Big Wonderful Thing
A History of Texas
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- $39.99
Publisher Description
2020 Philosophical Society of Texas Nonfiction Book Prize
2019 Nonfiction Book Award Finalist, Writers’ League of Texas
2021 Citation from the San Antonio Conservation Society
“Harrigan, surveying thousands of years of history that lead to the banh mi restaurants of Houston and the juke joints of Austin, remembering the forgotten as well as the famous, delivers an exhilarating blend of the base and the ignoble, a very human story indeed. [ Big Wonderful Thing is] as good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados.”—Kirkus, Starred Review
The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.
“I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.”
Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea.
Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes, it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harrigan (The Gates of the Alamo) describes post-Columbian Texas in novelistic style in this eloquent homage to the Lone Star state. He follows many figures among them the 19th-century Mexican general and politician Antonio L pez de Santa Anna, Comanche chief Quanah Parker, and "Mother of Texas" Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long and makes smooth transitions between landmark events, such as the 16th-century Spanish expeditions and the Alamo. Lesser-known but powerful stories, including that of the devastating 1963 natural gas explosion at a New London school, pepper the colorful narrative. Despite the author's love of Texas, he's also frank about the horrific violence that figures throughout its history, including the experiences of Native Americans and enslaved people. Harrigan jauntily describes unexpected connections: he recounts learning later that his seemingly average childhood neighbors included WWII hero Joe Dawson and civil rights champion Dr. Hector Garcia. Texan politicians such as H. Ross Perot, Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, and the Bush presidents receive attention without political analysis; Harrigan recalls getting to know George and Laura Bush as fellow parents of young daughters. Scenes of dusty West Texas and the pine-laden eastern forests add a travelogue touch. History lovers will enjoy this packed, fascinating account of a singular state.
