Book Description

Historical interpretations shape a culture's understanding of itself, its challenges, its options. New conditions within society, along with new information and methods available to historians, should call forth new interpretations of the past. Thus history changes as time passes. Yet Texas historians have had trouble discarding old understandings. The contributors to this volume of Texas historiography explore this key question: Why have historians not subjected the myths of the state to rigorous, ongoing examination? Why does the macho myth of Anglo Texas still reign? This book is the first scholarly attempt to place the intellectual development of Texas history within the framework of current trends in the study of U.S. history. Twelve eminent scholars have contributed evaluations of the historical literature in their respective fields of expertise--from Texas-Mexican culture and African-American roles to agrarianism, progressivism, and the New Deal; from perspectives on women to the urban experience of Sunbelt boom and near-bust. The cumulative effort describes and analyzes what Texas history is and how it got that way. These stimulating critiques challenge the field to produce a new synthesis that moves away from the provincialism that has so often limited the intellectual directions of the state's historians and the actions of its political leaders.