A richly informed, crisply written story of the Texas GOP’s emergence, long isolation, and then rise to dominance. It’s a great read for any Lone Star State political junkie.
~Karl Rove
Historians will appreciate Thorburn’s attention to nuance and detail, but they will also benefit from his study’s impressive breadth. Replete with individual characters and behind-the-scenes battlefronts, this is, ultimately, a sweeping history that spans more than a century and a half of Texas Republican Party development. In search of insider information on the state GOP, scholars will undoubtedly reference Thorburn’s work for decades to come.
~Sean P. Cunningham
A valuable overview of the party's growth from its nineteenth-century roots to its twenty-first-century position of political dominance. Thorburn traces the contributions of campaign volunteers, party leaders, candidates, and officeholders as they helped to transform Texas politics. Anyone interested in Texas history will find this a valuable resource.
~Tom DeLay
Wayne Thorburn's latest book provides a comprehensive history of Texas Republican politics from the party's founding in 1867 up to the present. For those who wish to understand Texas politics, it is a valuable and readable history that will be of interest regardless of one's partisan loyalties.
~Kent Hance
With a sure hand and a keen eye, Wayne Thorburn details the peculiar evolution of the Texas Republican Party, as it moved from 'relative irrelevance' to dominance of Lone Star politics.
~Kenneth Heineman
Students of American politics will find Thorburn’s history valuable.
~Kirkus
[A] granular blow-by-blow account...Political historians will appreciate the fine-grained details.
~Publishers Weekly
In presenting a long timeline with pivotal turning points, [Thorburn] offers a panoramic view of Lone Star politics...Thorburn aims for a deeply-researched take on how Republicans were for a long time the underdogs, striving for a definitive 'two-party' state until they gained dominance.
~Sightlines
Thorburn’s book is most useful as a tightly organized, semi-official record of the party’s growth in Texas, written with apparent evenhandedness by a major participant in the state GOP. More significantly for non-Texans, it’s useful as a stimulus to reflection on the nature of partisan dominance and its potential decay or reversal.
~Law & Liberty
Thorburn provides a well-written, well-organized portrait of the origins, evolution, and political dominance of the GOP in Texas...Although not ignoring the major figures well known by the public, Thorburn’s work reminds readers of the importance of those who worked at the city and county level to ensure both voter turnout and the day-to-day operations needed to secure state-wide electoral victories. Thorburn’s history provides a model for those who wish to understand Texas politics and why the phrase 'Sold South' now best describes the Republican Party's dominance of the region...Highly recommended.
~CHOICE
This is an enthusiast’s history...But it is also a soberly conducted and extensively researched scholarly work that should interest students of Texas political history and also of southern Republicanism...Thorburn’s history is largely one of party officials, activists, candidates, and officeholders...This approach makes the book a wonderful resource for who did what when.
~Journal of Southern History
