The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 99, July 1995 - April, 1996 Page: 280

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

greater number of scholars, who have chosen the state as their research special-
ty. Those of us who teach Texas history now have a plethora of choices of materi-
als for course adoptions. The exception to this trend in publication was only an
adequate collection of documents. This updated reprint of Documents of Texas
History, which includes twenty-four new items from the last thirty-four years, par-
tially corrects that exception.
The first edition of Documents of Texas History, edited by Ernest Wallace and
David Vigness, two very fine historians, ended in 1961, has long been unavail-
able, and featured documents which reflected the distinctiveness of Texas histo-
ry. This new edition, edited by George Ward, broadens the perspective of the
original volume by accenting Texas's national role and by including cultural top-
ics as well as the more traditional political and economic primary sources. Ward
introduces each new document with a brief paragraph or two placing the source
in a national context. For example, he uses the Charles Whitman shooting to
discuss the general perception that violence describes Texas history (which he
denies), and to evaluate the event and the perception within the general context
of the American fascination with mayhem. The documents added to this reprint
edition address issues of a changing Texas; retaining the original documents
and introductions allows the book to serve as an artifact and a document of the
way the history of the state was once perceived. Consequently, the reprinting of
Documents has made available and useable for the classroom a valuable collection
of primary sources.
George Ward and State House Press deserve commendations from all of us
interested in the history of the state.
Texas A&M University ROBERT A. CALVERT
Texas Studies 1994. Edited by James Ward Lee. (Denton: University of North
Texas Press for the Texas Studies Association, 1994. Pp. 163. ISSN 1076-
6782. $io.oo, paper.)
The Texas Studies Association at the Center for Texas Studies at the
University of North Texas has now issued the first Texas Studies annual, a pleas-
antly designed soft-cover publication. Although the sponsors might reject com-
parisons, some of the contents might have been found in the Southwest Review or
Texas Monthly, but all are inviting. Two entries are extracts from recently pub-
lished books: A. C. Greene's personal commentary on the Butterfield stage route
across Texas, and a portion of Gideon Lincecum's Texas travel journal from
1835. This is Gid on good behavior, but observant as ever. I like Greene's quip
that "a bulldozer can change more history in a week than a historian can record
in a lifetime" (p. 5).
Elsewhere, University of Texas at Austin English professor Don Graham finds
coincidental literary parallels between George Sessions Perry's Hold Autumn in
Your Hand and Virgil's Georgics. Following are two articles by University of North
Texas staffers. John Kuiper recalls how the Denton Chamber of Commerce
hitched the town's promotional wagon to a movie: the southwestern premier of

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