Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Everything is bigger in Texas,and#8221; as the saying goes, and this certainly applies to the history of sleaze, iniquity, and violence associated with the Lone Star State.
Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem provides a glimpse at the stateand#8217;s seamy underbelly and delves into some of the most striking episodes of lust, corruption, slaughter, and chaos in Texas and the people who have perpetrated them. To a colorful roguesand#8217; gallery of lunatics, corrupt politicians, prostitutes, murderers, and every other sort of scoundrel that appears in the book, author
Michael O. Varhola has added a smattering of UFOs, mythological beasts, and other paranormal oddities.
Specific chapters among the 54 that appear in Texas Confidential include and#147;Rogues of the Alamo,and#8221; a look at the things that just about everyone connected with the famous battle had to hide; and#147;The Ivory Tower of Death,and#8221; on the bloody 1966 University of Texas rampage that left 18 people dead and 42 wounded; and#147;Porno, Texas Style,and#8221; which includes a list of adult actors from the state; and and#147;The Aurora UFO Incident,and#8221; about the stateand#8217;s oldest documented UFO incident, which occurred in 1897.
Synopsis
The latest installment in the Confidential series, Texas Confidential pokes at the seamy underbelly of the Lone Star State, where folks do everythingincluding sex, scandal, murder, and mayhemin a BIG way. Author Michael J. Varhola, author of Clerisys Ghosthunting Maryland and Ghosthunting Virginia, rounds up more than 40 Texas talesfrom the rogues who defended the Alamo to the rogues who brought down Enron.
Along the way, readers learn the sordid details of sexfrom Miss Hatties Bordello in West Texas (now a museum!) to Charlie Wilsons Whore”; scandalfrom corrupt governors Ma” and Pa” Ferguson to corrupt politicians Lyndon Johnson and Tom DeLay, to the nefarious Duke of Duval County”; murderfrom Bonnie and Clyde to the Kennedy Assassination to the over-zealous cheerleader mom and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre; and mayhemfrom the crash of a UFO in 1897 in the little town of Aurora to Nazi war criminals hiding in El Paso (while working for the local government) to David Koresh and his ill-fated Branch Dividian cult.
Packed with pictures and loaded with sidebars, Texas Confidential is informative, irreverent, and enormously entertaining. Varhola leaves no sacred cow untipped. As he wends his way through Texas history, he exploreswith a gimlet eye and a pinched nosemany of its less glorious moments and explodes a few myths for good measure.
Like all the books in the series, Texas Confidential is all in good fun, if not in good taste
About the Author
Michael O. Varhola is a writer, editor, publisher, and journalist who lives in the Hill Country north of San Antonio, Texas. He has authored or co-authored 10 non-fiction books, including
Texas Confidential, Life in Civil War America, Ghosthunting Maryland, Ghosthunting Virginia, Shipwrecks and Lost Treasures: Great Lakes, and Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950 and#150; 1953. Varhola studied at Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado, and at the American University of Paris before earning a B.S. in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park and is an eight-year veteran of the U.S. Army. Varhola also has an active online presence, notably through his TravelBlogue, Facebook, and on a variety of other blogs, forums, and sites.