About Greene's The 50+ Best Books on Texas
Undaunted by the furor caused by his first listing, A. C. Greene offers a new selective survey for anyone who wants to know more about Texas and Texas books. Each of the selections in The 50+ Best Books on Texas have been completely rewritten, or added to, or updated in this 1998 offering.
“In the sixteen years that The 50 Best Books on Texas has been around it has become a kind of guidebook to Texas literature, which embarrasses me. It was not conceived as that… the listings are my picks…
“Some books have been dropped from this 50+ Best Books list… Texas writing is changing. Many more Hispanic and black writers will explore their Texas roots or relationships as individuals. More Texas writers will pursue the peculiar puzzles of life in the larger Texas cities, and perhaps the day will come when there will be no need, other than historical, for lists of ‘best’ books about Texas.” —from the Introduction
“A. C. Greene’s list of ‘The Fifty Best Texas Books,’ first published in the August 1981 issue of Texas Monthly, was by the author’s own admission subjective, but also daring. It attempted to discriminate and judge, something not many critics of Texas writing had been willing to do prior to the 1980s. Greene apparently accomplished his goal: he provoked. The purpose of Larry McMurtry’s now famous essay, ‘Ever a Bridegroom: Reflections on the Failure of Texas Literature,’ was, in part at least, to dispute Greene’s contention that fifty good Texas books exist… The public response was immediate and sometimes explosive.” —Range Wars
About the Author
A. C. GREENE was born in 1923 in Abilene, Texas and after service in WWII he graduated from Abilene Christian College. He served on the staff of the Abilene Reporter-News, ran his own bookstore and headed the journalism department at Hardin-Simmons University. He joined the Dallas Times-Herald, serving as book editor and editorial page editor before being awarded a Dobie-Paisano fellowship during which he wrote A Personal Country. He wrote a column for The Dallas Morning News and wrote more than 22 books. He published numerous articles in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, Southwest Review, Southwestern Historical Quarterly, New York Times Book Review, and wrote and narrated many television shows for PBS. He was a Fellow in the Texas State Historical Association and the Texas Institute of Letters.