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What Did Dallas Learn from Rediscovering a Suppressed Book?

Dallas, Schutze argues in The Accommodation, has always been “much more Southern, with stronger roots in slave culture,” than most residents know or care to admit. His book traces how the city’s white “business oligarchy” was able to achieve a relatively smooth transition into legal desegregation during the Civil Rights era — it’s an oft-cited source of civic pride that Dallas in the 1960s avoided the racial unrest of cities such as Little Rock and Los Angeles — while finding “informal ways to maintain actual and total separation” of the races into the present day. Read more

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We’ve Been Telling the Alamo Story Wrong for Nearly 200 Years. Now It’s Time to Correct the Record

The version most Americans know, the “Heroic Anglo Narrative” that has held sway for nearly 200 years, holds that American colonists revolted against Mexico because they were “oppressed” and fought for their “freedom,” a narrative that has been soundly rebutted by 30-plus years of academic scholarship. But the many myths surrounding Texas’ birth, especially those cloaking the fabled 1836 siege at the Alamo mission in San Antonio, remain cherished in the state. Read more

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Opening a Small-Town Bookstore During the Pandemic Was the Craziest Thing We Ever Did

It’s every book lover’s fantasy. Yet nothing can quite prepare you for the reality of starting any business, even under normal conditions. Certainly, few dreamers think to prepare for the nightmare of a global pandemic that shutters most brick-and-mortar retail, disrupts supply chains, and kills hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens. Read more