'This is a funny pointed love letter to Texas at once elegiac and clear-eyed' Ben Macintyre
The Times From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower God Save Texas is a
journey through the most controversial state in America.Texas is a Republican state in the
heart of Trumpland that hasn't elected a Democrat to a statewide office in more than twenty
years but it is also a state in which minorities already form a majority (including the
largest number of Muslim adherents in the United States). The cities are Democrat and among the
most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king but Texas now leads California in technology
exports and has an economy only somewhat smaller than Australia's.Lawrence Wright has written
an enchanting book about what is often seen as an unenchanting place. Having spent most of his
life there while remaining deeply aware of its oddities Wright is as charmed by Texan foibles
and landscapes as he is appalled by its politics and brutality. With its economic model of low
taxes and minimal regulation producing both extraordinary growth and striking income
disparities Texas Wright shows looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to
create.This profound portrait of the state completed just as Texas battled to rebuild after
the devastating storms of summer 2017 not only reflects the United States back as it is but
as it was and as it might be. As much the home of Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson as of J.R.
Ross Perot and the Bush family as filled with magical scenery as with desolate oil-fields and
strip-malls Texas is a bellwether super-sized mass of contradictions: a life-long study.
