Texas Monthly Originally Posted: May 2019 Andrew R. Graybill is the chair of the History Department at Southern Methodist University and the author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West. Several years ago Tony Horwitz was tasked by his wife to “ruthlessly cull” the books he had amassed as a college student during the Carter administration. Sifting through boxes stashed at their house on Martha’s Vineyard, Horwitz came across The Cotton Kingdom, an 1861 book by the New York journalist Frederick Law Olmsted—better known today as the landscape architect who co-designed Manhattan’s Central Park. The book was the culmination of several trips Olmsted had made to the American South, including Texas, in the 1850s. (His account of his rambles [...]

Dallas Morning News Originally Posted: March 13, 2019 For generations dating back to the 1930s, throughout Mexico, including in this region in the central state of Guanajuato known as El Bajio, the towns have emptied themselves out of their youths during what's called the 'winter blues.' The young would head north to seek out their own version of the American Dream: Jobs. In North Texas and other places they worked in everything from gardening, to restaurant service, to roofing and to constructing some of the area's most iconic buildings. They helped build D/FW International Airport, Texas Stadium and just about every high-rise in Dallas. No more. "Dallas was the dream of my father - it's not my dream," said Jairo Villalon, 21. With his friends, [...]

Wall Street Journal Originally Posted: September 20, 2018 Mr. Andrew Graybill is the chair of the history department and co-director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. In 1990, United Airlines was in search of a home for its new repair center. Dazzled by the prospect of 8,000 new jobs and $700 million in revenue, Oklahoma City launched an aggressive campaign to lure the facility. To help fund some of the incentives used to tempt the company, residents agreed to a $120 million tax hike. Boosters took out an ad on a billboard outside United’s Chicago headquarters imploring the airline to “Come Fly the Friendly Skies of Oklahoma City.” But in the end Indianapolis won the day. As Sam [...]

Texas Monthly Originally Posted: April 2018 issue The follow is a review by Andrew R. Graybill, chair of the history department and co-director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. Lawrence Wright had his road-to-Damascus moment in 1979 in Gruene, the quaint Hill Country town halfway between San Antonio and Austin. At the time, he was living in Georgia, writing for a regional magazine and freelancing for various national publications. Although the Oklahoma-born Wright had spent his teenage years in Dallas, where his father was a bank president, he’d escaped the state’s centripetal pull once he graduated from high school, in 1965, leaving first for college in New Orleans and then accepting a teaching position at the American University [...]