Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Texas tales and tomes

Two of my favorite early contributions to the blog are Bryan Curtis' and Don Graham's takes on The Great Texas Novel.

So what's new in Texas books? Last month The Dallas Morning News suggested ten Texas books to watch for this summer, including books by Sarah Bird, Will Clarke, and Sandra Brown.

The list includes a couple of interesting-looking works of Texas-touched nonfiction.

The General & The Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa, by Eileen Welsome (Little, Brown).

Ms. Welsome, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes on a brutal sideshow to World War I and the Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa's raids into New Mexico and Texas, the deployment of Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing in response and the slide into an outright, racial war between the U.S. and Mexico. A timely story, vividly told.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright (Knopf).

A New Yorker journalist, screenwriter (The Siege) and Dallas memoirist (In the New World), Mr. Wright traces the rise of militant jihadists from their origins in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood to the Twin Towers.

Click here to read about all ten DMN picks.

--Marshal Zeringue