Contributing Editor

Joe Holley

Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of A City

Hachette Books

Hardcover, 978-0316485241, 272 pages (also available as paperback and ebook), $27.00

May 1, 2018

Reviewed by Chris Manno

If you’re looking for a baseball collectible enshrining the 2018 World Champion Houston Astros and their hurricane-battered host city, then Joe Holley’s Hurricane Season: The Unforgettable Story of the 2017 Houston Astros and the Resilience of A City is it. If you’re looking for a focused historical sports narrative, this may be more problematic to read.

The story loops forward and backward and changes narrative modes like a frenetic Robin Williams anecdote: it’s robust, very colorful, entertaining, but exhausting in the end. Ultimately, the reader has a hard time deciding what this book is, because Holley himself seems confused as to what it should be.

Like most baseball game commentary, Holley tends to be overly verbose here. That is consistent with the book’s sixteen-word title but tiring for the reader. He opens with compelling if paradoxical (am I reading a radio broadcast transcript?) play-by-play that is laden with the foibles of baseball sportscasting,  >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

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Two more remarkable Texas photography books

I spoke too soon. A few weeks ago I wrote columns about two Texas books that would no doubt be among the most elegant books published in Texas this year.

Well, I wasn’t wrong. They are quite elegant books — Horses of the American West: Portrayals by Twenty-Four Artists and As Far As You Can See: Picturing Texas. But I’ve come across two more books, equally as enticing, that will command coffee-table attention. And, since we’re still barely halfway through the year, I’m sure there will be others.

The two new volumes are:

Seasons at Selah: The Legacy of Bamberger Ranch Preserve, text by Andrew Sansom, photography by Rusty Yates and David K. Langford.

Lost, Texas: Photographs of Forgotten Buildings by Bronson Dorsey.

Both were published by Texas A&M University Press and are reasonably priced at $40.

When a reader first looks at Seasons at Selah (SEE-lah), he or she is naturally drawn to the stunning photographs by Langford and Yates that dominate the volume (divided into spring, summer, fall and winter scenes). The reader might be inclined to just thumb through the book and admire the pictures, but that would be a mistake.

Andy Sansom’s conversational-style narrative relates the extraordinary story that the photographs exemplify — the story of J. David Bamberger and his passion for conservation and environmental education.

In 1969 Bamberger, who had made millions building the Church’s Chicken fast-food chain, bought what he called “the sorriest piece of land” in the Texas Hill Country -— in Blanco County near Johnson City. He set about restoring it and turning the 5,500 acres of Selah Ranch into an award-winning model of land stewardship and preservation.

As Bamberger nears 90, Selah continues to thrive but faces the challenge of eventually outliving its founder while maintaining his vision for, and devotion to, the land. Seasons at Selah is an important story told lovingly and impressively in words and pictures.

Lost, Texas is the result of eight years of retired architect Bronson Dorsey traveling thousands of miles on rural roads to photograph buildings that, for the most part, are abandoned and forgotten. Dorsey includes old schools, hotels, cafes, office buildings, mills, gins, and even an air base -— with examples from all sections of Texas, organized by region.

Each photograph is accompanied by a brief essay discussing the context of the building and the community or small town where it is located, many of which have declined as well. Unlike most of us who don’t bother to slow down when passing by these decaying facilities, Dorsey not only took the time to stop and photograph them but also to put them in historical context.

“I hope (the photographs) recall a sense of how those who preceded us lived,” Dorsey writes, “and how the Texas of earlier days became the Texas of today.”

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Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life