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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.
Contents
Prologue. Big Tex
Part One. They Came from the Sky
1. Castaways
2. Golden Cities
3. "Woe to Us"
4. The Lady in Blue
5. Voyageurs
6. God's Work
Part Two. The Ripe Peach
7. Filibusters
8. "God Speed Ye"
9. The Texas Dream
10. The Consequence of Failure
11. Come and Take It
12. "The Alamo Is Ours!"
13. Vengeance
Part Three. The People Want Excitement
14. Aftermath
15. Spartan Spirit
16. "Savage Ware Fare"
17. The Broken Flagpole
18. Los Diablos Tejanos
19. The Crisis of the Crisis
20. Robbers and Lawyers
21. Warriors and Refugees
22. "I Will Never Do It"
23. "With Throbbing Hearts"
24. Reconstructed
25. The End of ComancherÍa
26. Fenced In
27. The "Peril" of Legislation
28. Bipedal Brutes
29. Scorpions and Horny Toads
Part Four. While Old Rip Slept
30. A Thousand Little Devils
31. Gushers
32. Light Coming on the Plains
33. Sediciosos
34. Pa
35. War at Home and Abroad
36. The Blacksnake Whip
Part Five. The Empire of Texas
37. Music and Mayhem
38. The Boy from the Hill Country
39. Centennial
40. Passionate Ones
41. Texans at War Again
42. The Show of Shows
43. A New Texas
44. Ye Shall Know the Truth
45. The Lord Takes a Sleeping Pill
46. Giant
47. A Gamblin' Man
48. Welcome Mr. Kennedy
49. "El DegÜello" Reprise
50. The Voice of God
51. The Tower
52. Vigil on the Pedernales
53. A Side to Belong To
54. Don't Be So Self-Righteous
55. Baptism of Fire
56. Texans versus Texans
Epilogue. Davy Crockett's Fairy Palace
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Index
