SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY最新文献

{"title":"The Falls of Wichita Falls: An Environmental History of the Red Rolling Plains by Jahue Anderson (review)","authors":"Andrew C. Baker","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a928850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a928850","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>The Falls of Wichita Falls: An Environmental History of the Red Rolling Plains</em>by Jahue Anderson <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Andrew C. Baker </li> </ul> <em>The Falls of Wichita Falls: An Environmental History of the Red Rolling Plains</em>. By Jahue Anderson. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2023. Pp. <fpage>204</fpage>. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index). <p> <em>The Falls of Wichita Falls</em>is a western story about the troubled relationship between the dreams of city boosters and the harsh environmental realities of the region. Wichita Falls faced the predictable unpredictability of the Red Rolling Plains with its aridity, salinity, and perennial vulnerability to tornadoes and floods. As Jahue Anderson explains, the region’s geography, climate, geology, and history created “these pumpjack-filled, cattle-laden, mesquite-infested red plains” (p. xii).</p> <p>The opening chapter has all the makings of a great Texas tale. On a sunny day in April 1905, a train bearing President Theodore Roosevelt arrived in Frederick, Oklahoma, about sixty miles northwest of Wichita Falls. The hunter-in-chief had come to chase wolves across the 480,000 acre “Big Pasture,” one of the few remaining places where a man could gallop into the horizon without hindrance. Joining him was a cast of historical characters who could not help but be Western archetypes. There was wolf-grabbing lawman Jon R. Abernathy, western cattlemen Samuel Burk Burnett and W. Tom Waggoner, Texas Ranger captain and rancher William J. “Bill” McDonald, and famed Commanche leader Quanah Parker. The result was a testosterone-fueled collision of Turnerian historical stages that went storming across the Red Rolling Plains.</p> <p>Eor Anderson, the event offers a tangle of interpretive possibilities. He seizes some of these moments deftly, finding in Roosevelt’s wolf hunt both epilogue and prologue to the region’s environmental history. At other points, though, Anderson clutters the narrative with ecological asides: “what Roosevelt did not understand. . . is that the wolf is a ‘keystone’ species” (p. 19); “modern range management science indicates” (p. 28); and “unfortunately, the president failed to realize the selective killing of predators unbalanced the ecosystem” (p. 34).</p> <p>The hunt sets the stage for the century of development to follow. That story begins and ends with the twice-mentioned falls of Wichita, which becomes the book’s central metaphor. Stormwaters destroyed the original falls along the Big Wichita River in 1886. As with so many Texas rivers, flash flooding was a persistent reminder of the costs of untamed nature and the need to dam and control. Yet, in this case, the destruction of the falls was also the result of a predictable failure of engineering. The storm overpowered an upstream dam “built by ambitio","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141147473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mexican Americans in West Texas: The Borderlands of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos by Arnoldo De León (review)","authors":"Alex Mendoza","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a928851","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a928851","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>Mexican Americans in West Texas: The Borderlands of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos</em>by Arnoldo De León <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Alex Mendoza </li> </ul> <em>Mexican Americans in West Texas: The Borderlands of the Edwards Plateau and the Trans-Pecos</em>. By Arnoldo De León. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2023. Pp. <fpage>314</fpage>. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index.) <p>Preeminent Tejano scholar Arnoldo De León provides a much-needed study that fills a historical gap in the Mexican-American history of Texas with this work. It explores the story of people of Mexican descent from colonial times to the modern era in West Texas, highlighting their contributions to the region and perseverance in the world around them. De León maintains that the story of Mexican Texans in the Edwards Plateau and Trans Pecos regions is just as valuable, if not more so, than that in the cradle of Tejano history along the Texas-Mexico border and in South Texas. This is not new. De León has maintained this premise in articles and edited works during the previous six years. Yet, his study is a culmination of his earlier research and conveys the most thorough account of Tejanos in the western part of the state.