Gail Collins is the funniest serious political commentator in America. Reading this book is pur pleasure from page one. ( )

Excellent....but I can't help but wonder if I'm succumbing to confirmation bias. Hmm.... nope. It's still an excellent read.

Well researched, well documented, very well composed. It should appeal to - and scare the hell out of - non-Texans. Maybe. Maybe not.

Ms. Collins skewers the players and hypocrisies (she's a little more gentle...calling them "ironies") an even handed, if harsh, journalistic approach. I suspect the natives would view the perpetrators as heroes and the policies as triumphant examples of the spirit of what made Texas great.

Financial deregulation resulting in the meltdown. Educational failure. Enron. Halliburton. Savings and loan non-oversight failures (to recall the golden era of Reagan). Suing the EPA and trying to repeal the Clean Air Act. Yep. Worthy efforts all.

I just live here. I'm not from here, so I guess I'll never understand. ( )

Gail will be able to add a new chapter as a result of the very recent actions (6/2013) by the Texas legislature and Perry which have resulted in making Wendy Davis a potential star among Democrats and progressives. ( )

Journalist Gail Collins examines the negative impact that Texas has had on the rest of the United States including politics, banking, education in general plus textbooks and sex education in particular, and pollution including the state’s refusal to acknowledge global warming. Written in a popular style although it includes numerous endnotes if the reader wants to look up sources of the information.

Appendix includes statistics from the 2011 “Texas on the Brink : a Report from the Texas Legislative Study on the State of our State” which shows how Texas ranks on such categories as state taxes, education, state of the child, health care, health and well-being, women’s issues, access to capital [i.e. money], environment, workforce, quality of life, public safety, and democracy [voting]. ( )