What are they reading?

R.G. Ratcliffe blogged the books that Rick and Bill White are reading (link). Excerpt follows...

Gov. Rick Perry:

The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan By Eric Blehm

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa By E. B. Sledge

Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacific By RV Burgin

The Bible

New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America by Burton Folsom

Former Houston Mayor Bill White:

Brian Holden Reid -- America's Civil War -- The Operational Battle Field
This is a book written by a British military historian about tactics and strategy during battles in the first three years of the civil war. Unlike some American accounts, it places a lot of emphasis on the strategic decisions by both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, each of whom had strong views about how the war should be conducted.

Larry McMurtry -- Books: A Memoir
This book is a compilation of essays by Larry McMurtry about a lifetime of collecting and selling books, his reading, and the process of writing. Quite a bit of it is about Texas.

George Lewis Crocket -- Two Centuries in East Texas
This 1932 book describes the early history of East Texas, particularly the area in around St. Augustine County. The book was given to me out a collection of Otis Carroll in Tyler.

Michael Lewis -- The Big Short
This is a story about how those who packaged and sold sub-prime loans, bringing the U.S. financial system to the brink of catastrophe. It focuses on those who recognized early what was coming, whose warnings went unheeded.

The Trail Drivers of Texas (compiled and edited by J. Marvin Hunter)
This is a collection of the oral histories of cowboys who took cattle to market during the 25 or so years before extensive fencing and the extension of rail lines into Texas. It was first printed in 1924 and reprinted in 1985 by the U.T. Press.

Gordon S. Wood -- Empire of Liberty
History of the United States, 1789-1815, by one of America's greatest living historians.

Bill White must be a fast reader, because he didn't list the liberal book he bragged about reading... authored by Akhil Amar (link). Excerpt follows...

I am going to bed reading Akhil Amar's excellent book The Bill of Rights.

Akhil Amar is a liberal legal scholar with some controversial ideas... I wonder what part of the book Bill White found to be "excellent" anyway? The part about how people like Rick are crazy racists for clinging to the Tenth Amendment? Maybe R.G. Ratcliffe or some other intrepid journalist will ask him about it. Nah... because that would not be beneficial to Bill White... so don't expect anyone in the news media to challenge him on it...