{"id":482,"date":"2018-12-31T12:28:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=482"},"modified":"2018-12-31T12:28:43","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T12:28:43","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=482","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

3.27.16\u00a0\u00a0 George Jones biography chronicles his colorful life<\/h1>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>If you were a fan of George Jones\u2019s country music<\/span>, you will want to read Rich Kienzle\u2019s<\/span> biography, The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Dey Street Books, $27.99 hardcover), which comes out Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Appropriately, Kienzle begins the book with the question often on promoters\u2019 and fans\u2019 minds when they attended a George Jones concert during his hard-drinking years: \u201cWould he or wouldn\u2019t he show up?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones was born George Glenn Jones in Saratoga, Texas, in 1931. He went by Glenn, not George, growing up in Southeast Texas and took to music early on, singing hymns at revival meetings in and around Kountze. His mother was devoutly religious, his dad prone to drunkenness and physical abuse.<\/p>\n

In about 260 pages, Kienzle traces Jones\u2019s life and career through eight periods: 1931\u201353, 195361, 196268, 1968\u201375, 1975\u201383, 1983\u201390, 1990\u201399, 1999\u20132013. Jones died in April three years ago at age 81. \u201cHe was a common man graced with uncommon talent,\u201d Kienzle writes. \u201cDuring his life, he was considered by peers and fans to be the greatest living country singer. In death, he remains, to many, the greatest country singer of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet he wrestled continuously with drinking, drugs, arrests, debt, marital problems and other demons, often barely surviving them\u2014 and finally rebounding from them. \u201cHis failures were as spectacular as his triumphs,\u201d says Kienzle. \u201cJones\u2019s life and music are inseparable. The music often triumphed even during his worst personal moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas history: <\/span>Three new books on Texas history have been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.<\/p>\n

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<\/a><\/span><\/span>The Texas Frontier and the Butterfield Overland Mail, 1858\u20131861<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Glen Sample Ely<\/span> is a lavish, oversized (8 x 10) volume tracing the Butterfield stage line through Texas. Ely tells how the Butterfield became the frontier equivalent of the modern interstate highway system, helping promote business and settlement in the primitive and often violent West Texas frontier ($34.95 hardcover, 440 pages, 236 color and 56 black and white photos, maps and illustrations).<\/p>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River<\/span><\/a><\/span> by Patrick Dearen is the first book-length treatment of the environmental history of the 926-mile Pecos River. Dearen, from Midland, has written award-winning historical novels and non-fiction works set along the Pecos and Devils Rivers ($29.95 hardcover, 256 pages,41 black and white illustrations, nine maps).<\/p>\n

Lone Star Unionism, Dissent, and Resistance: Other Sides of Civil War Texas,<\/span><\/a><\/span> edited by Jesus F. de la Teja,<\/span> is a collection of ten essays by noted historians on non-Confederate sentiments in Texas before, during and after the Civil War. Pieces concern such topics as slave flight, Unionist German Texans, anti-Unionist violence in North Texas, Tejano Unionism, the significance of Juneteenth, and the story of Edmund J. Davis, the \u201cunlikely radical\u201d who went from being a pro-slavery Democrat to a Union general and Reconstruction governor ($29.95 hardcover, $19.95 paperback, 296 pages).<\/p>\n

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Glenn Dromgoole<\/span> is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books<\/span><\/a><\/span> Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> <\/span>Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 3.27.16\u00a0\u00a0 George Jones biography chronicles his colorful life If you were a fan of George Jones\u2019s country music, you will want to read Rich Kienzle\u2019s biography, The Grand Tour: The Life and Music of George Jones (Dey Street Books, $27.99 hardcover), which comes out Tuesday. Appropriately, Kienzle begins the book with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}