2020 Philosophical Society of Texas Nonfiction Book Prize 2019 Nonfiction Book Award Finalist, Writers’ League of Texas 2021 Citation from the San Antonio Conservation Society
"Harrigan, surveying thousands of years of history that lead to the banh mi restaurants of Houston and the juke joints of Austin, remembering the forgotten as well as the famous, delivers an exhilarating blend of the base and the ignoble, a very human story indeed. [ Big Wonderful Thing is] as good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados.”—Kirkus, Starred Review
The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world.
“I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.”
Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea.
Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes, it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.
Harrigan has devoted much of his life to exploring and explaining Texas, ever since his family crossed the Red River from Oklahoma in 1953. He is the author of numerous works of nonfiction and fiction, including the critically acclaimed novels A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, Remember Ben Clayton, and the New York Times best seller The Gates of the Alamo. He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly and an award-winning screenwriter who has written many movies for television.
author of New York Times bestselling books Em S.C. Gwynne
"I am not sure which is the greater achievement here: digesting such a vast amount of historical data or making that gigantic wall of information fun to read. Because it certainly is the latter. I challenge the reader, in fact, to open to any page of this 829-page colossus and not have fun. It’s all interesting, and that is not hype. Harrigan tacks brilliantly through the shifting winds of Texas history by telling a series of rip-snorting good tales."
Dan Rather
"It's rare to find a book that so compellingly weds such deep research with brilliant storytelling. A masterwork and a Texas history for the ages, destined to become a classic."
Mimi Swartz
"No one tells the story of Texas better than Stephen Harrigan. He brings to Big Wonderful Thing contemporary and thoughtful analysis along with the most graceful writing anywhere. Harrigan pulls no punches but uses humor and pathos to examine the complexities and contradictions that have made us who we are. Finally, Texas has the rich and honest history it deserves."
Lawrence Wright
"Big Wonderful Thing is history at its best—comprehensive, deeply informed, pleasurable, and filled with surprise and delight. It is at once a gift to the people of Texas and an unflinching explanation to the world at large of America’s most controversial state. The book itself is truly a big wonderful thing."
S.C. Gwynne
"I am not sure which is the greater achievement here: digesting such a vast amount of historical data or making that gigantic wall of information fun to read. Because it certainly is the latter. I challenge the reader, in fact, to open to any page of this 829-page colossus and not have fun. It’s all interesting, and that is not hype. Harrigan tacks brilliantly through the shifting winds of Texas history by telling a series of rip-snorting good tales."
Larry McMurtry
"Stephen Harrigan has given us a wonderful new history of Texas. It tells us all we need to know and little that we don't need to know. A splendid effort."
