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Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. I couldnt believe Texas was real, the painter Georgia OKeeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are. Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texass evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artistsall of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes, it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.
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“Narrator George Guidall bestows his abundant gifts on this sprawling audiobook on the history of Texas. His melodious tone well serves the often outsized events and unusual folklore of The Lone Star State…Always an impeccable storyteller, Guidall artfully relates the dozens of profiles, yarns, and historical anecdotes that range from colonial times to the present with restraint, authority, and his characteristic measured style. This audiobook leaves the listener fully satisfied. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
Quotes
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“Harrigan, essentially, is to Texas literature what Willie Nelson is to Texas music.”
— NPR -
“An excellent perspective on [Texas’s] rich history with a wider, more diverse lens…Promises to educate—and entertain—many about the complexities of this rich and storied state.”
— Texas Highways -
“He tells the stories of all the types of people who have lived in Texas, from its earliest days into modern times, with a sense that all of their lives mattered in fashioning the state’s identity.”
— New York Review of Books -
“Remembering the forgotten as well as the famous, delivers an exhilarating blend of the base and the ignoble, a very human story indeed. As good a state history as has ever been written and a must-read for Texas aficionados.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Awards
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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About Stephen Harrigan
Stephen Harrigan, a longtime writer for Texas Monthly and many other magazines, is the author of the novels Aransas and Jacob’s Well. His other books include Water and Light: A Diver’s Journey to a Coral Reef and the essay collections A Natural State and Comanche Midnight. He lives in Austin, Texas.
About George Guidall
George Guidall, winner of more than eighty AudioFile Earphones Awards, has won three of the prestigious Audie Award for Excellence in Audiobook Narration. In 2014 the Audio Publishers Association presented him with the Special Achievement Award for lifetime achievement/ During his thirty-year recording career he has recorded over 1,700 audiobooks, won multiple awards, been a mentor to many narrators, and shown by example the potential of fine storytelling. His forty-year acting career includes starring roles on Broadway, an Obie Award for best performance off Broadway, and frequent television appearances.