BookPeople Hosts Stephen Harrigan

"I have the provincial Texan's deep-seated suspicion of serious culture. … I'm afraid of being taken in, of giving my heart to something that might turn out to be phony, so I tend to hold back, fierce in my ignorance." – Stephen Harrigan's "The Anger of Achilles"

Don't let that be you, gentle reader. When Harrigan appears at BookPeople tonight to read from his new collection, The Eye of the Mammoth (UT Press, 376 pp., $29.95), you should just go ahead and give yourself over to the joy of it all.

Harrigan has spent the better part of half a century writing about everything from the Alaska Highway to casinos in Monaco (and plenty of "the soul-claiming properties of Texas's modest little capital city" in between), and he currently is an adjunct professor at the Michener Center for Writers as well as a writer at-large for Texas Monthly. He collects some of that history – "natural history, human history, personal history" – in The Eye of the Mammoth, which includes 30-odd selections from A Natural State, Comanche Midnight, and previously unpublished manuscripts.

Now that's serious culture. Step in and bask.

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Stephen Harrigan reads tonight at BookPeople (603 N. Lamar) at 7pm. The event is free and open to the public, but in order to have a copy of The Eye of the Mammoth signed, it must be purchased from BookPeople. For more information, visit the BookPeople website.