Sallyport - The Magazine of Rice University - Winter 2002

Texas Tidbits - On the Bookshelf
Winter 2002
VOL.58, NO.2
Texas Tidbits
The mystique of Texas is unmistakable.
In fact, when you get right down to it, some
countries aren’t as interesting as Texas.
Maybe that’s because Texas has it all—
martyrdom and triumph, colorful characters
and rugged pioneers, huge cities and ghost
towns, admirable deeds and shady dealings—
all of it happening across a vast and
incredibly varied terrain. Oh, have I
mentioned cowboys, deadly gunfights, lost
mines and sunken treasure, political
shenanigans, feuds, rodeos, natural and manmade
disasters, and multiple revolutions?
No matter, because Steven A. Jent ’73 does that quite well in A Browser’s
Book of Texas History (Republic of Texas Press, 2000). This collection of
verbal snapshots may not be the final word in Texas chronicles, but it
certainly is definitive in its own way, delighting in the pivotal exploits,
fateful extremes, and savory tidbits that make Texas history so entertaining.
Jent’s inviting and fun style is perfect for this sort of anecdotal history. He
knows when and where the punch lines should go to highlight the state’s
humors and ironies, and he hits just the right tone when tragedy calls for it.
Jent’s history begins with the earliest explorers to set foot in Texas and runs
well into the 1990s, but the book is not arranged by historical sequence.
Instead, it starts with January 1 and finishes on December 31, and each date
features one or more entries describing Texas events or people significant
to that day. This is no-brainer browsing at its best—you start at the
beginning and go to the end. In between, you’ll find a captivating
mishmash of Texas history, with the modern alongside the Wild West,
rousing adventure next to disaster, and the sublime hand in hand with the
ridiculous. Peopling these events are gunfighters, soldiers, politicians,
artists, entrepreneurs, adventurers, musicians, inventors, and a few
oddballs. The collection is not exhaustive, though, so while Scott Joplin
makes an appearance, Janis Joplin doesn’t.
Writing Texas history this way allows Jent to highlight various categories
of Texas people and their achievements. For example, it’s amazing how
many “firsts” there have been in Texas. The 21-story Milam Building in
San Antonio was the first air-conditioned office building in the U.S. The
first oil well gusher was Spindletop, near Beaumont. Army Airplane
Number 1 accomplished America’s first military air flight on March 2,
1910, at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. KUHT, Channel 8 in Houston,
was the first noncommercial TV station in the nation. And Denton Cooley
performed the first artificial heart transplant at St. Luke’s Episcopal
Hospital in Houston on April 4, 1969.
The list goes on, and if it turns out to be the longest list of firsts there is,
http://www.rice.edu/sallyport/2002/winter/bookshelf/texastidbits.html (1 of 2) [10/30/2009 11:00:39 AM]