Texas history is vast and divers. And not many voices can capture it as masterfully as the late Texas historian Norman D. Brown. His famed 1984 book, “Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug” captured the political history of the state during the Roaring 20s period.
His new, posthumously released book is “Biscuits, the Dole, and Nodding Donkeys.” It picks up at the end of the 20s, in 1929. This installment tells the history of Texas during a time when the oil industry was just beginning to grow, and when supporters of the Democratic Party – which was seen as “the party of the South” – were experiencing changes in their political beliefs.
Rachel Ozanne is a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin history department, and a member of the faculty at Austin Community College. She was the editor, and wrote the introduction to Brown’s new book.
“When you’re thinking about Texas politics of the early [to] mid-20th Century, Norman Brown remains the authoritative voice on, especially the 1920s and 1930s,” Ozanne says. “Scholarship of Texas history has previously emphasized a lot of the 19th Century, thinking about [the] Texas Revolution and all of those wonderful stories that we learned growing up … only in more recent decades of scholars started to explore some of the more complex issues going on in the 20th Century.”
Written by Antonio Cueto.