</p> <p>De León traces the history of Tejanos in West Texas chronologically, from the period of the first arrival of Spanish <em>pobladores</em>in the 1600s to the impact of the twenty-first century. But this is not a standard year-by-year account of Mexican American history in the region. Rather, there is quite a bit to investigate in each chapter. The subjects that readers can explore, arranged thematically with helpful subheadings, range from labor and religion to the significant question of accommodation, a recurring theme of De León’s which maintains that Anglos and ethnic Mexicans found common ground to interact despite disparate cultural and “racial” backgrounds. Through the use of economic alliances, the need for frontier defense, and interethnic marriages, the two groups forged ahead by accommodating to a common purpose of perseverance.</p> <p>The author argues that West Texas is different from the rest of the Lone Star State, with which most lifelong residents would agree. This influenced how Mexican Americans in West Texas forged their communities For instance, the tensions that came with the spillover of the Mexican Revolution, 1910–1920, did not have as significant an impact on the region, adding to the complexity of Tejano history and reinforcing how it is not as monolithic as people assume. Significantly, De León suggests that even the violence and racism present in the era of lynching in the early 1900s, known as “ <em>la matanza</em>,” was different in West Texas, where the prejudice and discrimination derived from western customs and values, in contrast to th","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141147472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion by Elliott West (review)","authors":"Matthew Babcock","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a928847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a928847","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p><span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li> <!-- html_title --> <em>Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion</em>by Elliott West <!-- /html_title --> </li> <li> Matthew Babcock </li> </ul> <em>Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion</em>. By Elliott West. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023. Pp. <fpage>628</fpage>. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index). <p>In <em>Continental Reckoning</em>, historian Elliott West presents a compelling, expansive, and exceptionally well-written history of the American West, placing it in both national and global contexts, from the 1840s to the 1880s. Historians commonly refer to the period from 1865 to 1900 as the “Age of Transformation” because of the dizzying social, economic, and political developments occurring across the United States in that era. West contends that the nation’s transformation began much earlier and was intensified by the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill and the acquisition of California and the Southwest in 1848, when the West was born “as a region” (p. xix). Rejecting an east coast-driven, Civil War-centric conception of American history, West employs his Greater Reconstruction thesis, convincingly arguing “The Civil War and the birth of the West” were linked and equally important for understanding the cascading changes in “national life” from the mid-1840s to 1880 (p. xx). Offering insights into everything from hydraulic mining to locusts, West’s book is significant for its extraordinarily rich synthesis of California and Great Plains history during this age of expansion.</p> <p>West’s well-researched twenty-three-chapter study is divided into three chronological sections. Part I, “Unsettling America,” describes the “continental unsettling” that the nation experienced from 1845 to 1865, fueled by westward territorial and economic expansion, violence against ethnic minorities and native peoples, and the Civil War (p. 2). During that conflict, the federal government asserted firmer control over the West, the author posits, by turning back the Confederate invasion of New Mexico and subduing and confining Native Americans. The next two sections primarily address the postbellum era to the 1880s. Part 2, “Things Come Together,” shows how the United States government constructed an infrastructure of roads, railroads, and telegraph wires across the West, binding it to the nation and facilitating its exploration and scientific study. Einally, Part 3, “Worked into Being,” focuses on the exploitation of western resources and the region’s environmental and scientific transformations through ranching, agriculture, and mining.</p> <p>Any historian looking to update and enliven their lectures on the nineteenth-century American West, particularly on California and the Great Plains, will find a mother lode of material here. Readers learn that San Eranci","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141147553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New Mexico's Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement by Ramón Gutiérrez (review)","authors":"Maggie Elmore","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918127","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918127","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>New Mexico's Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</em> by Ramón Gutiérrez <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Maggie Elmore </li> </ul> <em>New Mexico's Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</em>. By Ramón Gutiérrez. ( Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2022. Pp. 556. