Texas

by James A. Michener

Overview

From the first Spanish explorations to the Alamo to the oil fields, here is alarger-than-life history of a larger-than-life state.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780394541549
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/12/1985
Pages:	1096
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

James A. Michener was one of the world’s most popular writers, the author of more than forty books of fiction and nonfiction, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the bestselling novels The Source, Hawaii, Alaska, Chesapeake, Centennial, Texas, Caribbean, and Caravans, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.

Date of Birth:

February 3, 1907

Date of Death:

October 16, 1997

Place of Death:

Austin, Texas

Education:

B.A. in English and history (summa cum laude), Swarthmore College, 1929; A.M., University of Northern Colorado, 1937.

Editorial Reviews

Michener's latest combination of mam moth research, history, and fiction ex udes all the color, courage, villainy, vi olence, and independent spirit expect ed from the Lone Star state. The book's organizing principle is a governor's task force created to study the state. It is composed of stereotypical Texans: oil man, rancher, genteel descendant of Southern aristocracy, Chicano, etc. Their ancestors are Texasevery one an adventurer, from a Spanish mission ary to Scots-Irish and Germans hungry for land and freedom, to a minister sent to civilize Comanches, to Mexican ban dits and Texas Rangers. Interspersed among these sagas are task force meet ings in various Texas cities to study lo cal geography and natural historya far more accessible approach than pre vious Michener tomes that lump them in heavy opening chapters. Purists may object to the overabundance of dramat ic incidents, but they make exciting reading. Highly recommended. Cyn thia Johnson Wheall er, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, Mass.

Library Journal

Fascinating.”—Time
 
“A book about oil and water, rangers and outlaws, frontier and settlement, money and power . . . [James A. Michener] manages to make history vivid.”—The Boston Globe
 
“A sweeping panorama . . . [Michener] grapples earnestly with the Texas character in a way that Texas’s own writers often don’t.”—The Washington Post Book World
 
“Vast, sprawling, and eclectic in population and geography, the state has just the sort of larger-than-life history that lends itself to Mr. Michener’s taste for multigenerational epics.”—The New York Times

From the Publisher