Books

December 1, 1989

Continental Drift

Five beautifully produced books explore the Americas, from anonymous folk art to the great muralists, from revolutionary heroes to a Texas ranching patriarch.

September 30, 1989

Whistling in the Dark

Larry McMurtry explores the far side of forty in his new novel.

August 31, 1989

The Way of the Buffalo

Dallas novelist C. W. Smith takes a long, hard look at a subject with a painful history.

June 30, 1989

Territorial Imperative

A fresh look at the U.S. war with Mexico shows that the effects of this forgotten conflict are still being felt today.

By T. Fehrenbach

May 31, 1989

Moving On

Dave Hickey’s fine short stories are enhanced by the scarcity; Texas expatriate William Humphrey takes on the Cherokees’ Trail of Tears.

March 1, 1989

Days in the Country, Nights on the Town

New fiction takes the reader on forays into Louisiana swamps, excursions into smoke-filled Austin honky-tonks, and down life’s highway with a lady trucker

November 1, 1988

Dan Jenkins’ latest takes a tough-cookie journalist out of a thirties movie and puts her into a chase through Depression-era Fort Worth; Sarah Glasscock populates her fictional Alpine with a cast of real characters.

September 30, 1988

The Old West, the New South

In Anything for Billy, Larry McMurtry trounces the Western myth; Frederick Barthelme, in Two Against One, casts a cold eye on a self-desdtructing marriage.

July 31, 1988

Long Live the Kink

Kinky Friedman dropped out for a while, but it sure beat dropping dead. Now the warped warbler is back with a play, a movie deal, and murder mystery number three.

By David Gaines

May 31, 1988

Character Flaw

A tour of the Texas psyche, with guides like Sam Houston, Katherine Anne Porter, and John Henry Faulk; a novel of adolescence addresses carnal knowledge and fundamentalist religion.

Politics & Policy|

May 1, 1988

Learning to Love the Bomb

Can a Texas publisher of technical books make a difference in the nuclear powers’ arms race? You bet.

By Michael Ennis

Politics & Policy|

March 1, 1988

Should This Man Be President?

For all his integrity and noble intentions, George Bush has yet to prove he’s got the agenda of a true statesman.

By Nicholas Lemann

March 1, 1988

The Soft Sell

Once, the term “paperback original” was reserved for second-rate work. Now, thanks to an innovative editor, two Texas novelists are proud to see their books in softcover.

December 1, 1987

Growing Up With George and Martha

By turning two tiny dots into two huge hippos, James Marshall made an indelible mark on children’s literature, and little people laughed happily ever after.

By Stephen Harrigan

December 1, 1987

Poison Pen

Dallas’ drive-in film critic Joe Bob Briggs made us laugh at bad movies. When we became the butt of the joke, it wasn’t funny anymore.

By Drew Jubera

September 30, 1987

Novel Approach

Three novelists discover that a Texas connection need not be a tie that binds.

By Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson

Sports|

September 1, 1987

Unsportsmanlike Conduct

When he played for the Dallas Cowboys, Hollywood Henderson had everything. Here he tells how he lost it.

June 30, 1987

Oil Gluttons

Getty Oil dropped into the market like raw steak into a bay full of sharks: Oil and Honor clarifies the waters. Beverly Lowry keeps the pages turning in her deft and racy roman à clef. The Perfect Sonya.

April 1, 1987

The Next Picture Show

In Larry McMurtry’s Texasville, the teenagers from The Last Picture Show await their thirtieth high school reunion amid the hard times in Thalia and, as always, the war between the sexes.

March 1, 1987

Slim Pickens

Boone, T. Boone Pickens’ autobiography, is most interesting when it names names and tells tales, but such moments surface only occasionally and sink quickly.

By Paul Burka

February 1, 1987

The Apple Version

Walt Disney, Howard Johnson, and Margery Post Merriweather have one thing in common: they’re all trapped inside Max Apple’s new novel.

January 1, 1987

Science Marches On

UT historian William Goetzmann traces America’s belief in endless possibilities to the boundless curiosity of its earliest explorers.

