11.1.15   Photographs relate history of Texas politics

Chuck Bailey offers an informative and easy-to-read pictorial history of Texas politics in his new coffee-table book, Picturing Texas Politics: A Photographic History from Sam Houston to Rick Perry (University of Texas Press, $45 hardcover).

The book, which includes 268 black-and-white photos, is divided into four sections. Chapter 1 covers the Republic of Texas through the Civil War and Reconstruction. Chapter 2 deals with the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Chapter 3 pictures Texas political leaders from the Depression through World War II. Chapter 4, the largest of the four sections, covers from after WWII to former governor Rick Perry.

Each photograph is accompanied by a paragraph or two of text summarizing the political figure’s career. Most politicians get one page, with a handful receiving two-page treatments and former president Lyndon Johnson four pages.

At the beginning of each chapter, historian Patrick Cox provides a three- to nine-page essay summarizing the political developments and personalities of that era.

Chuck Bailey is the coauthor of another pictorial portrait of Texas politics, Texas Political Memorabilia: Buttons, Bumper Stickers, and Broadsides, published by UT Press in 2007.

Small-town stories: Two Texas authors, Montie Guthrie and Terry Keeling, have sent me books they’ve recently published full of stories about life in two small Texas towns.

In Tales Tall and Short: Santa Anna, Texas (H.V. Chapman & Sons, $15), Guthrie writes about businesses, theaters, churches, personalities, and other historical matters of interest in Santa Anna, which is twenty miles west of Brownwood.

One story deals with “jackrabbit drives” held in the Depression era to reduce the jackrabbit population, which was a threat to farmers’ crops. Another piece tells about the one-room city jail, no longer used but still standing. His book is available in Santa Anna at Santa Anna Crafts and Gifts and the Texas Ranger Motel.

Keeling, in his Bits and Pieces: Life in Small Town Texas (Lone Star Productions, $16.95), admits that his collection of stories “is probably not going to be of much interest to anyone under fifty,” adding, “but that’s okay. What do they know, anyway?”

His focus primarily is on relatives and people he knew while growing up in Leon County, northeast of Bryan. A story about “Animals and Pets I Have Known” includes a picture and tale about the author’s first pet, a goat. Keeling’s Uncle Runt claimed to be the best left-handed baseball pitcher in the state in his heyday.

Keeling also wrote Johnnie Loves Fannie: Letters from Long Ago (Lone Star Productions, $10.95), based on love letters from his grandfather to his grandmother in 1903. Keeling can be reached at (903) 536-7708.

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Glenn Dromgoole, is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.