"Inside Texas Politics provides students with an exciting insider's perspective on the world of Texas government. Its focus on how power struggles have shaped Texas institutions and political processes offers students a fresh perspective that differentiates itself from all other texts on the market. Rottinghaus' anecdotes make Inside Texas Politics fun and relevant for today's students, and his visual representations of data foster the skills students need in order to understand and think critically about the political world around them"--

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

From the end of Reconstruction until the 1950s, Texas was classified as part of the “Solid South,” consistently electing Democrats to national, state, and local office. After World War II, however, a new politics began to emerge throughout the South that ultimately made the region as solidly Republican as it had once been Democratic. Allan Shivers wielded extraordinary influence in this about-face. Serving as governor from 1949 to 1957, Shivers stands as an important transitional figure who, while staying within the Democratic Party all his life, nonetheless led Texas into Eisenhower’s column and toward a new political alignment. Author Ricky F. Dobbs traces the political career of Allan Shivers from his student days at the University of Texas, through his World War II service with the 36th Infantry and various state offices, to his role within the party after leaving the governor’s mansion. Throughout, Dobbs places Shivers’s career in the context of the modernization and urbanization that changed the state and regional picture. He portrays Shivers as one of the state’s most powerful governors and compellingly shows his influence on modern Texas.

This book is about the other Texas, not the state known for its cowboy conservatism, but a mid-twentieth-century hotbed of community organizing, liberal politics, and civil rights activism. Beginning in the 1930s, Max Krochmal tells the story of the decades-long struggle for democracy in Texas, when African American, Mexican American, and white labor and community activists gradually came together to empower the state's marginalized minorities. At the ballot box and in the streets, these diverse activists demanded not only integration but economic justice, labor rights, and real political power for all. Their efforts gave rise to the Democratic Coalition of the 1960s, a militant, multiracial alliance that would take on and eventually overthrow both Jim Crow and Juan Crow. Using rare archival sources and original oral history interviews, Krochmal reveals the often-overlooked democratic foundations and liberal tradition of one of our nation's most conservative states. Blue Texas remembers the many forgotten activists who, by crossing racial lines and building coalitions, democratized their cities and state to a degree that would have been unimaginable just a decade earlier--and it shows why their story still matters today.

The former executive director of the Texas GOP offers a “granular blow-by-blow account” of his party from Reconstruction to the 21st century (Publishers Weekly). On July 4, 1867, a group of men assembled in Houston to establish the Republican Party of Texas. Combatting entrenched statewide support for the Democratic Party and their own internal divisions, Republicans struggled to gain a foothold in the Lone Star State, which had sided with the Confederacy and aligned with the Democratic platform. In The Republican Party of Texas, Wayne Thorburn chronicles more than 150 years of the defeats and victories of the party that became the dominant political force in Texas in the modern era. Thorburn documents the organizational structure of the Texas GOP, drawing attention to prominent names, such as Harry Wurzbach and George W. Bush, alongside lesser-known community leaders who bolstered local support. The 1960s and 1970s proved a watershed era for Texas Republicans as they elected the first Republican governor and more state senators and congressional representatives than ever before. From decisions about candidates and shifting allegiances and political stances, to race-based divisions and strategic cooperation with leaders in the Democratic Party, Thorburn unearths the development of the GOP in Texas to understand the unique Texan conservatism that prevails today.

Finalist, 2021 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives. A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles traces the state’s conflicted and dramatic evolution over the past 150 years through its pivotal political players, including oft-neglected women and people of color. Beginning in 1870 with the birth of Texas’s modern political framework, Bill Minutaglio chronicles Texas political life against the backdrop of industry, the economy, and race relations, recasting the narrative of influential Texans. With journalistic verve and candor, Minutaglio delivers a contemporary history of the determined men and women who fought for their particular visions of Texas and helped define the state as a potent force in national affairs.

The #1 package for thinking critically about the past, present, and future of Texas politics