By Paul Andrew Hutton

November 1, 1986

Forty-two Per Cent Potent

In the novel Paradise, Donald Barthelme offers a cereal box of current events and social observations; Laura Furman challenges the dogged ideal of family in Tuxedo Park; Karleen Koen’s Through a Glass is a crash-bang publishing event.

October 1, 1986

Texas Primer: The Texas Institute of Letters

Belonging to this literary club is a lot like becoming a Texan; you can be a newcomer for only so long.

By Karl Kilian

September 30, 1986

Partners in Crime

David Lindsey stalks Houston cops, through the violence the violence and around the blood, in search of another mystery novel.

July 31, 1986

Texas, In Short

The characters in Prize Stories and South by Southwest often dwell on the past while living out their lives in an anxious present.

June 30, 1986

My Fair Editor

George Bernard Shaw wrote a quarter of a million pieces of correspondence and never mailed one to San Antonio. So where does his editor choose to live?

By Vance Muse

May 31, 1986

Nine Days of Solitude

The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor is more than just journalistic ghostwriting; I the Supreme is robbed of its punch; Bird of Life, Bird of Death peeks behind Central America’s dictators and dominoes.

April 30, 1986

Southern Discomfort

Bobby Jack Nelson—roughneck, cowhand, prospector, and Australian talk show host—is also a fine novelist; Larry L. King writes about writing.

April 1, 1986

Of Things Miraculous and Marvelous

Three unknown Texas writers tackle three different genres and prove the novel is alive and well.

By Peter Applebone

December 1, 1985

Nights of Figs and Other Mysteries

Charles Portis’ Masters of Atlantis is anything but believable and nothing if not enjoyable. A Small Town, Shelby Hearon’s ninth novel, is a hit-and-miss proposition.

By Peter Applebome

November 1, 1985

Dense as a Clootie Dumpling

It had to happen. Novelist James Michener has finally trained his macroscope on Texas, and the result is, well, long.

By Stephen Harrigan

August 31, 1985

Faces of the West

A collection of black and white portraits that capture the powerful effects of the West upon its people, with an introduction by Larry McMurtry.

By Larry McMurtry

May 31, 1985

Going Whole Hog

Larry McMurtry’s grand epic, Lonesome Dove, opens with blue snake-eating pigs and goes on to describe unflinchingly the settlement of the American West. Mark Singer’s Funny Money examines the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

By Jan Morris and Gregg Easterbrook

February 1, 1985

Eavesdropping On History

Max Crawford’s Lords of the Plain is a convincing tale of cavalry and Indians; Thomas McGuane’s Something to Be Desired is an insightful cowtown comedy.

January 1, 1985

Mexico Refried

A book on Mexico by New York Times correspondent Alan Riding is a little more than a rehash of recent history.

By Dick Reavis

December 1, 1984

Beyond Kitsch

Frederick Barthelme’s first novel, Second Marriage, is a wondrous tale of love and absurdity set in the Gulf Coast suburbs.

November 1, 1984

Back in the Huddle Again

Dan Jenkins’ new football novel, Life Its Ownself, picks up where Semi-Tough left off; Heat from Another Sun, a dark detective novel, turns on the gore.

August 31, 1984

Tangled Lines

William Humphrey’s Hostages to Fortune tells a sodden fishing story; C.W. Smith’s The Vestal Virgin Room tells of an empty quest for fame; Rosemary Catacalos’ Again for the First Time is an outstanding collection of verse.

May 31, 1984

The Intellectuals’ Dear Abby

A new study of sociologist C. Wright Mills is adequate but uninspired; this year’s Texas Institute of Letters fiction prize has gone to a fine first novel.

By Joe Holley

April 30, 1984

Uncivil Wars

Civil Wars is armed with first-rate writing; Free Agents is a grab bag of Max Apple’s short fiction; Edisto is a precocious first novel; Group Therapy doesn’t probe deeply enough; Lords of the Earth is yet another Texas oil saga.

By John Davidson