God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State

Good to learn more about Texas especially these days, and this book besides providing a wistful retrospective on the author's Texan roots and imparting much of the flavor of the state, explains how Texas got to be Texas of today (somewhat concurrent and largely responsible for how the Republican Party got to be the Republican Party of today), and the Texas within Texas that is Austin. It's a bit nostalgic for me, too, as I lived in Dallas for just a year, but it was my first year out of college and I was introduced to BBQ, blistering heat, Tex-Mex, Tex-Mex racism, and coworkers with guns in their cars. But I had a shot at a job in Austin, so what might have been...

Maybe I missed the point, but this was an enormous let down from a journalist I hold in high regard. Most of the book was just a lazy quasi-memoir with little actual analysis. It reads more like a disjointed series of essays about various Texan anecdotes hastily assembled to make a full-length book. “Let me tell you about X. And oh let me tell you about Y.”

Don’t waste your time.