Texas Reporter, Texas Radical: The Writings of Journalist Dick J. Reavis

Writing about Texas, Mexico, and Texan-Mexican relations for over four decades, Dick J. Reavis is one of the most poignant political voices of Texas—not as a politician, though his writings are infused with politics, but as a candid, unsentimental, probing, journalist. Reavis has worked as a reporter, features author, and staff writer (San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer, San Antonio Light), as a Senior Editor of Texas Monthly, and as a professor of journalism (North Carolina State University). He has authored six books and translated two from Spanish. Throughout his award-winning career, he has returned consistently to investigate the lives of everyday Texans, insistently challenging prevailing political assumptions and mythologies. It was precisely this commitment that prompted him to investigate the federal government’s siege of the Branch Davidians in 1993 outside of Waco, TX, which led to his best-known work, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (1995), a book that challenged government accounts and mainstream media. This anthology demonstrates the range of his writings, which include investigations of Mexican guerillas and Texas biker-gangs, the struggles of urban day-laborers and of undocumented immigrants in rural areas, the politics of Texas radicals during the Civil Rights movement, and the activities of the Klan and other far right groups across the state, to identify but a few. This collection of Reavis’s writings brings into focus the voice and political commitments of this critical, contemporary, Texas writer.  

DICK J. REAVIS has authored six books, including The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (1995) on the FBI/ATF siege of the Branch Davidians outside of Waco, Texas. Reavis has written hundreds of articles for Texas and national newspapers and magazines, including The Texas Observer, San Antonio Express-News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Dallas Observer, San Antonio Light, Texas Parks & Wildlife, Soldier of Fortune, Salon.com, and the Wall Street Journal, and he is a former staff writer and senior editor at Texas Monthly. Over his decades-long career, he has explored such diverse topics as motorcycle gangs, the Southern Civil Rights Movement, guerrillas, convicts, undocumented immigrants, and Mexican coal miners.

MICHAEL DEMSON is an Associate Professor of English at Sam Houston State University whose research explores the intersections of literature and radical political cultures. His recent publications include two collections of essays on Romantic literature, Romantic Automata: Exhibitions, Figures, Organisms, Commemorating (2020), and Peterloo: Violence, Resilience, and Claim-making in the Romantic Era (2019). He is also interested in popular radical graphic narratives, recently collaborating on an English translation of Me, Mikko, and Annikki (2019), a Finnish graphic novel by Tiitu Takalo. His own graphic novel, Masks of Anarchy: From Percy Shelley to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, illustrated by Summer McClinton, was published in 2013. He has published widely in academic journals.