The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 107, July 2003 - April, 2004 Page: 494

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

One might wonder why George H. W. Bush, America's forty-first president,
deserves a biography ten years after he left the White House and his son, George
W. Bush, is the man of the hour. Ken Anderson's logic is that many younger
Americans know that the elder Bush served as president, but might not know
about the man or his career.
Bush, of course, has had a fascinating career, from World War II torpedo
bomber pilot to oil industry executive, ultimately going into politics and being
elected president in 1988. His story has been well chronicled, and there are no
new or striking revelations in this book. Yet as Anderson notes, George H. W.
Bush's story did not end when he left the White House in 1993 after only one
term in office. Bush and his wife Barbara would see sons elected to the governor-
ships of Texas and Florida, and in 2001 the Bush family would become the sec-
ond in American history to have both a father and son serve as president.
Anderson covers it all in a smooth and clearly written manner. He also includes
a list of places that one could visit to learn more about Bush, including Texas
sites such as the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College
Station, the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredricksburg, and the USS
Lexzngton in Corpus Christi.
Those already familiar with Bush's life and career won't need very long to
read the book, but it should find a home in plenty of school libraries.
Houston GEORGE SLAUGHTER
Texas Trilogy: Life in a Small Texas Town. By Craig D. Hillis. Photos by Bruce F.
Jordan. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003. Pp. xxviii+178. Preface, epi-
logue, notes, sources, index, music CD. ISBN 0-292-73463-8. $29.95, cloth.)
Texas Trilogy is actually a number of books in one. Craig Hillis has used Steven
Fromholz's classic song cycle as his framework for a historical and cultural study of
Bosque County and by extension, life in rural and small-town Texas over the past
150 years. Bruce Jordan's wonderful contemporary photos along with archival pic-
tures accompany the various sections of text or song lyrics to beautifully illuminate
the book's major themes. Finally, Steven Fromholz provides an insightful prefatory
essay in which he recounts his early career and the genesis of "Texas Trilogy."
Fromholz, born in Temple in 1945, fondly recalls his youthful days at his
grandmother's house in Kopperl, one of Bosque County's biggest towns. As a
student at North Texas State, he got caught up in the folk boomlet of the early
1960s. Stationed in San Francisco while in the navy, Fromholz became a veter-
an performer on the local coffeehouse scene. It was there that he wrote "Texas
Trilogy" in late 1967. Fromholz and a partner, recording as FRUMMOX,
included it on their 1969 LP. Hillis is right in describing "Texas Trilogy" as a
"composition which endures" (p. vii). For narrative power and musical appeal,
it compares to epics like Don McLean's "American Pie" and Al Stewart's "Roads
to Moscow" from the same era. UT Press has thankfully packaged with the book
the remastered CD recording of the trilogy so that a new generation of listeners
can be introduced to this Texas masterpiece.

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