The 50 Best Books On Texas

An annotated listing of over fifty books judged by the author to be the best examples of Texas literature; arranged alphabetically by title.

A selective survey of fiction, biography, natural history, and ranching for anyone who wants to know more about Texas and Texas books.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

Describes growing up in small town West Texas in the early twentieth century focusing on fishing, festivals, and friendships. Also discusses the difficult struggles which many people experienced as well as portraying unusual people in humorous anecdotes.

“Full of schadenfreude and speculation—and solid, timely history too.” —Kirkus Reviews “This is a portrait of capitalism as white-knuckle risk taking, yielding fruitful discoveries for the fathers, but only sterile speculation for the sons—a story that resonates with today's economic upheaval.” —Publishers Weekly “What's not to enjoy about a book full of monstrous egos, unimaginable sums of money, and the punishment of greed and shortsightedness?” —The Economist Phenomenal reviews and sales greeted the hardcover publication of The Big Rich, New York Times bestselling author Bryan Burrough's spellbinding chronicle of Texas oil. Weaving together the multigenerational sagas of the industry's four wealthiest families, Burrough brings to life the men known in their day as the Big Four: Roy Cullen, H. L. Hunt, Clint Murchison, and Sid Richardson, all swaggering Texas oil tycoons who owned sprawling ranches and mingled with presidents and Hollywood stars. Seamlessly charting their collective rise and fall, The Big Rich is a hugely entertaining account that only a writer with Burrough's abilities-and Texas upbringing-could have written.

They were men who could not be stampeded, said the late Colonel Homer Garrison Jr. of the men who wore the badge of the Texas Rangers. Colonist Stephen F. Austin, during the earliest days of Anglo settlement in Texas, wrote that he would employ 10 men to act as 'rangers' for the common defense... and thus, the famous Texas Rangers came into being. An important part of Texas history, these few good men were distinguished, unique even among themselves, and soon, even mythical. The myths and traditions surrounding the Rangers have endured and evolved. Today the Texas Rangers are among the most respected law enforcement agencies in the world.

In 2021, Texas County Reporter celebrates its fiftieth season on the air. Broadcast every week on stations across Texas, it focuses on “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.” And at the center of it is Bob Phillips, the show’s creator and host—an erstwhile poor kid from Dallas who ended up with a job that allowed him to rub elbows with sports figures, entertainers, and politicians but who preferred to spend his time on the backroads, listening to less-famous Texans tell their stories. In this memoir, Phillips tells his own story, from his early days as a reporter and his initial pitch for the show while a student at SMU to his ongoing work at the longest-running independently produced TV show in American television history. As we travel with Phillips on his journey, we meet Willie Nelson and become friends with former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry; reflect on memorable, unusual, and challenging show segments; experience the behind-the-scenes drama that goes on in local television; launch an annual festival; and discover the unbelievable allure of Texas, its culture, and, especially, its people. Spanning generations, A Good Long Drive is proof that life’s journey really is a destination all in itself.

The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.