Historian booked for two honors in Texas

Bullion delivers engaging lectures at an unrushed pace and writes history’s stories with literary skills. He loves what he calls “the business of teaching.”

John Bullion, professor, History, has been tapped by Texas State University-San Marcos to play a major role in that institution’s yearlong commemoration of the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Professor John Bullion’s biography of LBJ — Lyndon B. Johnson and the Transformation of American Politics — has been named the central assignment for Common Experience, the 2008 reading program there. As part of the shared reading experience, professors from all academic divisions lead 3,000 freshmen in class discussions on the book.

The selected reading and the seminar classes are mandatory for freshmen, according to Frank de la Teja, State Historian of Texas and chair of Texas State’s history department. The university purchased 2,000 additional books for use in other classes, including an LBJ history course.

In October Bullion will present the annual James Taylor Lecture, Texas State’s most prestigious and oldest public lecture. He will speak on LBJ’s ideas about patriotism: Lyndon B. Johnson and the Last Refuge.

Both the common reading program — now in its fifth year — and the lecture mark LBJ’s 100th birthday. The 36th president of the United States graduated from the Texas university in 1930 with a bachelor’s degree in history and education.

Bullion, who taught at Texas State from 1974 to 1978, says his book is meant to stimulate thought about a man who served as president through some of the most difficult challenges of the 20th century.

In reading Bullion’s LBJ biography, students will examine how Johnson dealt with issues that remain relevant: an unpopular war in Southeast Asia, a troubled domestic economy, poverty, civil rights and relations with European nations, the Soviet Union and China.

"From the students’ standpoint, it (the book) enables them to perceive Johnson's contributions — good, bad and mixed — to the world they live in, while letting them assess him knowledgeably and fairly," Bullion writes in an author's statement.

Bullion wrote the book, published in 2007, for the distinguished Pearson/Longman series Library of American Biography, which is directed at college students.

"The Bullion book came out just as we were contemplating putting together a custom reader that students would work from," de la Teja says. "We found the book to do exactly what we needed in terms of engaging freshmen students and providing coverage of appropriate themes."

Bullion is also the author of a well-received memoir, In the Boat with LBJ, published in 2001. In the Boat details some strategies Bullion's father developed while serving as one of Johnson's tax attorneys and describes the time Bullion spent hunting deer on the LBJ ranch in 1965.

Bullion's invitation to deliver the Taylor Lecture seemed an obvious choice for follow-up to the required reading. "Professor Bullion’s direct experience with LBJ makes his comments more immediate for students," de la Teja says.

Bullion teaches American colonial history and focuses his research on 18th-century British politics and the American Revolution as well as the life and times of Lyndon Johnson. His teaching and writing skills have long been recognized at MU, where, among other honors, he is a 2005 William T. Kemper Fellow, which included a $10,000 prize for teaching excellence.

"John is a well-known and popular lecturer who brings the past to life with accuracy and a sense of humor," says MU history department Chair Jonathan Sperber.

Links:

John Bullion
Department of History

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