Lone Star Nation

October 6, 2014
According to Governor Rick Perry, about 1,000 people arrive in Texas daily, a land this study's author calls the "very epicenter of change in America in the 21st century." Parker, a thoughtful journalist whose passion for his home state is evident but not worshipful, cites plenty of figures, including that Texas makes up one-sixth of the U.S.'s GDP, and that 4 million people have moved there so far this century. Parker's Texas is a land of rapid change, from the oil boom that began in 1901 to the rise of the "Texas Triangle" of Houston, Austin and El Paso, propelling such rapid economic growth that it's hard to believe Austin had a 40% commercial vacancy rate downtown as late as 1987. He also shows the rising Latino population as poised to profoundly change a state never shy about polishing its history to a gleaming white cowboy mythos. Pithily summarizing recent political history, Parker covers Perry's disastrous Presidential bid and State Senator Wendy Davis's filibuster to block an anti-abortion bill. This modern mega-state, Parker argues eloquently, is not a conservative dinosaur, but a rapidly changing vastness that like America, is undergoing profound shifts, and "will continue doing so while being paradoxically more like America, tooâand yet, particular and distinct."