Alaska leads in area, California in population, but Texas surpasses all other states in swagger, strut, and self-regard. This (partly) explains why the catalog of books about the state is so vast, and why those books tend to sprawl. T.R. Fehrenbach’s 1968 tome, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans, extended to 792 pages, perhaps because he saw fit to begin his magisterial account millions of years ago, in the Pleistocene. Now, nearly 50 years later, Stephen Harrigan’s own Texas retrospective, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas, manages to outdo Fehrenbach and fill 944 pages, all while skipping centuries of history Fehrenbach saw fit to include, and choosing instead to start in 1528, when hapless, naked, starving Spaniards led by Pánfilo de Narváez washed ashore on Galveston Island.
Historians must tell stories, and Harrigan’s challenge is to find a pattern in the formless flow of events. Instead of a sweeping—even inspiring—narrative, he settles for a series of finely etched anecdotes that often proceed as non sequiturs, albeit sometimes delightful ones. At one point, he announces, without explanation: “It’s time to talk, briefly, about chili.” After four paragraphs about the state’s official dish, he proceeds to discuss international oil prices, then a scheme by Bunker and Herbert Hunt to corner the silver market, then Bill Clements and other governors.
