Turning the Pages of Texas
Turning the Pages of Texas is a collection of sixty essays about Texas books, authors, book collectors, libraries, and bookstores. It is a book for booklovers and bookish readers. 

Lonn Taylor writes from the point of view of a historian who has been reading books about Texas for seventy years, since he was seven years old, and who has known many of the authors he writes about. He presents his reflections about well-known figures such as John Graves, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. He also introduces readers to people like folklorist C. L. Sonnichsen, who wrote about Texas feuds; Julia Lee Sinks, who interviewed early settlers of Fayette County in the 1870s; Karen Olsson, who wrote a fine novel about the mystique of Austin; and David Dorado Romo, who describes himself as the “psychogeographer of El Paso” and is the grandnephew of a saint. Some of the authors Taylor writes about are truly obscure, like Gertrude Beasley, who published her autobiography in Paris in 1924 and died in a New York insane asylum, or Tony Cano, whose self-published autobiographical novel describes what it was like to be poor and Mexican in West Texas in the 1950s. Taylor also teases out the Texas connections of writers as diverse as William Sydney Porter, Hervey Allen, and H. Allen Smith, and he writes about tracking down Texas books in London and Washington, DC, as well as at Barber’s in Fort Worth, the Brick Row Book Shop in Austin, and Rosengren’s and Brock’s in San Antonio. 

This is a booklover’s book.
1129962583
Turning the Pages of Texas
Turning the Pages of Texas is a collection of sixty essays about Texas books, authors, book collectors, libraries, and bookstores. It is a book for booklovers and bookish readers. 

Lonn Taylor writes from the point of view of a historian who has been reading books about Texas for seventy years, since he was seven years old, and who has known many of the authors he writes about. He presents his reflections about well-known figures such as John Graves, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. He also introduces readers to people like folklorist C. L. Sonnichsen, who wrote about Texas feuds; Julia Lee Sinks, who interviewed early settlers of Fayette County in the 1870s; Karen Olsson, who wrote a fine novel about the mystique of Austin; and David Dorado Romo, who describes himself as the “psychogeographer of El Paso” and is the grandnephew of a saint. Some of the authors Taylor writes about are truly obscure, like Gertrude Beasley, who published her autobiography in Paris in 1924 and died in a New York insane asylum, or Tony Cano, whose self-published autobiographical novel describes what it was like to be poor and Mexican in West Texas in the 1950s. Taylor also teases out the Texas connections of writers as diverse as William Sydney Porter, Hervey Allen, and H. Allen Smith, and he writes about tracking down Texas books in London and Washington, DC, as well as at Barber’s in Fort Worth, the Brick Row Book Shop in Austin, and Rosengren’s and Brock’s in San Antonio. 

This is a booklover’s book.
22.95 In Stock
Turning the Pages of Texas

Turning the Pages of Texas

by Lonn Taylor
Turning the Pages of Texas

Turning the Pages of Texas

by Lonn Taylor

Paperback

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Overview

Turning the Pages of Texas is a collection of sixty essays about Texas books, authors, book collectors, libraries, and bookstores. It is a book for booklovers and bookish readers. 

Lonn Taylor writes from the point of view of a historian who has been reading books about Texas for seventy years, since he was seven years old, and who has known many of the authors he writes about. He presents his reflections about well-known figures such as John Graves, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. He also introduces readers to people like folklorist C. L. Sonnichsen, who wrote about Texas feuds; Julia Lee Sinks, who interviewed early settlers of Fayette County in the 1870s; Karen Olsson, who wrote a fine novel about the mystique of Austin; and David Dorado Romo, who describes himself as the “psychogeographer of El Paso” and is the grandnephew of a saint. Some of the authors Taylor writes about are truly obscure, like Gertrude Beasley, who published her autobiography in Paris in 1924 and died in a New York insane asylum, or Tony Cano, whose self-published autobiographical novel describes what it was like to be poor and Mexican in West Texas in the 1950s. Taylor also teases out the Texas connections of writers as diverse as William Sydney Porter, Hervey Allen, and H. Allen Smith, and he writes about tracking down Texas books in London and Washington, DC, as well as at Barber’s in Fort Worth, the Brick Row Book Shop in Austin, and Rosengren’s and Brock’s in San Antonio. 

