THE LUSTY TEXANS OF DALLAS

by JohnW. Rogers '16. E. P. Button and Co., 1951,384 pp., $4.50.

This volume—the seventh in the Society of America Series—is a lively and interesting ac- count of Dallas from that day in 1839 when John Neely Bryan wrote his name 011 a piece of buckskin and affixed it to a sapling on the highest point of the bluff on the east bank of the Trinity River down to the 1950 election of Judge Sarah T. Hughes of Dallas as national president of the American Business and Pro- fessional Women's Club. It is written by a native Dallasan who made the trek to Hanover in 1912 and demonstrated here at Dartmouth forty years ago that the Lone Star State was producing loyal sons who were both interested and competent in fields literary and dramatic. His story of Dallas is somewhat journalistic in style and spotty in coverage but brim full of a wide variety of fact which is always per- tinent, often humorous, and never dull.

Whether in the period of cattle or cotton or oil, Mr. Rogers finds in Dallas evidence of top leadership. In such other fields as enter- tainment and hospitality, merchandizing and journalism and education and music and art he gives an account of unusual achievement. Of special interest is his account of the Dallas Little Theatre and Margo Jones' famous Theatre-in-the-Round, and of the famous Cokesbury Bookstore in Dallas which for a number of years has been selling more books than any other bookshop in the country. In- cluded also is some of the early history of this part of Texas and a fascinating account of the Fourieristic colony just outside o£ Dallas.

This makes good reading for anyone but is particularly recommended for those who feel that "culture" stops at the Hudson.