The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 96, July 1992 - April, 1993 Page: 137

Book Revzews

subtitle suggests, involved more than merely adding population. Growth was
concomitant with the rise of distinctly urban political structures, processes,
issues, and forms; of intergovernmental relationships; of social and physical
change; of the urban infrastructure; and of strategies of growth themselves.
The introduction and nine chapters, some written by the editors and some by
others, treat these themes. Explicit in chapter 1 and implicit in the others is the
contribution this book makes to greater "balance" (p. 29) in thinking and writ-
ing about the urban and rural experiences in Texas.
The remaining eight chapters are monographic essays on particular issues of
urban Texas. They move in roughly chronological order from the end of Re-
construction to the post-World War II era, and are grouped into four parts of
two chapters each.
The book is an excellent piece of scholarship. Char Miller and Heywood T.
Sanders have assembled a first-rate stable of authors who almost always write
clearly and often engagingly. Among the strongest articles is the one by Cary
Wintz, which carefully modifies the mythic role of the Fourth Ward in the de-
velopment of black Houston, but which also points to the ward's real, if some-
what different, importance. Miller and Sanders's essay about Olmos Park on
San Antonio's north side is a masterful evocation of an exclusive suburb, set in a
national and local sociopolitical context.
The volume's commercial success is more problematic. Some of the chapters
will be tough meat for undergraduates. For example, the chapter by Amy
Bridges on progressive-era structural reform wanders for two and a quarter
pages before settling into its theme. Thereafter it introduces material from
cities outside Texas without any clear purpose, in contrast to Miller and Sand-
ers's careful blending of non-Texas circumstances in their Olmos Park chapter.
Five of the nine chapters wholly or partly concern San Antonio, an accurate
reflection of the editors' interests but a less objective mirror of the relative im-
portance of Texas's leading cities.
The limitations of this anthology, however, pale beside its strengths. The col-
laboration of these two wise scholars, Miller and Sanders, has produced a land-
mark volume. Every student of Texas history should read this book.
University of North Texas WILLIAM H. WILSON
LBJ and the Polls. By Bruce E. Altschuler. (Gainesville: University of Florida
Press, 1990o. Pp. xvii+ 137. Acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $19.95.)
When Lyndon Johnson returned to Texas after his presidency, he did a great
favor for future generations of scholars by bringing his presidential papers
with him and housing them in the Lyndon B. Johnson Library.
Bruce Altschuler has used the Johnson archives to great advantage in LBJ
and the Polls. Not only does this book shed some light on Lyndon Johnson's use
of public opinion polls, but also it contains some valuable insights for students
of the American presidency. Specifically, Altschuler refutes the common argu-
ment that public opinion polls present a direct conduit from popular opinion

137