California and Texas: The Blue and the Red?

As someone who lived in California and Texas for nearly my entire adult life, I read Kenneth P. Miller’s new book, Texas vs. California (2020), with considerable anticipation. Miller, a California native who currently heads the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College in the Golden State, clearly aimed to write a “big book” on the parallels and differences between California and Texas, and in many respects, he succeeded. Texas vs. California is an impressive tome, boasting 259 pages of dense text and over 100 pages of endnotes, bibliography, and indices. Brimming with tables and graphs, the book is an admirably thorough (if at times wonky) compilation of data about the two states: history, culture, economics, demographics, and politics. Read Full Article »