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) <p>Perhaps no Mexican American civil rights leader's legacy is more contested than that of New Mexico's Reies López Tijerina. A land rights activist, religious leader, indefatigable defender of the poor and disposed, and mastermind of an armed takeover of a federal courthouse, López Tijerina's story reveals complexities of the Chicano Movement. López Tijerina was simultaneously an activist and religious visionary. It is this intricate story Ramón Gutiérrez seeks to capture in his deeply researched biography.</p> <p>Even those familiar with López Tijerina and the land rights movement in New Mexico will find something new in this volume. There is much to celebrate about this book. Gutiérrez shifts our attention from civil rights activism in California and Texas to civil rights activism in New Mexico. In <strong>[End Page 366]</strong> so doing, he makes land rights a central issue of the Chicano Movement. He likewise links López Tijerina's work as a faith leader and his efforts to establish a faith community to his political activism. Indeed, as Gutiérrez shows, these cannot be separated. Scholars and students of Southwestern history will find this an important intervention.</p> <p><em>New Mexico's Moses</em> puts religion at the center of the Mexican American civil rights movement. Like Rudy Busto in <em>King Tiger: The Religious Vision of Reies López Tijerina</em> (2005) and Lorena Oropeza in <em>The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina</em> (2019), Gutiérrez argues that Tijerina's evangelism informed his activism. Gutiérrez joins a small but growing number of scholars in Latinx history such as Felipe Hinojosa, Delia Fernández, Anne Martínez, Lloyd Barba, and Lilia Fernández who use religion as a lens for understanding Latinx community formation and social movements.</p> <p>Gutiérrez is not the first historian to argue for a scholarly look beyond Catholicism to Pentecostalism to see the imprint of religion on the Mexican American civil rights movement. Daniel Ramírez and Lloyd Barba have also argued for increased attention on the relationship between the Chicano Movement and charismatic Christianity. Where Gutiérrez's work shines is in its deep dive into López Tijerina's religious visions.</p> <p>Finally, it is impossible to talk about Reies López Tijerina without considering his crimes against his family members. There is a real moment of reckoning both in the a","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle by Lucie Genay (review)","authors":"Terry Furgerson","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918132","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle</em> by Lucie Genay <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Terry Furgerson </li> </ul> <em>Under the Cap of Invisibility: The Pantex Nuclear Weapons Plant and the Texas Panhandle</em>. By Lucie Genay. ( Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2022. Pp. 304. Illustrations, map, notes, bibliography, index.) <p>As the Cold War recedes into the past, it increasingly falls under the purview of historians. This includes author Lucie Genay, a professor at the University of Limoges in France. In this book, Genay examines the controversies surrounding the Pantex ordnance plant, located near Amarillo, Texas. Established in 1942 to build conventional bombs, during the 1950s it began to assemble atomic weapons. The plant was an economic boon for the area, creating large numbers of jobs in a location where employment opportunities were limited. However, the secretive nature of the work meant that the public knew few details about the facility. Some residents felt uncomfortable with the fact that nuclear weapons were being built nearby, while others believed that the plant was a likely target for an attack by the Soviet Union. But economic benefits combined with a sense of patriotism to sustain local support for the plant. Panhandle residents treated Pantex like the elephant in the room; ever present but seldom discussed. Genay refers to this as a \"cap of invisibility,\" a phrase she credits to Grace Mojtabai, who authored an earlier work about Pantex. (p. 7)</p> <p>This cap was maintained for decades, but public discussion of Pantex increased during the 1980s. Debate over the proposed production of the neutron bomb led to protests outside of the Pantex facility. From there the arguments continued. The winding down of the Cold War led to a consolidation of weapons facilities, and Pantex faced the possibilities of either closure or expansion. The former would harm the local economy, while the latter might boost employment. But an expansion would involve the dismantling of nuclear warheads and the recycling of the plutonium within them, with the accompanying hazardous waste. Battle lines were soon drawn between those who favored expansion and those who had environmental concerns, such as the possible contamination of the underground aquifer that sustained local agricultural.