Originally Posted: April 26, 2018
Mr. Spiegelman is an emeritus professor of English at Southern Methodist University.
The dust jacket of his new book misidentifies Lawrence Wright as a Texas native (he was born in Oklahoma; as a child he moved to Abilene, and in 1960 to Dallas), but this is a forgivable mistake, because he writes about his state with the fervor, knowledge and ambivalence that come from deep-seated familiarity. A Pulitzer Prize winner (for “The Looming Tower,” his book about al-Qaeda), he has found his latest and best subject in “God Save Texas.” Its subtitle, “A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State,” is the tip-off: Only someone who loves his state would ever allow a political entity to have a “soul.” READ MORE