Fifty Years of the Texas Observer - Softcover

The Texas Observer began publishing in Austin in 1954, and in the past five decades it has been an important voice in Texas culture and politics. Following in the muckraking tradition of George Seldes and I. F. Stone, the Observer has championed honest government, civil rights, labor, and the environment, providing a platform for many of the state's most outspoken writers - Roy Bedicheck, Willie Morris, Molly Ivins, Amado Muro, Maury Maverick, Jim Hightower, and Dagoberto Gilb, to name a few. To mark the Observer's fiftieth anniversary in 2004, Char Miller has gathered a cross-section of the best work to appear in its pages. While the Observer has ventured beyond Texas in its editorial coverage, Miller has chosen pieces that specifically speak to the state's politics, people, environment, culture, and locales. With a foreword by Molly Ivins, these pieces form a progressive chronicle of a half-century of life in Texas.

Char Miller is Professor of History at Trinity University. He is the author of Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism and the editor of several volumes, including An Atlas of U.S. and Canadian Environmental History, American Forests, and a compilation from the Colorado-based publication High Country News entitled Water in the West. Char Miller has been a frequent contributor to the Texas Observer. Molly Ivins is a former editor of and frequent contributor to the Texas Observer. Her books include Who Let the Dogs In: Incredible Political Animals I Have Known (forthcoming), Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America, and Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush (all coauthored with Lou Dubose), and Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?