To understand San Antonio, pick up ‘In the Loop’
How the heck did tourism become so important for San Antonio? To find out, read this assiduously researched and carefully written social and economic history. For “In the Loop” (Trinity University Press), David B. Johnson traces the city’s development from a Spanish military outpost and mission town into a destination spot for tuberculosis patients and seekers of quaint sights, then later into a manufacturing and distribution center for South Texas. All along, coalitions of the elite Hispanic families, Anglo-American boosters and GermanAmerican merchants — later joined by political activists and cultural leaders — jostled to build the infrastructure that would maintain the tourist trade and military posts, while fitfully diversifying the economy and raising the standard of living for residents.
Life in a Texas slave community
For years, historians found it next to impossible to reclaim the stories of ordinary enslaved Americans. So much had been left blank on — or erased from — the public record that, along with enforced illiteracy, any snatches of written or published evidence of everyday life were considered rare indeed. Central Texas teacher and literary leader Joleen Maddox Snider, however, pieced together the lives of an East Texas slave community in “Claiming Sunday” (TCU Press), principally by sorting through the records, especially the letters, of their enslavers, and by consulting their descendants. A revised edition came out in 2022.
History on both sides of the Rio Grande
I’ve said it before: Mexican history is Texas history. They can’t be split apart easily. Paul D. Lack’s “Searching for the Republic of the Rio Grande” (Texas Tech University Press) fills in some enormous holes in that shared history. Subtitled “Northern Mexico and Texas, 1838-1940,” this straightforward narrative covers the split between federalist and centralist forces in Mexico after the Texas Revolution. Except for some of the Anglo-Texan raids, this attempt to establish an independent Republic of the Rio Grande, and its importance to the Mexican American War, was all news to me.
The underbelly of a city exposed in ‘Austin Noir’
At first, I was disappointed that this collection of short stories did not include work by Austin noir king Jesse Sublett. Then I started paging through the paperback to stumble on geographic references that rang with, not just familiarity, but a genuine sense of place. The stories, too, felt true. “Austin Noir” (Akashic Books), edited by Hopeton Hay, Scott Montgomery and Molly Odintz, is part of a vast, global series of site-specific collections that includes “Houston Noir,” “Dallas Noir” and “Lone Star Noir.” The volume includes a handy map of the story locations.
A century of Texas state parks
At the beginning of 2023, I wrote cheerfully about the 100th anniversary of the Texas state parks system. Readers told me about their most beloved parks. I promised to visit as many as possible.
That did not happen. I ducked into a few familiar ones on my way hither and yon, but no big road trips were built around the parks. Hey, at least I wrote several times about George Bristol’s essential “Texas State Parks: The First 100 Years, 1923-2023” (TCU Press), which was featured at the Texas Book Festival. It follows the National Parks movement and its manifestations in our state. “This is a biggish book,” I wrote. “It includes a full section with glorious photographs of each state park, along with appendices on the sporting-goods-tax campaign and other background material.”
If at first you don’t secede
Texas has a depressing habit of producing or attracting folks with radical viewpoints and a propensity for violence. Robert Lance McLaren and his Republic of Texas militia were among them. In 1997, they initiated an armed standoff in the Davis Mountains with local law enforcement and Texas Rangers, while holding one couple hostage and demanding the release of two militia members. Author Donna Marie Miller, who did a terrific job with her first book, “The Broken Spoke: Austin’s Legendary Honky-Tonk,” has unearthed a prodigious amount of background material for “Texas Secessionists Standoff (Texas A&M University Press) in order to flesh out the archival news narrative of this sevenday “war” that will sound all too familiar post-Jan. 6.
Texas Hill Country, the natural way
I go back to these elegant, accessible essays again and again. There’s just something so appealing about an accomplished scientist such as David M. Hillis, who can speak and write in way that’s