The Texas Book: Profiles, History, and Reminiscences of the University (review)

Book Reviews Jesús F. de la Teja, Editor The Texas Book: Profiles, Hùtory, and Reminiscences ofthe University. Edited by Richard A. Holland. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 272. Illustrations, color photographs, notes. ISBN 0292714297. $29.95, clodi.) The Texas Book brings together a carefully selected series of essays commemorating the first 125 years of the University of Texas at Austin. In selecting topics, editor and contributor Richard Holland wisely favored significant subject matter over comprehensiveness or popular appeal. Rather than recounting the school's chronological history or national football championships, the book tells its story through essays labeled Profiles (individuals who contributed to UT's evolution), History (the physical, architectural, and institutional developmentofdie university), and Reminiscences (memoirs of illustrious ex-students, friends, and faculty). Ex-students (as UT alumni are often called) hoping for nostalgic depictions of their undergraduate days will be disappointed by The Texas Book, unless diey are venerable products of B Hall, the raucous poor boys' dorm that dominated the Forty Acres between 1890 and 1926. Essays like David Dettmer's "Requiem for B-HaIl" dwell as much on the university's growing pains as its successes, with a special emphasis on six decades of conflict over segregation and racial diversity at an increasingly selective and sophisticated school. Three ofthe eight History essays address UT's racial crucible, including Prof. Douglas Laycock's lengthy dissection of the Hopwood litigation (which temporarily suspended affirmative action during the late 1990s) and die controversial top ten percent rule, which increasingly excludes factors other than class rank from consideration in undergraduate admissions. Other than a scholarly article describing the University Interscholastic League's surprising role in desegregating high school athletics in die 1950s, die only nod to sports is a reminiscence by former Longhorn football starJulius Whittier about his experience desegregating the team in the early 1970s. Campus architecture receives more attention, although former dean Larry Speck's celebration of UT's architectural heritage regrettably is not coordinated with the book's beautiful color plates ofearly campus master plans, including architectural renderings ofsignificant buildings. For anyone associated with UT in the 1960s and 1970s, editor Holland's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at Chairman Frank (Erwin)" may be the most compelling essay of the book. Two other especially memorable selections recount how Chancellor Harry Ransom created the Ransom Center, bringing one of the world's 222Southwestern Historical QuarterlyOctober great collections of manuscripts and rare books to a middle-sized Texas university town. Holland's vivid portrayal of the university's nineteenth-century progenitors, visionaries George W. Brackenridge and George W. Littlefield, casts light on UT's origins and nicely complements Prof. Betty Sue Flowers's reminiscence of Hippie Days on campus in the 1 960s and an elegiac excerpt from Willie Morris's classic memoir of UT of the 1 950s, North Toward Home. Anyone interested in UT Austin should enjoy this thought-provoking book, but readers who have struggled over the many paradoxes of this institution will gain a new understanding and appreciation ofhow UT became the school it is today. The coming decades may produce characters and controversies as memorable as diose that dominated UT's first 125 years, but The Texas Book will nonedieless merit a place of honor in die historiography of a great, unique, and promising university. AustinJames Cousar Big Bend National Park. By Joe Nick Patoski, photographs by Laurence Parent. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 112. Color photographs. ISBN 02971 14416. $29.95, cloth.) In a remote corner of the soudiwest United States the Rio Grande bends around a giant landmass, creating a distinctive 801,163-acre Texas treasure, sixty miles long by sixty miles wide—almost die size of Rhode Island—called Big Bend. A land of astonishing variety, Big Bend contains deserts, mountains, mesas, plains, badlands, and vanished seas. Its complex geology forms diverse vegetative landscapes, from yucca-laden valleys to snow-covered pines. Big Bend, one of the least visited of the fifty-eight national parks, beckons to those individuals who crave "more solitude, wilder country, and wilder wilderness" (p. 15). It is one of the last places in Texas where one might glimpse ajavelina, mountain lion...