An Unconventional History of Texas, From a Writer With the State in His Veins

Painting by Charles M. Russell

(NYTimes) ... "Texas Blood" is a rich journey. Whether he's writing about modern-day drug smuggling ("Cube-shaped spaces in the middle of a pallet of cilantro might not necessarily be packages of dope, but the odds are good") or the itineraries of 16th-century Spanish entradas, Hodge is always deep in the buffalo grass. His reporting is vigorous.
As a citizen historian, he has a reliable eye for important scholarship: Pekka Hämäläinen on Comanches, Carolyn Boyd on pictographs. As he promises, he hews close to primary sources, such as Frederick Law Olmsted's lively 1860 travel narrative, "A Journey Through Texas," or the often-heartbreaking crossing-the-plains diaries of women like Ruth Shackelford ("Little Annie died this morning just before daylight. She died very hard"). Continued