</p> <p>These controversies are the focus of this social and intellectual history. In nine chapters this book explores the motives of various groups and their positions on the possible expansion of Pantex. For religious leaders it was a debate on morality, while farmers were anxious over environmental issues. Local business leaders looked through an economic lens, while workers worried about safety and health issues concerning hazardous materials. Each chapter","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"216 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020 ed. by Brandon T. Jett and Kenneth Howell (review)","authors":"Vincent Giardino","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918141","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020</em> ed. by Brandon T. Jett and Kenneth Howell <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Vincent Giardino </li> </ul> <em>Steeped in a Culture of Violence: Murder, Racial Injustice, and Other Crimes in Texas, 1965–2020</em>. Ed. By Brandon T. Jett and Kenneth Howell. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2023. Pp. 280. Photographs, figures, table, bibliography, index.) <p>The editors and authors of <em>Steeped in a Culture of Violence</em> took on a perilous task for historians and academics: exploring the not-so-distant past. Many readers will have vivid memories of, and perhaps strong opinions concerning, events discussed in this book. However, if newspapers provide the first draft of history, this collection serves as a useful second draft. The contributors provide a detailed account of the reasons for, responses to, and early outcomes of Texas' present battle against violent crime. The collection is well-sourced and free of political bias.</p> <p>The editors provide a concise review of violence in Texas, from native behavior before Cabeza de Vaca walked across the state up to the early 1960s. The contributors focus on their topics in turn: murder, intimate partner violence, hate crimes, racial violence, urban gangs, prison violence, and mass shootings—confining themselves to the last 55 years. One important chapter covers intimate partner violence, which has seen a dramatic shift in attitudes from the beginning of the studied period through today. Ashley Baggett details the work of early advocacy groups <strong>[End Page 361]</strong> and the slow transformation from the unspoken \"private matter between a husband and wife\" to the later understanding of the generational nature of intimate partner violence, and how it spreads beyond the home into the community. Another fascinating chapter is Mitchel Roth's survey of violence in the Texas prison system. He reviews the evolution from the previously denied practice of using older, more violent inmates as proxy guards to the cliques fighting for control of today's prison yards, and the homemade weapons used along the way.</p> <p>The editors chose the mid-1960s as the starting point of this book but omit any review of the effects of deinstitutionalization and the broader understanding of mental illness and its impact on violent crime. County jail facilities have since become the largest mental health care centers in their communities, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) says more than a third of inmates in state and federal prisons have a history of mental illness. Professionals in law enforcement and criminal law can attest to the nexus between mental illness and violent crime. Though it is not always well-tracked or understood, better t","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"59 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Historic Buildings of Waco, Texas by Kenneth Hafertepe (review)","authors":"Maggie Valentine","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918130","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Historic Buildings of Waco, Texas</em> by Kenneth Hafertepe <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Maggie Valentine </li> </ul> <em>Historic Buildings of Waco, Texas</em>. By Kenneth Hafertepe. ( College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2023. Pp. 320. Photographs, maps, appendices, bibliography, index.) <p>To those who can see beyond the atrocities of the Branch Davidians, the pop culture of the Dr. Pepper Museum as a cultural institution, and the current trendiness of Magnolia, the city of Waco, Texas, holds a treasury of 19<sup>th</sup>-20<sup>th</sup>-century architecture that reflects both national and regional trends. Professor Kenneth Hafertepe captures this history and demonstrates how to research it, in a well-documented sequel to his history of domestic architecture of the city. In contemporary photographs and solid text, the author reveals the built history of the city and demonstrates how both the history and the passage of time affect the present experience. As an architectural historian, he shows an appreciation of order, classification, and integration that is never sentimental, but connects the past and present.</p> <p>Hafertepe draws heavily from primary and contemporary sources—how places were seen in the past, combined with beautiful contemporary photographs, showing how the buildings have changed with time, and accompanying text highlighting what makes them special and significant still. He uses primary sources, citations, and historical documents to great advantage, including Sanborn maps, guidebooks, and previous scholarship. The text supplements and complements the images, so they are more than coffee-table memories, but seen as vestiges of history still vital to the evolving urban context.