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.
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