{"id":604,"date":"2018-12-31T13:03:06","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=604"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:03:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:03:06","slug":"texas-readsglenn-dromgoole-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=604","title":{"rendered":"Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Tower sniper terrorized UT fifty years ago<\/span><\/h1>\n

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Shortly before noon on Monday, Aug. 1, 1966, <\/span>twenty-five-year-old Charles Whitman carried a footlocker full of weapons and ammunition to the top of the thirty-story Tower at the University of Texas and opened fire on the unsuspecting pedestrians below.<\/p>\n

The slaughter \u2014 14 dead, 32 injured \u2014 continued for nearly an hour and a half until Whitman was himself killed by Austin police.<\/p>\n

Whitman\u2019s death toll reached seventeen, including his wife and mother whom he murdered before taking over the tower\u2019s observation deck. One of the thirty-two injured would die years later, ruled a homicide dating back to the wound Whitman inflicted.<\/p>\n

A comprehensive new book by an Austin father and son team, Monte Akers<\/span> and Nathan Akers,<\/span> retraces the full story leading up to the mass murders and the resulting aftermath.<\/p>\n

Tower Sniper: The Terror of America\u2019s First Active Shooter on Campus<\/span><\/a><\/span> (John M. Hardy Publishing, $24.95 hardcover) comes out this week in conjunction with the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the sniper attack. A trade paperback edition ($14.95) will be available in a few weeks, the publisher said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Roger Friedman,<\/span> a clinical psychologist, wrote the foreword and a chapter reflecting on the traumatic legacy of the Whitman massacre. One of Friedman\u2019s closest childhood friends was killed that day. In spite of the tragic loss of life, the authors write, the Tower story also brought out the best in people who reacted courageously and unselfishly. \u201cIt is the story of people who did not look or walk away when they saw strangers in need,\u201d they conclude. \u201cIt is a story of humans at their finest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Upbeat stories:<\/span> My brother Charlie Dromgoole, <\/span>who lives in College Station, has penned a collection of stories laughing about and reflecting on his forty-two-year career as a chamber of commerce executive.<\/p>\n

Chamber Stories That I Can Tell (and some that I probably shouldn\u2019t!)<\/span> is not a how-to book about chamber management, but rather a personal, often humorous, look at situations and personalities he encountered along the way.<\/p>\n

The forty-five pieces deal with his experiences in nine communities, including eight in Texas \u2014 Jasper, Brenham, Port Arthur, Sherman, Abilene, Round Rock, Lufkin, and Humble-Kingwood.<\/p>\n

One of the funniest stories \u2014 \u201cYou Don\u2019t Have to Be a History Buff to Be a Chamber Buff\u201d \u2014 concerns a community effort to bring the Magna Carta to Sherman. On a more serious note, he reflects on Abilene\u2019s successful campaign to be named an All-America City in 1990. The book ($11.95 paperback) is available online at texasstartrading.com or contact the author at charliedromgoole@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

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

>> <\/span>Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit<\/span><\/a><\/span>erary Life<\/span><\/h1>\n
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Viking<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-451-47634-0 (also available as an ebook, audio book, and on Audible), 352 pgs., $17.99; July 12, 2016<\/p>\n

Spunky Megan McKnight is a twenty-year-old soccer player <\/span>at Southern Methodist University with dreams of making the Olympic team. The Bluebonnet Club Debutante Season is the very last thing on her mind. Then a story (\u201can announcement for a virgin auction\u201d) appears in the local paper declaring that Megan and her twin sister Julia are debuting this season, complete with photographs (Megan thinks she looks \u201clike a hick who\u2019d lucked into a makeover coupon\u201d), and Megan realizes that her mother has pulled a fast one.<\/p>\n

When Megan confronts her mother (\u201cClearly decades of coloring your hair and chugging SlimFast have taken a toll\u201d), she learns that there is more to her mother\u2019s madness than she knows and she agrees to debut as a favor to her father. The Season,<\/span> the first novel from screenwriters Jonah Lisa Dyer<\/span> and Stephen Dyer, <\/span>is a romantic comedy, a modern YA riff on Jane Austen that is my pick, so far, for best beach read this summer. >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Veliz Books<\/p>\n

Paperback, 978-0-9969134-0-9, 216 pgs., $16.95; January 2016<\/p>\n

Themes of boundaries, loneliness, identity, opportunity, and responsibility<\/span> permeate this collection of contemporary short fiction set in and around El Paso, Texas. Paul Pedroza <\/span>possesses a versatile voice, able to create a diverse cast of compelling narratives: young and old, male and female, Anglo, Mexican, and Mexican-American, immigrants and residents, and a variety of socioeconomic classes, even the dead\u2014the encobijados, dead bodies wrapped in blankets and dumped by narcotraficantes. Pedroza is also equally at home with a variety of styles, from slice-of-life to the fantastical.<\/p>\n

The Dead Will Rise and Save Us: Stories by Paul Pedroza<\/span><\/a><\/span> is Pedroza\u2019s debut collection, although a handful of these stories have appeared previously in publications such as New Border Voices<\/span> (Texas A&M University Press, 2014) and MAKE: A Chicago Magazine,<\/span> Issue 12 (Winter 2012). >>READ MORE<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole >> archiveTower sniper terrorized UT fifty years ago Shortly before noon on Monday, Aug. 1, 1966, twenty-five-year-old Charles Whitman carried a footlocker full of weapons and ammunition to the top of the thirty-story Tower at the University of Texas and opened fire on the unsuspecting pedestrians below. The slaughter \u2014 14 dead, […]<\/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-604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604","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=604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}