ustxtxb_obs_1993_12_10_50_00019-00000_000.pdf

Lone Star Bibliography COMPILED BY JAMES CULLEN Editor’s Note: This is not a complete list of the books published in Texas or on Texas subjects during 1993. It appears that no other such list is compiled, although Barber’s Bookstore in Fort Worth publishes A Texan’s Catalog of Books, including a limited subject guide to Texas books. For information on Barber’s catalog call 1-800-327-5471. TO dates refer to the Observer issue in which the book was reviewed. Biography Bad Hand: A Biography of General Ranald S. Mackenzie, by Charles M. Robinson III, State House. An account of a Civil War hero and Indian fighter and his descent into madness. The book details Mackenzie’s early life and the first hints of mental instability as well as the accounts of his 4th Cavalry invasion of Mexico in pursuit of Indians, the battle of Palo Duro Canyon and the Powder River expedition, as he did more than any other Indian fighter to fracture the power of Indian resistance to frontier expansion. Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition, by Thomas W. Cuter, University of North Carolina. McCulloch was a Tennessee-born Texas frontiersman and amateur soldier whose career ran from Texas Revolution in the 1830s to his death as a Confederate general in 1862. Forged. Under the Sun/Forjada bajo el sol, the Life of Maria Elena Lucas, edited and with an introduction by Fran Leeper Buss, University of Michigan paperback. A native of the Rio Grande Valley, where she started her working life at age five, Maria Elena Lucas grew to become an outspoken champion of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee until, frustrated in the mid-1980s by the lack of women in leadership roles, she turned to the United Farm Workers, which promised to include all family members in organizing. In addition to speaking to thousands of people as a grassroots organizer, she also wrote poetry and directed short plays for farm workers. Even after a crop-dusting plane dropped a lethal load of pesticide on her E.A. Mares teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas in Denton. Bryce Milligan is an Observer contributing writer. while she was driving in an open car near San Juan in 1988, which left her permanently disabled, Lucas has been a tireless activist for migrant workers. Buss is an oral historian in Tucson and the book is part of a “Women and Culture Series.” From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston, by Patricia Smith Prather and Jane Clements Monday, University of North Texas. The biography of Joshua, slave to Margaret Lea, who married Sam Houston in 1840. Joshua was a trusted servant and craftsman until the General freed him in 1863. During Reconstruction he was a city alderman, county commissioner and property owner. The book provides details on Southern social history before, during and after the Civil War. In History’s Shadow: An American Odyssey, by John Connally, with Mickey Herskowitz, Hyperion. Reared during the Depression in a poor farm family, Connally learned the ropes of Texas politics in the employ of upand-coming Congressman Lyndon Johnson. Connally was a close adviser to LBJ and John F. Kennedy, became Governor of Texas, was wounded in Dallas, later switched parties and became an adviser to Richard M. Nixon, failed in his own presidential ambitions, amassed and lost a fortune and was on his way to a second fortune when he died this past June. For Connally contumely, see TO 7/2/93. I Say Me for a Parable: The Oral Autobiography of Mance Lipscomb, Texas Bluesman, compiled by Glen Alyn, W.W. Norton. Even after his “discovery” in the early ,1960s, Lipscomb, the legendary blues master, lived out his days near Navasota with occasional trips to play special events as he became better known but never very prosperous. He describes his experiences as a Grimes County sharecropper and songster to Alyn, a musician who got to know Lipscomb at the Kerrville Music Festival in the early 1970s . and who faithfully preserves Lipscomb’s almost mystic vernacular. John Henry Faulk: The Making of a Liberated Mind, by Michael C. Burton, Eakin. Austin writer Burton draws on interviews with Faulk, family members and friends, including Studs Terkel, Lee Grant, Pete Seeger and Cactus Pryor for this first biography of Faulk, the celebrated humorist, folklorist, raconteur and champion of the First Amendment. Burton starts with Faulk’ s formative years in South Austin in the 1920s when, as the son of a well-known and eccentric lawyer, he associated more with his poor black neighbors and white “cedar choppers” than the middleclass members of the Methodist church he attended. Faulk is followed through the University of TeXas, where he was encouraged to develop his talent for folklore by J. Frank Dobie and John Lomax; his career as a radio and television personality at CBS until it was derailed by the Hollywood Blacklist; the lawsuit that exonerated him but was unable to restore those prime years; his return to Texas; and his legacy in defense of the First Amendment. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Arthur Frederick Ide, Monument Press, Las Colinas. This 220-page report on the junior Senator’s rise and troubles appears to be based mainly on news clips, including coverage in the Observer, and other details gleaned from the public record. New York Days, by Willie Morris, Little, Brown & Co. In the sequel to the prize-winning North Toward Home, the former Observer editor recalls his exciting years as the youngest ever editor in chief of Harper’s magazine, when he worked to transform the literary magazine into a groundbreaking political and cultural voice in the late 1960s, only to be driven off by the disaffected owners. Ornette Coleman: Harmolodic Life, by John Litweiler, William Morrow. A thoroughly readable account of the Fort Worth native who heralded the Free Jazz movement. See TO 11/26/93. Pioneer Woman Educator: The Progressive Spirit of Annie Webb Blanton, by Debbie Mauldin Cottrell, Texas A&M. “In 1918 Annie Webb Blanton broke the gender barrier in Texas politics when she was elected to head the state’s public school system. This victory came despite the fact that women in Texas could not vote in the general election that elevated her to office.” So begins Cottrell’s story of the pioneering woman educator who taught in public school and university classrooms, was the first female presidency of the Texas State Teachers Association and founded an international sorority for teachers, Delta Kappa Gamma. Blanton combined traditional and progressive values in her own THE TEXAS OBSERVER 19