Off the Bookshelf

Counter Culture Texas

Republic of Texas Press, 259 pp., $24.95 (paper)

The holy grail for author Susie Flatau and photographer Mark Dean is the "sacred" soda fountain. Their search is born out of "a desire to experience real places"; reality, for them, is rooted in old counters at diners, bars, and general stores across (largely) rural Texas. Flatau employs as many adjectives for counters as Eskimos have for snow. Her wide-eyed, almost rapturous descriptions of the 41 dependable old joints surveyed in Counter Culture Texas are meant to make instant believers of readers who think such places don't exist anymore. Counter Culture Texas is recommended as a trip down nostalgia lane for the armchair traveler or as a glove-box book, an engaging, appreciative, and useful guide next time you find yourself traveling Texas' back roads.