Books
17 Great Books on the Border to Read Instead of ‘American Dirt’
Attica Locke’s New Mystery Novel Unearths East Texas Secrets
Heaven, My Home explores how black and white people can live almost entirely different experiences inside the same time and place.
Attica Locke’s 2017 detective novel, Bluebird, Bluebird, featuring Texas Ranger Darren Matthews, was a popular and critical success. Now, in the sequel Heaven...Read More
The Large Ask
Naomi Klein concedes in her new book that fighting climate change will be expensive and disruptive. She also passionately argues that it remains our most necessary battle.
Look I understand too little too late I realize there are things you say and do You can never take back But what would you be if you didn’t even try You h...Read More
How Earl Campbell Changed Football in Texas
In Earl Campbell: Yards After Contact, a new biography of the famed player, Asher Price writes, “Earl Campbell tried, through carrying the football, to transcend race.”
In 1977, the University of Texas’ crushing running back, Earl Campbell, racked up 1,744 yards on the football field, 1,054 of those coming after initial cont...Read More
American Health Care is Broken, Especially in Texas. What Can We Do About It?
Physician Marty Makary’s new book shows how sky-high medical bills can ruin patients’ lives—but puts the burden on individuals to demand change.
Add yet another first place health care ranking no one wants for Texas: We have the highest hospital bills in the country. A new study has found that Texas pr...Read More
‘The Secrets We Kept’ is a Finely-Structured Story of Secrets, Spies, and Secretaries
Lara Prescott’s sparkling debut novel is based on one of the Cold War’s strangest stories: a covert operation to spread a banned book across the Soviet Union.
When I taught American literature at a Soviet university in 1980, I managed to bring along some books that were banned by the Kremlin: Catch-22, One Flew Over t...Read More
‘The Weil Conjectures’ Rewards the Intellectually Adventurous
Part biography, part memoir, Karen Olsson’s new book traces the extraordinary lives of a famous mathematician and his philosopher sister.
The Latin root of the word conjecture, conicere, means to throw things together. Think of Jackson Pollock splashing different paints onto a canvas and hoping fo...Read More
‘Black Light’ is a Weird, Wonderful Fever Dream of a Book
People glow, hunt for psychedelic mushrooms, and fall in and out of love in Kimberly King Parsons’ debut short story collection.
Some fiction lets you know exactly what it is from the outset. It’s comfortable in its genre or setting; it’s upfront with the reader about the plot, the ti...Read More
A Riveting New History of an Ancient West Texas Canyon
Like a cross-section of the desert, David Keller’s book reveals layers of overlapping history in the spectacular and rugged Pinto Canyon.
“Other than by foot or horseback, there are only two ways to get to Pinto Canyon,” writes David Keller in his latest book, In the Shadow of the Chinatis: A ...Read More
‘Texas Flood’ is a Soulful Portrait of Stevie Ray Vaughan
A new biography captures Vaughan’s journey from record-obsessed Dallas kid to all-time guitar god, taking care to convey what made his music transcendent.
Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Ray Vaughan succeeds in just the way it must to reach both Vaughan’s fans and those first learning why he’s a sh...Read More