</p> <p>The city of Waco was laid out in 1849 and named for the native American village of Tawakoni (later spelled <em>Hueco</em> by the Spaniards) who first settled the site on the Brazos River, until they were driven out by the Cherokees who razed the existing settlement. It was famous in Anglo history as a frontier town with gambling halls, hotels, and a Methodist church. It was the site of race riots in the 1860s; an important stop on the cattle trails for the next two decades, playing a vital role in the Texas cotton industry; and a case study of urban renewal as a part of HUD's Model Cities program. It has been home to the bucolic Baylor University since 1886, the oldest university in Texas.</p> <p>The architecture of Waco reflects almost every style and trend in post-Civil War American architecture, from early skyscrapers to Georgian Revival, Spanish American Revival, Mission Revival, and Regional Eclecticism, as well as some nice surprises. There is a wonderful homage to San Antonio's Mission San Jose done in 1928–1931 by Roy E. Lane, a surviving (although modified) Hippodrome movi","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt ed. by Anne Norton Holbrook and Dan Bellar-McKenna (review)","authors":"Joe W. Specht","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918133","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt</em> ed. by Anne Norton Holbrook and Dan Bellar-McKenna <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joe W. Specht </li> </ul> <em>For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt</em>. Ed. By Anne Norton Holbrook and Dan Bellar-McKenna. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2022. Pp. 222. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) <p>When Fort Worth native Townes Van Zandt died of a heart attack at age 52 in 1997, he already had a devoted following. In the twenty-five years since his passing, the awareness of his talents has continued to swell far beyond the Red River and Rio Grande. The subject of two biographies plus documentaries, tribute albums, and the like, Van Zandt's catalog is available via music streaming services and back in print on 180-gram vinyl. Sacred Bones, a specialty label, has even released six of his early albums on 8-track tape, much to the delight of retrogradehipsters.</p> <p>And now there is <em>For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van Zandt</em>. In the editors' words, an \"eclectic collection … intended [not] only for scholars [but also for] enthusiasts of Van Zandt and the modern singer-songwriter tradition.\" (p. 6). Indeed, Townes is an exemplar, the personification, if you will, of the modern singer-songwriter … with a distinctive Texan flavor. Not to be forgotten is the romanticized public image of the tragic troubadour whose personal demons inspired his art while at the same time enabling the substance abuse that resulted in his death.</p> <p>The chapters in the collection are wide-ranging. Brian T. Atkinson provides a succinct overview of Van Zandt's recorded legacy, along with a brief review of books and films on the subject. Robert Earl Hardy focuses on Townes as \"poetic songwriter\" and the diverse influences on his work ranging from Robert Frost to Lightnin' Hopkins. Ann Norton Holbrook deconstructs the role that gender plays in several of Van Zandt's compositions. And Jim Clark takes a similar literary approach in his chapter, \"Macabre and Mirth.\"</p> <p>In separate chapters, musicologists Dan Beller-McKenna, Nathan Fleshner, and Travis D. Stimeling probe Van Zandt's oeuvre within the context of minor and major modal scales, its rhythmic and metric complexity, and the use of 1960's pop production practices on the early albums. Blase S. Scarnati explores how Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard's version of the Van Zandt classic, \"Pancho and Lefty,\" and accompanying <strong>[End Page 375]</strong> music video added another dimension to appreciating the spirit of the song.</p> <p>Bruce Quaglia examines Van Zandt's history of mental illness, comparing it with two other similarly-affected legends of the Austin music scene, Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson. And in the final chapter, Norie Guthrie selects Van Zandt-r","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Battle for the Heart of Texas: Political Change in the Electorate by Mark Owens, Ken Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr. (review)","authors":"Joel Webster","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918129","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Battle for the Heart of Texas: Political Change in the Electorate</em> by Mark Owens, Ken Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr. <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joel Webster </li> </ul> <em>Battle for the Heart of Texas: Political Change in the Electorate</em>. By Mark Owens, Ken Wink, & Kenneth Bryant Jr. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Pp. 210. Illustrations, tables, notes, index.) <p>It is often hard to go a week without seeing an article or a pundit offering an overreaction to potential political changes in Texas. This is <strong>[End Page 369]</strong> why three scholars from the University of Texas at Tyler—Mark Owens, Ken Wink, and Kenneth Bryant Jr.—collaborated with the <em>Dallas Morning News</em> to assess the many political implications of changes in the Texas electorate in recent years. In addition to county- and state-level voting data, their discussions focus on 23,750 interview responses taken between 2018 and 2020.