New Year, New Reads From the Longhorn Universe

By Alcalde Staff in 40 Acres, Good Reads, Jan | Feb 2023 on January 1, 2023 at 7:00 am | No Comments

THE ROAD TO TEXAS  

Incredible Twists and Improbable Turns Along the Longhorns Recruiting Trail  

BY MIKE ROACH   

The wild, competitive world of high school and college football is revealed in The Road to Texas, which details behind-the-scenes stories of how Texas landed some of the program’s greatest players, from Derrick Johnson, BS ’20, Life Member, to junior Bijan Robinson. As the recruiting editor for 247Sports, Roach captures the exciting, suspenseful, and occasionally mundane and disappointing recruiting scene along the highways and byways of Texas.  

THE BEAUTY OF DAYS GONE BY  

BY JASON STONE, BBA ’99   

Facing his own mortality in 1926, legendary cattleman Charles Goodnight feels the need to free his conscience of a dark secret. As the aging plainsman reminisces, he finds his strength and energy return under the weight of passing time and the torment of choices he made. Based on historical events, the novel is a fictionalized biography of the man best known for blazing the Goodnight Trail along the Pecos River up to Colorado and Wyoming. Set near the end of the Indian Wars, the story blends the styles of Lonesome Dove, The English Patient, and Blood Meridian.

SHARPENING THE LEGAL MIND  

How to Think Like a Lawyer  

BY WILLIAM POWERS JR., Distinguished Service Award Recipient, Life Member 

A former professor and dean of Texas Law, the late Powers became UT’s second-longest serving president and was tapped to investigate the corrupt business practices of the Enron Corporation. In Sharpening the Legal Mind, he gives accessible insights into how lawyers think, including the roles of philosophy, morality, and the court system in shaping the law. Edited by John Deigh, professor of law and philosophy at UT, the book offers a primer on legal reasoning and demystifies often-convoluted topics.  

THE FOUNDATIONS OF GLEN CANYON DAM  

Infrastructures of Dispossession on the Colorado Plateau  

BY ERIKA MARIE BSUMEK   

As water in the Western U.S. becomes increasingly scarce, UT associate history professor Bsumek details the provocative past of Arizona’s Glen Canyon Dam. Completed in 1966 to control the Colorado River, serve as a water storage facility, and generate hydroelectric power, the construction of the dam is tied to settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous lands. Bsumek communicates these complicated issues and provides a fair, nuanced, and personal backstory of the megastructure.