James Talarico

So as our final question, what are three books you'd recommend to the audience?

So I chose a fiction book, a political book, and a religious book just to make sure we cover all our bases.

For the fiction book, my favorite book is Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, maybe the most famous and beloved Texas classic.

Texas has gotten a bad rap recently around the world for the extremism and corruption coming out of our government.

But if you want to see what's beautiful about our state, that spirit of friendship that I mentioned earlier, read Lonesome Dove.

It captures the spirit of Texas better than a lot of other works of art.

And it's such a great book.

You'll have a blast reading it.

Won't be able to put it down.

My second book is my religious book, and it also has a Texas connection.

It is Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.

We mentioned Dr. King on this show.

Howard Thurman was his spiritual mentor, the theologian who started to chart that course long before Dr. King.

And he wrote this book from a series of lectures in Austin, Texas, at Houston Tillerson University, historically black college in Austin.

And it's a beautiful book.

It's not very long, but it really gets to the heart of who Jesus is, what he means in a political context, and what Christian nonviolence looks like in the world.

And I think it's so instructive, even if we're not necessarily fighting Jim Crow, we're not in his context, but I think all of us can learn something from the power and the effectiveness of that nonviolence rooted in a deep morality.

And then the last book is the political book, and it's The Upswing by Robert Putnam and his co-author, I think her name is Shailen Romney Garrett.

And the book is all about how

Throughout the 20th century, we as a country, as a culture, moved from individualism in the Gilded Age toward communitarianism, to working together to do big things as a community.