*Starred Review* Wright (The Terror Years, 2016) is a staff writer for the New Yorker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and a longtime resident of Texas. It is a state whose history, politics, and culture Wright finds endearing, repelling, and puzzling, all dependent upon which aspect he is exploring and describing. This thoughtful, engrossing, and often-amusing survey is a kind of waltz across Texas. Wright uses history, politics, and a series of vignettes to reveal a great deal about a state that may soon surpass California in population and economic dynamism. Wright shows how the activities of several intrepid and ruthless entrepreneurs fostered Texas' modern oil-based economy. He touches on the heritage of the cowboy culture, as seen through Charles Goodnight, who inspired Larry McMurtry's novel Lonesome Dove (1985). Wright provides an affectionate yet critical portrait of Lyndon Johnson. As a Texan, Wright despises the condescension and snobbery directed at his state, but he finds the casual bigotry and ignorance of many Texans infuriating. He recalls the bipartisanship that once characterized politics in contrast to the current domination by Republican ideologues. This is an important book about a state and people who will continue to have a large impact on the U.S.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2018 Booklist

Wright (The Terror Years), a Pulitzer winner and New Yorker staff writer, takes an unflinching look at Texas-the state where he has spent most of his life-in all its grandeur and contradictions. A clear-sighted and often witty reporter, Wright highlights the state's past and present political figures (among them Lyndon Johnson, both Bush presidents, Ann Richards, and Ted Cruz); entrenched belief in low taxes and minimal regulation; booming economy of oil and technology exports; and track record of subpar social services and legislative accomplishments (redistricting, open carry and concealed carry gun laws). Wright also showcases three of the state's fastest-growing cities: Houston, the only major U.S. metropolis without zoning laws; Dallas, with its history of reinvention after John F. Kennedy's assassination and currently hot market for commercial construction; and Austin, with its high rate of start-up companies and its citizenry devoted to "quirky passions." Interspersed throughout are the author's personal reflections on growing up in Texas and on why he continues to live there. The demographics of this vast and diverse state suggest it's far more progressive than its representatives, and its population is increasing at an astonishing rate. Wright's large-scale portrait, which reveals how Texas is only growing in influence, is comprehensive, insightful, and compulsively entertaining. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Pulitzer Prize winner and longtime Austin resident Wright (The Looming Tower; The Terror Years) delivers an impressive ode to the Lone Star State in this work that is outside his typical journalistic focus. Written in a balanced tone, this narrative examines Texas' historical, political, and social fabrics that make the present tapestry, revealing a portrait of one of the most perplexing American states. Wright's analyses of Hurricane Harvey and 2017 legislative battles, along with the ambush of Dallas police officers in 2016 give the work currency. However, this reviewer wishes that Wright would have had a chance to evaluate the Astros' championship and the Sutherland Springs church massacre. Beyond that untimely omission, the author has done a masterful service of revealing both the warts and beauty of Texas' big state of mind. VERDICT Highly recommended for Texans and non-Texans alike, who are interested in works about the current zeitgeist.-Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas at San Antonio © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

GOD SAVE TEXAS: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State, by Lawrence Wright. (Vintage, $16.95.) Wright, a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and longtime resident of the state, explores Texas' foibles, ironies and contradictions with affection. Given the state's booming population and economic growth, Wright's book seems to say, America's future runs through Texas - whether the rest of the country likes it or not. HOW IT HAPPENED, by Michael Koryta. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) In this murder mystery, Rob Barrett, an interrogation specialist with the F.B.I., is sent to investigate a double homicide that's rattled the town of Port Hope, Me. He believes the confession by a young addict, who directs him to where she says the bodies can be found. But when the details don't seem to pan out, he's kicked off the case. UNEASY PEACE: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence, by Patrick Sharkey. (Norton, $16.95.) What's the downside to falling crime rates nationwide? In Sharkey's analysis, what was done to make those rates plunge included increased incarceration rates and violent policing tactics. This book admirably connects the story of how the country became safer with why many communities are wary of the police. A LONG WAY FROM HOME, by Peter Carey. (Vintage, $16.95.) A married couple and their bachelor neighbor set out on a 10,000-mile endurance contest around Australia in the hopes of eventually opening their own auto dealership. Our reviewer, Craig Taylor, praised this shape-shifting, propulsive novel, writing: "With all its inventive momentum, all its pleasurable beats, the fast pace of the race, the scenery unfurling, the novel ends up far from where it started, in a place of historical reckoning and colonial guilt." THE MAKING OF A DREAM: How a Group of Young Undocumented Immigrants Helped Change What It Means to Be American, by Laura Wides-Muñoz. (Harper, $17.99.) WidesMuñoz chronicles the battle for immigration reform through the stories of young activists. A centerpiece of the story is the passage in 2012 of the DACA act, and how it grew out of close to two decades of grass-roots efforts and political activity. CALL ME ZEBRA, by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi. (Mariner, $14.99.) In this crackling novel, a bookish Iranian in exile retraces the journey she took with her father, and finds love along the way. As our reviewer, Liesl Schillinger, wrote, the author "relays Zebra's brainy, benighted struggles as a tragicomic picaresque whose fervid logic and cerebral whimsy recall the work of Bolaño and Borges."

One of the state's most renowned writers takes readers deep into the heart of Texas.As a staffer for the New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Wright (The Terror Years: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, 2016, etc.) has illuminated a variety of intriguing subcultures. His native Texas is as exotic as any of them. He approaches his subject on a number of levels: as a stereotype, a movie myth, a cultural melting pot, a borderland, a harbinger of what is to come in an increasingly polarized and conservative country, and as a crucible that has shaped the character of a young writer who couldn't wait to escape but was drawn back. "Some maybe cowardly instinct whispered to me that if I accepted the offer to live elsewhere, I would be someone other than myself," he writes. "My life might have been larger, but it would have been counterfeit. I would not be home." The Austin-based author makes himself at home in these pages, traveling through Austin, Dallas, Houston, and El Paso and exploring the desolate wonders of Big Bend, "one of the least-visited national parks in the country, and also one of the most glorious," and the West Texas wonders of Marfa, Lubbock, and Wink. The chapter on the levels of Texas culture, an updated version of a Texas Monthly piece from 1993, is particularly incisive. But the misadventures of the Texas legislature are what will strike most readers with an uneasy mixture of amazement, amusement, and disbelief; one law, notes the author, allows citizens to "openly carry swords, a welcome development for the samurai in our midst." Once a Democratic bulwark (albeit conservatively so), the state has since become even more conservatively Republican, though a population that is not only growing, but growing younger and more diversethe "Anglo" majority has become the minoritycould make the state very much in play.A revelationWright finds the reflection of his own conflicted soul in the native state he loves and has hated. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.