Donald Day

One of the volumes in the American Folkways series. Not many have written as easily about Texas, so breezily, or so witily as Mr. Day in this broad, panoramic portrait of state and people. The swift pace, the vivid flavoring may obscure for some the fad that there is a solid, meaty merit in nearly every chapter. Few volnmell in the American Folkways series have had so much pungency, so much genuine gusto and spirit. Mr. Day almost makes his typewriter drawl in Texas style; he stresses the anecdotal, the odd (or since this is Texas, the gargantuan) custom,the salty individualist. The book has much of the variety and conglomeration of the state itself. A Texan, he would have you know, is a "citizen of a state of mind." And he quotes a Negro who has told a stranger:" But then. everything is bigger here than in the United States." That feeling still prevails. To the standard historian the author may seem a bit brusque in the going over he gives early Texas, but Mr. Day packs a great deal of fact and general trend in his first few pages. Inevitably he ommits edifying detail; some statements are overbroad. But he tells a lot, for instance with this quotation: "Too many Houstons would have made Texasa a hell of a place; but without the one Sam Houston, Texas would have heen in a hell of a fix." One may wonder, however, at a remark attributed to Jefferson Davis in an address to Texans in the Army of Northern Virginia: "The troops from other states have reputations to make; you Texans have one to "sustain!" The most valuable parts of the book are the authoritative, richly factual pictures of special places of Texas.

They have money, influence, power, and they turn out to vote. "They" are groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, and Concerned Women for America -- all parts of the Christian Right. But, are they a serious threat to religious liberty, bent on creating a theocratic state, or the last defenders of religion and family values in America? Bringing the story of the religious right up to the Obama administration, this revised fourth edition explores the history of the movement in twentieth and early twenty-first century American politics. The authors review the expansion of the Christian Right through George W. Bush's second administration and evaluate how the religious right fared in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Although figureheads of the religious right remain in the news, their power in Washington may be declining, and the authors consider the fate of the religious right under the Obama administration. Examining how the religious right both does and does not fit into the proper role of religious groups in American politics, Onward Christian Soldiers? is an essential addition to the Dilemmas in American Politics series. - Publisher.

In a selection of Rogers' own words, lassoed together by Day, Will Rogers tells how he became the spokesman and the watchdog for the inarticulate public in a period of dramatic change in American life. A great American, a great democrat, a great internationalist, and not a bad rodeo man, Will's simple directness spoke to "the big, Honest Majority", in whom his faith was steady.