Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright's latest book is God Save Texas: A Journey Into The Soul Of The Lone Star State. From his Slate interview with Isaac Chotiner:

What are your biggest fears about Texas, and are they distinct from your fears about the future of the country?

They are very much tied up. Ten percent of all the schoolchildren in America right now are Texans. We’re really failing in the education of our future workers in the state, and it has national repercussions. Texas is going to double in population by 2050, but the infrastructure of the state is already challenged. There’s been very little planning to accommodate that massive influx of population. Both Dallas and Houston are expected to have populations of 10 million people in just 12 years, and yet the cities are really, really struggling with the infrastructure. A lot of that has to do with the fact that the state has done so little to provide the kind of infrastructure that Texas really...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue