Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys: Texas Politics, 1929–1932 by Norman D. Brown (review)

Norman D. Brown (1935–2015) spent forty-eight years teaching in the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to training several generations of historians, Brown earned renown as one of the foremost scholars of American political history. At the time of his retirement in 2010, Brown had a manuscript draft of the sequel to his classic book, Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics, 1921–1928 (College Station, Tex., 1984). That memorable title references the book's key topics: the Ku Klux Klan, women in politics, and Prohibition.

When Brown passed away in 2015, his sequel remained an unpublished manuscript. Former University of Texas graduate history student Rachel Ozanne prepared the sequel for publication. Wishing to pay tribute to Brown's penchant for playful titles, the book became Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys: Texas Politics, 1929–1932. In this instance, biscuits are political patronage, the dole designates any kind of state or federal social welfare initiative, and nodding donkeys are oil pumps. Readers unfamiliar with the petroleum industry can be expected to think that nodding donkeys refers to goalong-get-along, pork-seeking Texas Democrats. Brown makes a case for such an interpretation.

Given the unusual circumstances surrounding the editing and publication of the work under review, it is understandable that the sequel might not mesh well. The issue, however, goes deeper than that: this book is really two sharply contrasting books in one. Complicating matters is that the two books are interspersed with each other, making for jarring transitions.

The first book is insightful and engaging. The discussion of Governor Ross Sterling and overproduction in the East Texas oil fields is without peer. Brown also performs a great service by not sugarcoating history. When he discusses mob lynching in the 1920s, he wants readers to understand that the methods used to kill went far beyond the rope. Brown's lively discussion of Texas congressman John "Cactus Jack" Garner, and Garner's tolerate-hate relationship with Franklin D. Roosevelt, underscores how important the Lone Star State became in national politics and in the shaping of public policy. It is in the first "book" that readers see Brown at his analytical and pithy best: "As it turned out, there was no friction between the businessman governor [Sterling] and the legislature. Both did as they pleased and neither complained of the other; the result was peace and harmony but little cooperative action" (p. 129).

The second "book," however, has problems. In many passages the detail becomes so thick that it is difficult to follow the threads. Then, a few paragraphs later, readers find so many passive voice constructions that who did what to whom becomes a guessing game. Normally, a reviewer would not mention passive voice construction, but its usage is as excessive as it is muddying. Compounding these issues is the habit of referring to political actors by their firstand middle-name initials. In newspapers and public legislative records of the era, editors often deployed initials to save precious column space. However, on the political hustings and in everyday life, few people call themselves by their initials tacked on to their surname. It would be more historically accurate to identify actors using the names they went by.

What, then, can we make of Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys? On balance, the book deserves a place on the scholar's shelf. Students, however, would likely have difficulty trying to reconcile the two-books-in-one. Regardless, Ozanne deserves great credit for bringing Brown's last work to light.