</p> <p>This data allows them to track any changes in voter's mindset across broad political issues that one would expect, like immigration, gun laws, or responses by Republicans to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, their examination of how the complexities of a vast and diverse Texas affect the mindsets of voters is their best work. They show the impact of race/ethnicity, urban vs. rural, and geographical differences that all make the future of Texas politics a complex game of navigating these various and competing voter groups that all possess their distinct needs, problems, and expectations.</p> <p>There are, however, some concerning occurrences throughout the book. Only five pages in, readers are confronted with historically questionable and incorrect facts surrounding \"three key elections\" where \"Texas split from the Solid South.\" For the 1872 election they oversimplify the target of Texas's votes—Horace Greeley—who did not run only as a Liberal Republican, as they assert, but also ran as the Democratic candidate. More troublesome is the statement that \"in 1928, Texas was the only Southern state to vote for Herbert Hoover (R) over Al Smith (D-NY).\" Texas was far from alone among Southern states; Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia also voted for Hoover. Finally, in 1948 Texas did not break with the Solid South (at least in its usual application) and sided with most of the region to support the Democratic nominee, Harry S. Truman, instead of supporting the Dixiecrats.</p> <p>This is a worrisome way to start a book that centers on Texas politics and political change. Such mishandling of the past might stem from their limited engagement with other scholarly works about Texas politics. The focus is largely on the notion of Texas being only a Southern state without speaking more to the uniqueness of the forces that have shaped it as part of the American","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"124 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139579976","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835–1935 by Brian D. Behnken (review)","authors":"Tim Bowman","doi":"10.1353/swh.2024.a918138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/swh.2024.a918138","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835–1935</em> by Brian D. Behnken <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Tim Bowman </li> </ul> <em>Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835–1935</em>. By Brian D. Behnken. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. 334. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) <p>Brian Behnken's <em>Borders of Violence and Justice</em> is an examination of ethnic Mexicans' relationships to \"formal and informal law enforcement\"—municipal and state police forces, mobs, and the U.S. federal government—from 1835 to 1935. (p. 2) Most importantly, Behnken emphasizes ethnic Mexican people's historical agency to show how resistance and advocacy existed in multiple, and sometimes unexpected, ways.</p> <p>Behnken begins by surveying ethnic Mexicans' relationships with law enforcement around the time of the U.S. conquest of the Southwest in the 1840s. Informal citizens patrols dominated nonwhites in various Southwestern cities; some lynch mobs, like in the cities of Houston, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles, actually became municipal police forces over time. Behnken also shows how ethnic Mexicans resisted the formalization of law enforcement and governmental authority through mechanisms like the Kearny Code in New Mexico and Stockton proclamation in California, thus exposing the myth of locals' cooperation with the U.S. military during the tense years of the U.S.-Mexico War. In Chapter Two, Behnken analyzes the relatively well-trod ground of nineteenth century vigilantism. Interestingly, Behnken uses stories such as that of Ramon Cordova, who was hanged by a Maricopa County lynch mob <em>after</em> his arrest and found guilty posthumously by a coroner's court, to dispel the myth of a failed U.S. justice system in the Southwest. The next chapter narrates the fascinating stories of Mexican and Mexican-American law enforcement officials in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arguing that their collective service \"demonstrates one of the ways Mexican-origin people fought for law and order\" despite their general dispossession in the decades following 1848. (p. 96) Ethnic Mexican law enforcement is perhaps particularly noteworthy given the justice system's propensity to ascribe an innate criminality to people of Mexican descent, and for the public's propensity to see \"bandits everywhere\" across the borderlands, the latter an especially acute problem in the early twentieth century Texas borderland. (p. 147) Finally, Behnken convincingly demonstrates in Chapter Six that pressures to reform policing—perhaps most prominently in the wake of Representative J. T. Canales's famous legislative investigations of the Texas Rangers in 1919—helped modernize p","PeriodicalId":42779,"journal":{"name":"SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL QUARTERLY","volume":"131 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139580153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}