Genuine Texas Handbook

by Rosemary Kent

Book Overview

A freewheeling and funny guidebook to texas culture. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0894801929
• ISBN13: 9780894801921
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Workman Pub Co
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Very dated, but still educational and funny

When we learned a few months ago that some dear friends of ours were shortly to be moving to Texas, one of the first things I did was come here to find an [...] vendor with a copy of "The Genuine Texas Handbook." Twenty-five years after it was published, the book is seriously dated, and in some crucial ways entirely out-of-date. And yet, it is still a funny, educational, and in other, equally crucial, ways very accurate portrait of the promised land and what it's all about. That's why I made sure it was the centerpiece of the Texas Acclimation Kit I prepared for them as they headed off to my ancestral homeland. I got my copy of the "Handbook" back around the time it was new, and it is now extremely well-thumbed. Rosemary Kent gave us a solid introduction to Texas history, culture, and food, as well as vital explanations of the state's different regions, its dedication to football, oil, and nasty feuding, and other essentials. If parts of her discussion are no longer particularly relevant (like, blessedly, the "Urban Cowboy" phenomenon), they still make for funny reading. Part serious, part tongue-in-cheek, and cram-packed with love, "The Genuine Texas Handbook" still makes, I argue, a fine gift for any Texan or Texan-Wannabe. And that covers pretty much everyone, doesn't it? (P.S. Texas annexed the U.S. -- or became a state, if you prefer -- on December 29, 1845. So happy Statehood Day!)