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TEXAS BIG RICH by Sandy Sheehy

TEXAS BIG RICH

By

Pub Date: Aug. 17th, 1990
Publisher: Morrow

A Town & Country and Ultra contributing editor offers an overabundance of Texas big-money society profiles, all of which add up to precious little substance. ""Being rich in Texas has always been more fun than being rich anywhere else in the United States because Texans, unfettered by pressures to conform, have felt free to show off with abandon,"" states Sheehy. One feels a shudder of guilty anticipation as she quotes Dallas boutique owner Loretta Blum musing, ""Nowhere else would you put on pink shorts, a lynx coat, a seventeen-carat diamond, and get into a white Rolls-Royce to go to the Safeway."" But a little glitz goes a very long way, as Sheehy moves on to describe lavish costume parties, tacky mansions, half-abandoned leisure resorts in quick, oddly monotonous succession. Though she does point out that the past decade's drop in oil prices has taken the air out of many Lone Star millionaires' sails, Sheehy spends little time on the losers and concentrates instead on the details of stillrich folks' love affairs and scrapes with the law. Fascinating stories do exist behind the facade of the Texas rich: Ed Bass, backer of the experimental biosphere in Arizona, deserves a book in himself, and young Michael Dell of Austin-based Dell Computer embodies the essence of siliconic Wunderkind. Though both men's stories are briefly mentioned here, in general whooping Wild-West stereotypes prevail and little effort is made to dig deeper. Fun fare for die-hard Dallas fans, if rather too adoring for others.