The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 286

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

T. W. House, Paul Bremond, Oscar Holcombe, Miss Ima Hogg,
John Henry Kirby, and Roy Hofheinz.
More pictures and better maps would also have been welcome.
Though there is a section of Houston scenes, there are no pictures
of the city's leading citizens. Maps showing the various stages of the
growth of the metropolis would have been helpful. Contrasting end
papers showing the city in 1836 and in 1966 would have been most
effective.
Most of these criticisms are, however, more in the realm of
bookmaking than of writing. McComb has presented a clear, scholarly,
and enjoyable history of Texas' largest city. Though probably not
the definitive study of the settlement on Buffalo Bayou, it is the
best history of Houston that has yet appeared. It adds a significant
chapter to our knowledge of the history of Texas and the Gulf
Southwest.
Stephen F. Austin State University RoBEWR S. MAXWELL
Kansas in Turmoil, 1930-1936. By Francis W. Schruben. (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1969. Pp. xiv + 240. Illustrations,
bibliography, index. $8.50.)
This is an unusual book, the product of many years' research and
reflection about Kansas in the depths of the Great Depression.
Professor Schruben, whose boyhood was spent in the midst of the
events he describes, has organized his rich materials into alternating
chapters, four presenting economic and social data interwoven with
four stressing political history. The political chapters are essentially
treatments of the biennial elections.
Readers of this journal will probably want to see how Schruben
treats that flamboyant character, "Doctor" John R. Brinkley, who
spent most of these years in luxurious exile at Del Rio, where he car-
ried on his broadcasts via telephone to Villa Acufia. There he could
elude both the Kansas Medical Society, which took a dim view of
his goat gland operations, his radio prescriptions, and his diploma-mill
degree, and the Federal Communications Commission, which had
forced him to sell KFKB ("Kansas First Kansas Best") . Schruben
seems to believe that Brinkley, while a rascal who had no intention
of carrying out his reform program, got something less than a fair
treatment in the Kansas "short count" gubernatorial election in 1930.

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