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20ogBook Reviews115 undertakings across time permit him to "illuminate aspects of class, income, race, ethnicity, age, gender, technology, and geography" (5) in Texas history. Indeed, at the end of the work, he argues that an examination of the history of leisure time in Texas can be used to track "a declining racial tension" in the state (252). Unfortunately, this is where the work is less successful. While the author effectively captures the story of leisure and recreation from the perspective of the white population, he is far less successful in demonstrating similar trends for Texas's African-American and Hispanics minorities. One illustration will suffice in demonstrating this particular weakness. In the chapter on parks and public places, McComb briefly mentions the desegregation of beaches and golf courses in Galveston in the early 1960s. While it is commendable for him to do this, he could have better supported his contention that recreation "played a role in the struggle for social justice" (46) if he had spent more time examining what such facilities specifically meant to Texas's African Americans. One fine example of this type of study is Robert J. Robertson's Fair Ways: How Six Black Golfers Won Civil Rights in Beaumont, Texas. If the African Americans receive short shrift, then Mexican Americans garner even less coverage. Their participation in the story of leisure in Texas is limited to a few paragraphs that deal with a bilingual lending library, live teatro (theater), and a quick quote regarding poor Mexicanos' use of Padre Island for recreation. In recent years works dealing with Mexican Americans and Mexicans participating in athletic and leisure pursuits such as high school football, boxing, and amateur and professional baseball have appeared (with many focused on Texas subjects ), and a discussion of such works would have enriched this manuscript. In summary, McComb's work is valuable for it calls attention to an underresearched aspect ofTexas's history. While not a definitive work, it is a good starting point to examine what Texans have done for leisure and recreation, and the impact of such activities upon the social history of the Lone Star State. Texas Tech UniversityJorge Iber Saint Mark's Episcopal Church: 150 Years of Ministry in Downtown San Antonio, 1858—2008. By Lewis F. Fisher. (San Antonio: Maverick Publishing, 2008. Pp. 152. Color and b&w illustrations, notes, selected bibliography, index, ISBN 978189327148, $30.00 cloth.) Those of us who work in the field of state and local history have probably read a number of regrettable volumes by writers who, well meaning as they may be, believe history to be either the simple aggregate of genealogical or financial data—with no real need for the interpretation or narrative structure—or the repetition of well-worn legends likely long proven untrue. Happily, Lewis F. Fisher's Saint Mark's Episcopal Church falls into neither of these traps: the author states at the beginning his aim to correct a historical record "rife with conjectures and fables" (vii), and he crafts one of the better narrative histories of an individual congregation, a volume sure to prove useful to those interested in die heritage of both San Antonio and the Episcopal Church in Texas. ii6Southwestern Historical QuarterlyJuly Fisher opens with the arrival of the first Episcopalian missionaries to San Antonio and the creation of the short-lived Trinity Church in 1850, noting that later historians of St. Mark's mistakenly believed diis to be the inauguration of their own community. St. Mark's began in 1858, and from that point onward it has been associated with the big names of history. The founders somehow retained the services of Richard Upjohn, foremost church architect at the time. Robert E. Lee was an early communicant; the book reproduces a July 15, i860, letter from Lee to his wife describing the congregation as "small at best, & poor at that" (15). Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were married there in 1934 in a hasty ceremony. And Rector Arthur McKinstry thrice turned down a call to move to St. Thomas's Church in Washington D.C, the spiritual home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pushed to have the offer made. But the author does not focus too...

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