{"id":996,"date":"2018-12-31T15:09:23","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=996"},"modified":"2018-12-31T15:09:23","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T15:09:23","slug":"neugebauer-a-witness-to-history_070917","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=996","title":{"rendered":"Neugebauer, A Witness to History_070917"},"content":{"rendered":"
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POLITICS\/BIOGRAPHY<\/p>\n

Janet M. Neugebauer<\/p>\n

A Witness to History: George H. Mahon, West Texas Congressman<\/span><\/p>\n

Texas Tech University Press<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-8967-2988-9, $45.00<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Si Dunn<\/p>\n

Weighing in nearly 2.5 pounds and 576 pages, this impressive political biography<\/span> of U.S. Representative George H. Mahon should be engrossing summer reading for policy wonks and aficionados of twentieth-century American politics. General readers also likely will enjoy learning more about the legendary West Texas Democrat from Colorado City.<\/p>\n

A Witness to History: George H. Mahon, West Texas Congressman<\/span> deftly tells the story of how a tall, strong-voiced young man became a \u201ccountry lawyer,\u201d thanks to a loan from a sympathetic judge, and later one of the most powerful and longest serving leaders on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

A Witness to History<\/span>\u2019s author, Janet M. Neugebauer, <\/span>is deputy director of the Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University. (Her other books include Lambshead Legacy<\/span> and Plains Farmer.<\/span>)<\/p>\n

Mahon, she notes, began his almost forty-four-year legislative career in 1935 as an eager Congressman ready to fight for Texas issues such as underground water, crop loans, and a new federal judicial district that could save West Texans from having to drive 300 miles or more to federal court in Dallas.<\/p>\n

In the House, however, Mahon quickly ran into that body\u2019s seniority system. The self-described \u201chero worshipper\u201d nearly became disillusioned, but he realized that to gain power and pass important legislation, he would have to bide his time, gain seniority, and build his power base carefully, from the bottom up.<\/p>\n

The freshman legislator, representing the 19th Congressional District, started accepting appointments to committees that veteran lawmakers typically considered snoozers, including the obscure Insular Affairs Committee. This committee, Neugebauer notes, \u201cwrote legislation concerning civil governments for each of the island possessions of the United States,\u201d including the Philippines and Puerto Rico. Importantly, it helped Mahon\u00a0 get to know more congressmen and gain experience in a wide range of issues.<\/p>\n

Four years later, in 1939, Mahon finally got a toehold on the coveted House Committee on Appropriations. Later, he would rise to chairman and lead that key group until he retired in 1978. His legislative work would range from buying army horses during World War II to helping America pay for atomic bomb development, space missions, supersonic aircraft, ballistic missiles, and other weapons.<\/p>\n

Kent Hance,<\/span> a former chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and former Texas member of the U.S. House, has contributed a telling foreword to Neugebauer\u2019s book. In it, he remembers Mahon as being \u201cvery accommodating to his fellow members of Congress. He was respected and admired by all, and I never knew of an enemy that he might have acquired along the way. He always tried to build political capital among his colleagues\u2014an essential ingredient in getting things done. No doubt George would be appalled at the lack of civility in national politics in this day and time, and would attribute this lack of congeniality to the logjam that now prevails in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

POLITICS\/BIOGRAPHY Janet M. Neugebauer A Witness to History: George H. Mahon, West Texas Congressman Texas Tech University Press Hardcover, 978-0-8967-2988-9, $45.00 Reviewed by Si Dunn Weighing in nearly 2.5 pounds and 576 pages, this impressive political biography of U.S. Representative George H. Mahon should be engrossing summer reading for policy wonks and aficionados of twentieth-century […]<\/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-996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996","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=996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}