The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 538

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

and honorable career by becoming historical pamphleteer and
patriarch of Fort Stockton. There are other articles of lasting
value-Joe Frantz's "Moses Lapham: His Life and Some Selected
Correspondence," James Day's "Jacob De Cordova's Explora-
tions in Northwest Texas," a long extract from the "Memoirs
of Major George Bernard Erath"-that bring to view forgotten
facets of our past.
The last one hundred pages of the book, "Biographies of
Early Surveyors," is the least satisfactory section. A few of the
"biographies" of these pioneers are given in sufficient length to
warrant the heading, but most are so brief they can be called
only sketches, understandable when sixty are crowded into such
limited space. Failure to list sources of the biographical informa-
tion for many of the names leaves the information of doubtful
value, an oversight that should have been corrected by the editor.
An explanatory introduction by the editor to each of the sections
would have been welcomed by most readers, certainly by this
one.
The illustrations on the endpapers of the volume and a short
section of contemporary photographs add interest. The book
makes a handsome appearance in or out of its dust jacket, and,
in addition, will give its owner hours of delightful and informa-
tive reading. GEORGE P. ISBELL
Party and Factional Division in Texas. By James R. Soukup,
Clifton McCleskey, and Harry Holloway. Austin (University
of Texas Press), 1964. Pp. xviii+ 221. Tables, maps, appen-
dixes, index. $5.00.
In his Southern Politics, Professor V. O. Key observed as
early as 1949 that Texas political behavior tended to revolve
more around economic and ideological issues than around race
and personalities, the political focal points characteristic of the
one-party south. In their book, Party and Factional Division in
Texas, James R. Soukup, Clifton McCleskey, and Harry Hollo-
way analyze the results of fourteen significant elections from 1946
to 1962 and conclude that the trend Key detected has become
even more pronounced in the last decade and a half. Not only do
liberal and conservative Democrats at present split mainly over

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