Close Calls: Jan Reid's Texas

By Jan Reid

Book Overview

For more than three decades of writing about Texas, Jan Reid has reported topics and perspectives that are unsentimental and often unexpected: stories of cops on the beat, Mexican jailbreaks, counterculture country musicians, an oldtime liberal Texas politician, and cows in the corn at J. Frank Dobie's Paisano Ranch. In the course of that reporting, he has seen and has experienced some close calls--none closer than one in Mexico that threatened his own life. Close Calls collects some of the best of Reid's prolific writings into a volume that provides a uniquely personal crosssection of life--the dangerous and the daily--in Texas. The stories that emerge from these pages show and encourage a hardbiting appreciation for the real Texas and its real people. In Reid's nature pieces, he writes vividly of the rivers, canyonlands, and prairies that enrich our national heritage and of his adventures in the wild, including paddling the Devils River, visiting exotic ranches in South Texas, or dealing with rabid coyotes. In other chapters Reid relates dangers of a different sort, including his addiction to the sport of boxing. But Close Calls is first a book of people--profiles of Texans rich and poor, famous and downtrodden. Reid provides details of his various assignments and the people and places he has encountered while working for Texas Monthly and other publications--going on beats with Texas police officers, attending church with George Foreman in New York, and meeting Kickapoo Indians in the Sierra Madres. The book closes with a dramatic account of Reid's hijacking and nearfatal shooting by robbers in Mexico and of the tortuous fight he has waged back to health from his closest call of all.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0890969655
• ISBN13: 9780890969656
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A Spellbinding Craftsman at Work

Writing fine magazine stories is harder than it appears. But then, the best writers have a way of making it look easy. A real craftsman must satisfy two needs---his own urgent need to reveal a story through lines that circle and punch, and the reader's robust need to be actively engaged. But that is the magazine writer's duty, and no one takes it more seriously than Jan Reid, an award-winning Texas writer with a long line of credits with the best magazines in print, including GQ, Esquire, Men's Journal and The New York Times Magazine. Now Texas A & M University Press has compiled a superb collection of Reid's finest work spanning the past 25 years. All but one of the stories in Close Calls first appeared in Texas Monthly, the magazine the Austin-based writer has called home since its inception and where he still is a contributing editor. Reid, in his book's introduction, calls himself an "accidental journalist." For such accidents, we all should feel grateful. From the mean streets of Dallas' toughest neighborhoods to the gorgeous rock cliffs of Palo Duro Canyon, the 16 pieces in the collection range far and wide in celebrating the writer's native state. Texas is Reid's beat, and he covers it with a sympathetic vengeance. Close Calls offers spellbinding stories. There are Mexican jailbreaks, professional prizefighters, beat cops fast with their guns, impoverished Kickapoo Indians, the state's meanest river (the Red), and a bizarre effort in South Texas to breed the endangered African black rhinoceros. Showing considerable courage, Reid is unafraid to shove back the veil and show us what lurks beneath the surface. He can pare a story down to its gritty details, or treat it tongue-in-cheek when humor is merited. In several pieces exploring our state's natural landscapes and wildlife, Reid reveals an eye as perceptive as the legendary Frank Dobie at his best. It so happens that Reid is a devoted boxing fan, and the final two stories detail how that fascination led in a circuitous way to a nightmarish late-night scene in Mexico City in which Reid is shot by a mugger wielding a handgun. Reid survives---truly a close call---but his prognosis afterwards is paraplegia. He will not walk again. But of course, he does. Not only that ... well, read Close Calls for yourself. Reid shows precisely why the best magazine writing has become an art form. You won't be disappointed.