This is a booklover’s book.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780875657165
Publisher: TCU Press
Publication date: 02/28/2019
Pages: 224
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

LONN TAYLOR retired in 2002 after twenty years as a historian on the staff of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. He is originally from Fort Worth and is a graduate of Texas Christian University. He is the author of numerous scholarly books and articles on the architecture and decorative arts of the Southwest. He lives in Fort Davis, Texas, where he writes a weekly column for the Marfa Big Bend Sentinel. His most recent book is Marfa for the Perplexed, published in 2018 by the Marfa Book Company. He is married to Edith Uunila (Dedie) Taylor.

Table of Contents

Foreword Steven L. Davis XI

Introduction XIV

I Giants And Old-Timers

1 Myself and Strangers 3

2 Legends of Texas 6

3 A Vaquero of the Brush Country (1929) 10

4 A Vaquero of the Brush Country (1998) 14

5 With His Pistol in His Hand 18

6 The Last Picture Show 22

7 A Personal Country 27

8 I'll Die before I'll Run 31

9 Peleliu Landing 35

10 Six Years with the Texas Rangers 40

11 O. W. Williams's Stories from the Big Bend 43

12 Chronicles of Fayette 47

13 The Trail Drivers of Texas 51

14 William Sidney Porter, Texas Writer 55

II A Bookman's Pleasures

15 My Books and My Friends 61

16 A1 Lowman, Texas Bookman 65

17 Browsing in Used Bookstores 70

18 Rosengren's Books, San Antonio 74

19 Browsing in Libraries 79

20 Some Rare Texas Books Not in My Library 83

21 My Life in Cookbooks 87

III Back Roads And Dark Corners

22 My First Thirty Years 93

23 Texas Brags 98

24 Back to Texas 102

25 The Other Side of the Tracks 106

26 Sam Houston's Texas 110

27 A Gallery of Texas Characters 114

28 A Place in El Paso 118

29 Exploring the Edges of Texas 122

30 Gray Ghosts and Red Rangers 126

31 Never the Same Again 130

32 Armadillo World Headquarters 135

33 Waterloo 139

34 Maverick 143

35 Comfort and Glory 147

36 Ringside Seat to a Revolution 151

37 Henry Cohen 154

38 Tío Cowboy 157

39 The World War I Diary of Jose de la Luz Sáenz 161

40 Texas Cattle Brands 165

41 Madeline in Texas 169

42 Lone Star Lawmen 173

43 The Big Rich 177

44 Norfleet 181

45 The Amazing Tale of Mr. Herbert and His Fabulous Alpine Cowboys Baseball Club 185

46 Marfa 189

47 H. Allen Smith, a New Yorker in Alpine 193

48 Grover Lewis, the Best Writer Nobody Ever Heard of 197

49 Alan Tennant and Rattlesnakes 201

50 John W. Thomason Jr.: Artist, Writer, and Marine 205

51 William Hervey Allen on the Mexican Border 209

52 Remembering Bryan Woolley 213

IV Cooks, Photographers, Poets, and Others

53 Our Founding Foods 221

54 Hillingdon Ranch 225

55 A Long View Southwest 229

56 Watt Matthews of Lambshead 233

57 The White Shaman Mural 237

58 Home Ground 242

59 Authentic Texas 246

60 Capturing Nature 251

61 Joel Nelson: Cowboy Poet and National Heritage Fellow 255

62 Ranch Verses 259

63 The Book We All Learned Texas History from 262

64 The Rotarians' Book Festival 266

About the Author 271

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