Hood, Bonnet, and Little Brown Jug: Texas Politics, 1921-1928

This comprehensive volume may be considered the definitive study of Texas politics during the twenties. As the title suggests, the three main issues in the Lone Star State during that decade were prohibition, the Klan, and women; or more accurately, a woman, in politics. All were intertwined in a swirl of frenetic activity which leaves the observer breathless from his effort to unsort and understand it. Professor Brown has done a massive and masterful job of research in his attempt to explain these complex interrelationships. In his exquisitely detailed account, he successfully relates the issues not only to each other but to national events and demonstrates thereby the importance which events and personalities in Texas bore at the bigger picture during the pre-Depression era. His accounts of the administrations of Governors Pat Neff, Miriam Ferguson, and Dan Moody are the most detailed yet written, and they illustrate well how the personal antogonisms and party factionalisms which characterized Texas politics affected the process of government. His accounts of the antics of Ma and Pa Ferguson and Fergusonism are likewise revealing.--Journal of the Southwest