Books about Texas make great last-minute gift options. Here are 10 of our picks.

You hear the aphorism all the time: People want experiences, not things.

Books satisfy both desires.

During this season, I traditionally share some last-minute gift ideas for folks who can't get enough of the state's people, places, culture and history.

All of the following 10 Texas books came out in recent months. A few of these titles have popped up in this column before, but they are worth a second or third mention.

Satire at its sharpest: 'Mr. Texas'

I could not stop giggling. Lawrence Wright's satire, "Mr. Texas" (Knopf), portrays the state's political culture so accurately, one winces with the shock of recognition. A well-meaning West Texas cowboy, considered something of a joke in his community, wins a seat in the state legislature with the help of a sleazy political consultant. What he discovers in Austin is a system so corrupt and convoluted, it might be hard for out-of-staters to credit. Texans know better. Wright has been developing this comic romp for decades. (I saw a stage version decades ago.) As a novel, "Mr. Texas" is expertly populated, textured and paced. He has updated the pointed political and cultural commentary already shared in his nonfiction book, "God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State."

A Texas adventure endures in 'The Madstone'

Elizabeth Crook's sixth historical novel, "The Madstone" (Little, Brown and Company), picks up where her brilliant "The Which Way Tree" left off. I shared these remarks in an Oct. 28 column: "For a few pages, I missed Sam from 'The Which Way Tree.' How could I not? She is a once-in-a-lifetime character. Yet resourceful Benjamin, always trying to do the right thing but caught up with all sorts of flawed characters, grows more and more compelling. Especially as he bonds with a woman on the run from her in-laws, a sadistic East Texas crime family that has not accepted the end of the Civil War." The suspense fanned by this chase across the state will make your heart race.

To understand San Antonio, pick up 'In the Loop'

How the heck did tourism become so important for San Antonio? To find out, read this assiduously researched and carefully written social and economic history. For "In the Loop" (Trinity University Press), David B. Johnson traces the city's development from a Spanish military outpost and mission town into a destination spot for tuberculosis patients and seekers of quaint sights, then later into a manufacturing and distribution center for South Texas. All along, coalitions of the elite Hispanic families, Anglo-American boosters and German-American merchants — later joined by political activists and cultural leaders — jostled to build the infrastructure that would maintain the tourist trade and military posts, while fitfully diversifying the economy and raising the standard of living for residents.

Life in a Texas slave community

For years, historians found it next to impossible to reclaim the stories of ordinary enslaved Americans. So much had been left blank on — or erased from — the public record that, along with enforced illiteracy, any snatches of written or published evidence of everyday life were considered rare indeed. Central Texas teacher and literary leader Joleen Maddox Snider, however, pieced together the lives of an East Texas slave community in "Claiming Sunday" (TCU Press), principally by sorting through the records, especially the letters, of their enslavers, and by consulting their descendants. A revised edition came out in 2022.

History on both sides of the Rio Grande

I've said it before: Mexican history is Texas history. They can't be split apart easily. Paul D. Lack's "Searching for the Republic of the Rio Grande" (Texas Tech University Press) fills in some enormous holes in that shared history. Subtitled "Northern Mexico and Texas, 1838-1940," this straightforward narrative covers the split between federalist and centralist forces in Mexico after the Texas Revolution. Except for some of the Anglo-Texan raids, this attempt to establish an independent Republic of the Rio Grande, and its importance to the Mexican American War, was all news to me.

The underbelly of a city exposed in 'Austin Noir'

At first, I was disappointed that this collection of short stories did not include work by Austin noir king Jesse Sublett. Then I started paging through the paperback to stumble on geographic references that rang with, not just familiarity, but a genuine sense of place. The stories, too, felt true. "Austin Noir" (Akashic Books), edited by Hopeton Hay, Scott Montgomery and Molly Odintz, is part of a vast, global series of site-specific collections that includes "Houston Noir," "Dallas Noir" and "Lone Star Noir." The volume includes a handy map of the story locations.

A century of Texas state parks

At the beginning of 2023, I wrote cheerfully about the 100th anniversary of the Texas state parks system. Readers told me about their most beloved parks. I promised to visit as many as possible. That did not happen. I ducked into a few familiar ones on my way hither and yon, but no big road trips were built around the parks. Hey, at least I wrote several times about George Bristol's essential "Texas State Parks: The First 100 Years, 1923-2023" (TCU Press), which was featured at the Texas Book Festival. It follows the National Parks movement and its manifestations in our state. "This is a biggish book," I wrote. "It includes a full section with glorious photographs of each state park, along with appendices on the sporting-goods-tax campaign and other background material."

If at first you don't secede

Texas has a depressing habit of producing or attracting folks with radical viewpoints and a propensity for violence. Robert Lance McLaren and his Republic of Texas militia were among them. In 1997, they initiated an armed standoff in the Davis Mountains with local law enforcement and Texas Rangers, while holding one couple hostage and demanding the release of two militia members. Author Donna Marie Miller, who did a terrific job with her first book, "The Broken Spoke: Austin's Legendary Honky-Tonk," has unearthed a prodigious amount of background material for "Texas Secessionists Standoff (Texas A&M University Press) in order to flesh out the archival news narrative of this seven-day "war" that will sound all too familiar post-Jan. 6.

Texas Hill Country, the natural way

I go back to these elegant, accessible essays again and again. There's just something so appealing about an accomplished scientist such as David M. Hillis, who can speak and write in way that's open to just about everybody, including the neighbors of his ranch in Mason County. Chief of the Biodiversity Center at the University of Texas, he explains the interplay of the elements in transparent prose in "Armadillos to Ziziphus: A Naturalist in the Texas Hill Country" (University of Texas Press). If I owned a Hill Country cabin, this book would be waiting to delight and inform every guest.

Head to Waco for these historic glories

Hurray for Ken Hafertepe! This Baylor University professor has become a leading advocate for preserving the state's physical past, in part through beautiful books about the historic buildings of Fredericksburg, the material culture of German Texans, and the old residences of Waco. Now he has turned his eye to that city's nonresidential buildings. Boy, do I wish the new "Historic Buildings of Waco, Texas" (Texas A&M University Press) had come out before I spent a few days wandering the city for this column. It will come in handy next time. Yes, superstar fixer-uppers Chip and Joanna Gaines have made Waco a mecca for lovers of old structures, but Hafertepe is providing the scholarly underpinning for this renaissance.

Michael Barnes writes about the people, places, culture and history of Austin and Texas. He can be reached at mbarnes@gannett.com. Sign up for the free weekly digital newsletter, Think, Texas, at statesman.com/newsletters, or at the newsletter page of your local USA Today Network paper.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: 10 books that would please any lover of Texas history, culture, places