God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State

A New York Times Notable Book

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

An NPR Best Book of the Year


God Save Texas is a journey through the most controversial state in America. It is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create.

Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT is a staff writer for
The New Yorker and the author of nine previous books of nonfiction, including
In the New World, Remembering Satan, The Looming Tower, Going Clear, Thirteen Days in September, and
The Terror Years, and one novel,
God's Favorite. His books have received many prizes and honors, including a Pulitzer Prize for
The Looming Tower. He is also a playwright and screenwriter. He and his wife are longtime residents of Austin, Texas.