Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole

11.13.16    Texas book topics: humor, football, women

You Might Be from Texas if by Nick Anderson (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing, $19.95 paperback) is a collection of color cartoons poking fun at our Texas eccentricities. Anderson, editorial cartoonist for the Houston Chronicle, has some pretty good zingers. You might be from Texas if:

 “You can’t remember your wife’s birthday or your anniversary… but you remember the Alamo.”

 “You aren’t surprised to see a roadside store that carries movie rental, bait and ammunition.”

 “You know that all history teachers in Texas have the same name: Coach.”

 “Your directions include ‘down yonder.’ ”

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, a fourth-generation Texan from Houston, wrote the foreword.

Texas football: This fall I’ve already written about several new books on Texas football, but here are two more that are noteworthy:

Journalist Mac Engel and photographer Ron Jenkins teamed up to produce a colorful, well-written, impressive coffee-table book covering four Texas football games in four days. In words and pictures, Pigskin Rapture: Four Days in the Life of Texas Football (Lone Star Books, $26 hardcover) puts readers in the middle of the action for these four games in October 2015: Indianapolis Colts at Houston Texans on Thursday, Midland Lee at Odessa Permian on Friday, Oklahoma vs. Texas on Saturday, and New England Patriots at Dallas Cowboys on Sunday. Quite a weekend of Texas football!

Best-selling author S. C. Gwynne, best known for his award-winning Empire of the Summer Moon, turns his attention to football coach Hal Mumme and his revolutionary impact on the game in The Perfect Pass: American Genius and the Reinvention of Football (Scribner, $27 hardcover). Gwynne tells how Mumme led the way in changing football from primarily a running game to a passing game. Mumme, who has had a controversial, roller-coaster career in college football, now coaches at Division III Belhaven in Mississippi. Gwynne calls Mumme “one of a handful of authentic offensive geniuses in the history of American football.”

Texas women: The Art of the Woman: The Life and Work of Elizabet Ney by Emily Fourmy Cutrer (Texas A&M University Press, $24.95 paperback) tells about the noted and controversial sculptor who immigrated to Texas in 1871. Her work included sculptures of Texas founding fathers Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin.

Texas Tech University Press has published Finding Dorothy Scott: Letters of a WASP Pilot by Sarah Byrn Rickman ($24.95 hardcover). Scott was one of the thirty-eight homeland women pilots to die while serving their country during World War II. She was based at Dallas Love Field for much of her duty and was twenty-three when she died in a midair crash in California. Her letters are archived at Texas Woman’s University.

Women in Civil War Texas: Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi is a collection of eleven historical and biographical essays by noted scholars on various aspects of women’s lives during the Civil War. The book was edited by Deborah M. Liles and Angela Boswell and published by the University of North Texas ($29.95 hardcover).

Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

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