NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

Since his election in 2012, Ted Cruz has refused to go along with the established way of doing business in Washington, becoming a voice for millions of Americans frustrated with governmental corruption and gridlock. In this, his first book, Cruz reveals how Americans can take back their country, and start moving forward.

Never before has the story been told of the dramatic turning point when Ronald Reagan found his voice as a presidential contender and overcame the Republican establishment. Reagan's Comeback is the story of how one state, one man, and one month changed national politics forever. Chronicling how Reagan’s political career nearly ended, this turnabout story is told by those who made it happen: campaign volunteers, financiers, political activists, and media observers. Positioning Reagan to win in 1980, the birth of the “Reagan Democrat” transformed Texas from Democratic stronghold to the reliably Republican powerhouse it is today, since producing five Republican presidential candidates and two Republican presidents, with more to follow. Reagan’s rise and victory against Ford in 1976 mirrors the current climate between the Tea Party movement and the GOP. With the 2012 election in sight, there is no better time to finally tell the whole story of how the Reagan Revolution found its launching point.

"The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, Cyrus Cassells's sixth volume of poetry, is comprised of two exhilarating song cycles and is his most intensely lyrical and ecstatic poetry to date"--

How did the Democratic Party--party of JFK, LBJ, and civil rights--fall from glory? How did Texas become Bush territory? What do politicians on either side need to do today to get our country back on track? Ben Barnes has the answers. Barnes had a front-row seat through it all. He won a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1960, at the age of 22, and four years later became the youngest Speaker of the House since the Civil War. In 1968, he helped Congressman George H. W. Bush get his son into the National Guard. How did his party lose its place in Texas, and the nation? Here, Barnes takes readers inside the rise and fall of the party he loves. He uses lessons learned in the Texas trenches as a guiding light for a new generation of lawmakers and political hopefuls, and calls for a return to bipartisan consensus building.--From publisher description.

Child of the Great Depression, teenage “Duchess of Palms” beauty queen, wife of an acclaimed novelist and later of a brilliant U.S. congressman, and ultimately a successful single working woman and mother, Nadine Eckhardt has lived a fascinating life. In this unique, funny, and honest memoir, she recounts her journey from being a “fifties girl” who lived through the men in her life to becoming a woman in her own right, working toward her own goals. Eckhardt’s first marriage to writer Billy Lee Brammer gave her entrée to liberal political and literary circles in Austin and Washington, where she and Brammer both worked for Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. She describes the heady excitement of LBJ’s world—a milieu that Brammer vividly captured in his novel The Gay Place. She next recalls her second marriage to Bob Eckhardt, whom she helped get elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as her growing involvement with the counterculture of social protest, sexual revolution, and drug use. Eckhardt honestly recounts how the changing times changed her perception of herself, recalling that “I didn’t know how to achieve for myself, only for others, and I felt ripped off and empty.” This painful realization opened the door to a new life for Eckhardt. Her memoir concludes with a joyful description of her multifaceted later life as a restaurateur, assistant to Molly Ivins, writer, and center of a wide circle of friends.

As a boy in Houston, Bill Sarpalius, his brothers, and their mother lived an itinerant life. Bill dug food out of trashcans, and he and his brothers moved from one school to the next. They squatted in a vacant home while their mother, affectionately called “Honey,” battled alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. In an act of desperation, she handed her three sons over to Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch north of Amarillo. At the time, Bill was thirteen years old and could not read. Life at Boys Ranch had its own set of harrowing challenges, however. He found himself living in fear of some staff and older boys. He became involved in Future Farmers of America and discovered a talent for public speaking. When he graduated, he had a hundred dollars and no place to go. He worked hard, earned a scholarship from the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, and obtained a college degree. After a brief career as a teacher and in agribusiness, he won a seat in the Texas Senate. Driven by the memory of his suffering mother, he launched the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse in an effort to help people struggling with addiction. Sarpalius later served in the United States Congress. As a Lithuanian American, he took a special interest in that nation’s fight for independence from the Soviet Union. For his efforts, Sarpalius received the highest honor possible to a non-Lithuanian citizen and was named a “Grand Duke.” The Grand Duke from Boys Ranch is a unique political memoir—the story of a life full of unlikely paths that is at once heartbreaking and inspirational.