Books
The Texas Observer’s Best Features of 2018
‘Life Was Her Art’: Nadine Eckhardt Remembered as an Influential Cultural Conduit in Texas and Washington
A lifelong progressive activist, Eckhardt always managed to straddle both the establishment and counterculture.
Nadine Brammer Eckhardt, first wife and muse of novelist Billy Lee Brammer (The Gay Place) and second wife of Texas Democratic Congressman Robert C. Eckhardt, d...Read More
Our 10 Favorite Texas Books of 2018
Politics, immigration, poetry, LSD, art and yes, vampires: There’s a little something for everyone on this list.
If there’s a bright side to the fact that, politically speaking, we spent 2018 still deep in what people on Twitter wearily call “the darkest timeline,” i...Read More
The Lone Star State Teems with Snakes, Lizards and Toads in ‘Herping Texas’
Michael Smith and Clint King's entertaining and rambling book recounts years of cold-blooded adventuring.
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time hunting for critters. The Dallas suburbs are a resolutely tamed landscape, with little in the way of big wildlife. But i...Read More
Octavio Solis’ ‘Retablos’ Recounts a ‘Beautiful, Messy’ Youth on the Border
Though its title evokes Mexican folk art, Retablos is closer in effect to that of French pointillism. Its small dabs of vivid color produce a brilliant cumulative effect.
Describing his memories of childhood, 60-year-old Octavio Solis says that they come to him like “a set of retablos, votive images painted on old beaten tin, m...Read More
‘When I Spoke in Tongues’ Chronicles a Long Walk Away from the Church
For readers who’ve wrestled with their religious upbringing, Jessica Wilbanks evokes a powerful sense of loss: the loss of the person she used to be, and of the person she might have become, had she stayed inside the fold.
On a research trip to Nigeria, Houston writer Jessica Wilbanks fills out a questionnaire after attending a Pentecostal church service. The form asks a series of...Read More
Casey Gerald’s Memoir Isn’t the Inspirational Tale You Think It Is
By his mid-20s, Casey Gerald — who grew up poor in Dallas — had an eye-popping résumé and an impressive career. So why did he walk away from the “circus of success”?
In 2015, George W. Bush rested his hand on Casey Gerald’s shoulder at a buffet in Dallas. The president wanted to ask Gerald, then an intern at Lehman Brother...Read More
‘Beyoncé in Formation’ is a Texas Professor’s Love Letter to Queen B
Part memoir, part pop-culture scholarship, this slim, engaging book uses Beyoncé as a springboard for wide-ranging ruminations on sexuality, motherhood and activism.
Omise’eke Tinsley made headlines in 2014, when the University of Texas at Austin announced that she would be teaching a new course titled “Beyoncé Feminism...Read More
Author Shane Bauer on How the Racist Roots of Private Prisons Still Permeate the System
“I was struggling with this feeling that I was becoming this different person in prison — a person I didn’t like.”
Falsified reports, inadequate medical care, severe understaffing and a plethora of illicit drugs and weapons: These are the grim realities of America’s modern...Read More
Best of the 2018 Texas Book Festival: An Observer Staff Guide
Six can’t-miss author events hand-picked by our writers.
Best of the 2018 Texas Book Festival: An Observer Staff Guide Six can’t-miss author events hand-picked by our writers. It’s the most wonderful time of the y...Read More