HOPE AND HARD TRUTH

A top aide for former Texas Gov. Ann Richards recounts her life and career.

In a pensive, somewhat meandering memoir that touches on her childhood and family as well as the iconic political campaigns she observed and helped lead, Rogers (b. 1940) emerges as an honest, forthright storyteller, devoted to her state and grateful for those who supported her during her long, fruitful career. The daughter of a Catholic father and Methodist mother who were both politically active in their hometown of San Antonio, Rogers was fascinated early on by the political process that was transforming the once-segregated Southern state as it witnessed enormous economic growth and demographic changes. Rogers and Richards first met when they were young mothers married to politically active men in Austin. In the early 1980s, they organized the Texas Women’s History Project, an influential group of women tasked with resurrecting the lost history of women in the state. For years, Rogers would serve as Richards’ most trusted assistant and campaign manager when she won the governor’s seat in 1990, a major upset by “a liberal Democrat, recovering alcoholic, civil rights activist, divorced single mother, and pro-choice advocate.” Reflecting on her role, Rogers writes, “I became a kind of quiet alter ego to Ann’s more flamboyant self….She was the innovator. I was the implementer.” However, the seeds for the right-leaning, evangelical political takeover in Texas, led by Karl Rove and George W. Bush four years later, were already being sown. Throughout her journey, the author has emphasized what she calls “authentic politics,” which has involved her active leadership in the women’s, civil rights, and environmental movements. Rogers has witnessed and participated in the transformation of her state, and she writes movingly about those influences on her.

A combination of earnest personal reflection and useful documentation of Texas political history and its big personalities.