Review: "Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas," by Stephen Harrigan

Reading "Big Wonderful Thing," a new history of Texas by Stephen Harrigan,
at my favorite lunchtime reading spot, the downtown pavilion
overlooking Louise Hays Park and the Guadalupe River.

If you accepted the task of writing a history of Texas, a book telling the story of our state, what writing tool would be most helpful? Would it be a complete research library, a quiet room in which to work, or a trusty IBM Selectric typewriter?

Stephen Harrigan
will be at Wolfmueller's Books
Thursday, December 5, from 4 - 6 pm

Stephen Harrigan, who recently completed a new book on the history of Texas, has a reply which might surprise you.
Speaking at the LBJ Library in Austin last month, Harrigan said “My most important tool in writing this book was my car. If I’m writing about, say, the pictographs along the Rio Grande – you know, they’re three or four thousand years old – I had to see that.”
And so Harrigan put thousands of miles on his car, visiting sites all over Texas, gathering information for his new book “Big Wonderful Thing: a History of Texas,” published this autumn by the University of Texas Press.
The result is a comprehensive look at the history of our state, beginning with shipwrecked Spaniards who washed ashore near Galveston Island in the late 1520s, and continuing to the early days of George W. Bush’s first term as president, when the World Trade Center buildings fell. Quite a few things happened in Texas between those two events.
Harrigan brings special talents to the project. As a writer he may be best known for his novels, though he’s spent decades reporting on Texas and Texans for magazines, and most of his published work is non-fiction. His novelist’s eye is evident in this history of Texas: he shares the important characters and scenes from our history as a story, not as a dry recitation of facts, dates, and names. Meanwhile, his experience as a reporter is evident in the depth of his research. He gets his facts right.
There are so many characters, scenes, and facts in our state’s history, which itself can be a daunting problem. How to winnow between the wheat and the chaff? This well-written (and well-edited) book weighs just shy of four pounds, a detailed history of Texas in a mere 945 pages. It takes at least that many pages to tell the story well. I was thankful Harrigan chose not to chase too many rabbits. This is a focused telling of the story of Texas
This history of Texas is told from a present-day viewpoint, which sings praises when appropriate and discusses follies and sins when necessary. Harrigan doesn’t burnish the heights or ignore the depths of Texas history; his book reflects both the bright and the dark, like a piece of photographic film, recording light and shadow as it makes an image.
I am happy to recommend this book to you – for yourself, or as a gift to a history-loving friend.
This Thursday, December 5, from 4-6 p.m. Stephen Harrigan will be at Wolfmueller’s Books, 229 Earl Garrett, to discuss “Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas” at a book signing event hosted by my friends Jon and Sandy Wolfmueller. The event is free and open to the public.
Near the front of the book, an 1835 quote from Stephen F. Austin is printed on a page by itself: “I hope that a dead calm will reign all over Texas for many years to come – and that there will be no more excitements of any kind whatever.”
That did not happen, Mr. Austin. Not by a long shot.

This review originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times December 5, 2019.