tell you the best overall book, I think, um, is Lawrence Goodwin's The Populous Moment, a short history of the Grarian Revolt in America. Fantastic book, and it brings in how uh Methodist circuit writers were also very influential in spreading the populist movement as they wrote around, and that the populace kind of adopted the Methodist tactics, uh, which I thought was fascinating. Uh but we've got some new ones. Greg just came out we recently with another book called The People's Revolt, Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism.
SPEAKER_01It's a great book, Gene. Uh Cantrell uh spent a long time writing that book. It's very well researched. It's
Texas Populism And The Roots Of Liberalism
SPEAKER_01a big book in the sense of there's a lot of pages to it. Yeah. I love the way he shows how populism has those Texas roots. Like, you know, to some extent, he shows it it it starts in Texas and spreads from Texas, and he's correct about that. But even more so in that book, and what makes it even great is he ties in the ideas of populism to be what become the ideas of what we will come to call American liberalism, the left of center ideas in American politics, and that how populist ideas fuel the progressive movement, which then in turn in turn fuels the New Deal, which in turn fuels the Great Society, which in turn eventually begins to die out with Bill Clinton in the third way and the rise of conservatism, particularly with Reagan. But and then it almost ends with a you know a call of we really need to get back to that. Uh and it was the best idea in American history that there was uh to do this, and it is a Texas idea to some extent, you know, letting us know, you know, Texas has not always been a politically conservative place. Another one that does great for that, that I would say is the companion. You either read this before you read Cantrell's book or you read it after. Kyle Wilkerson's Yeoman, Sharecroppers, and Socialists plain folk protest in Texas. He does an also excellent job showing. You know, these populists were really in the vanguard. They were a the cutting edge ahead of their time in framing these issues that would eventually enter political mainstream. You know, and letting us know, you know, populism was born, of course, uh you know, in the rural areas amongst the sharecroppers and the small farmers, these plain folks. And these guys had some fairly radical ideas. They were the socialists, they were calling for socialism, they were calling for protest, they were protesting against concentration, wealth as well as land and government. Great. And Kyle, another book he spent a long time researching, and it it's very, very, very well written, very readable. I've used it for class. Fantastic book.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that it that is that is a good book. And you know, and here's another area that oftentimes gets overlooked uh is Texas's role uh uh during the populist moment, but then in emerging into the progressive movement. And uh people don't realize that uh Texas by the early 1900s had accumulated a lot of power in Washington, D.C. Edwin House, a Texas uh financier, was Woodrow Wilson's biggest backer supporter and kind of uh advisor. In fact, in World War I, a as World War I came to an end, the Treaty of Versailles, it was House who went to Paris to prepare everything for Wilson. And Wilson was the first president, American president to go abroad. And uh but it was House who set things up and got a lot of the negotiations going. Um and largely forgotten. Largely forgotten. But at one point House was a kingmaker. He was a political uh he was the one who supported so many political campaigns in Texas. And uh, if you read various things on Texas politics, House's name pops up all the time, and uh but largely forgotten in today's world.
SPEAKER_01Uh and then and he was, yeah, he was uh uh to some extent an architect of moving that populist sentiment into become what becomes progressivism. I I think the best way to maybe is calling a bridge that did this. House was definitely not a populist as far as supporting the agrarian protest, as he was a financier, but he understood the appeal of those populist ideas and how they could bring the United States into another. And of course, that's it. Uh, you know, uh Lewis Gould's book, uh uh Prohibitionists and Progressives, isn't that the name of it? Yes. Uh he dives into Edwin Edward House so much and gives him so much uh credence for doing exactly that. You know, a lot of great things on populism. And it's uh, you know, as we talked about when we talked about it in our episode, populism is it's an era in American history and in Texas history that we don't give enough credence to. That we don't realize how damned important it was uh on this, because we often look at populism as a failed movement, but was it? Was it a failed movement politically?
SPEAKER_00It didn't elect anybody, but I believe its political ideas well it didn't elect anybody who was a populist who ran on that party, but the populist movement gave rise to Teddy Roosevelt adopting that the second time he ran for office. And he was a very good thing.
SPEAKER_01Woodrow Wilson as well, right? And Woodrow Wilson as well, you know, at the national level. Well, Gene, you know, we were gonna talk about books and everything else, and here we are.
LBJ Tease And Listener Feedback
SPEAKER_01We've been spouting off, and we're almost 30 minutes in, and we haven't even got to what both of us might consider one of the most important things about it, and that's Lyndon Johnson. How about we say we're gonna do a whole episode just on Johnson where we'll talk about Johnson's importance, why we should continue to give him this his his his due course, but also good books on Johnson, because there's a lot of them out there.
SPEAKER_00That's true. Well, you know, uh uh looking back, uh we touched on several areas um that we think don't get enough attention that had several good books. I I think we could do something on on any one of those, but I I do like the idea of starting with Johnson. Johnson was really who I cut my teeth on as a young historian, um, you know, bright-eyed and naive and optimistic. Um I've changed, I've changed since then. Um and uh so yeah, uh and I I I I uh under I took an undergraduate course on Lyndon Johnson in Southwest Texas, and I think we read six books on LBJ. So uh used to go out to his ranch all the time, make a pilgrimage out there, and uh spent many, many a days researching at the LBJ Library. So Lyndon Johnson uh and and again today here's another president, a president who who oftentimes is overlooked as as seen as a bridge or a placeholder between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy.
SPEAKER_01Which is which is that is that that's so unfortunate and so wrong because he was much more than that. Uh and he I I'll I place him as one of the most important presidents ever because in six short years he got so much done uh and and particularly advancing the cause of civil rights. So let's do that. Next episode, we're gonna talk about Johnson's books and about the man.
SPEAKER_00Sounds great. Scott, we want to thank everybody for tuning in and listening to us uh spout off about history uh and about these important periods in our past that we shouldn't forget about, that we need to do more, spend more time teaching and uh sharing our thoughts. Uh, and thank everybody for that.
SPEAKER_01And I hope everybody likes it. We've kind of revamped the podcast where we've kind of taken it in some new directions this time, and I hope everybody likes it. If you like it, let us know. We'd like to know if you like the direction we'll take it. So until next time, thanks everybody.
SPEAKER_00Bye bye.
