John Spong

Widely acclaimed as the greatest Western ever made, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove has become a true American epic. John Spong’s A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Pulitizer Prize-winning novel and the Emmy-winning miniseries. Spong talks to 40 of the key people involved – including author Larry McMurtry; actors Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, D. B. Sweeney, Frederic Forrest, and Chris Cooper; executive producer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff; executive producer Suzanne de Passe; and director Simon Wincer. They and a host of others tell lively stories about McMurtry's writing of the epic novel and the process of turning it into a miniseries. Accompanying their recollections are photographs of iconic props, costumes, set designs, and shooting scripts, and candid photographs and Polaroids taken by Bill Wittliff during filming. Designed as a companion to Witliff’s A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove,A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove is a must-have for every fan of this American epic. Spong, a staff writer at Texas Monthly since 2002, was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2010 and has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters’ O. Henry Award for Magazine Journalism. His stories have been collected in The Best American Sports Writing 2009, Literary Austin, and Rio Grande. He holds a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Spong was featured at the 2007 Texas Book Festival.

At the Festival: A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove (Southwestern The Making of Lonesome Dove Saturday, October 27 Texas State Capitol: Capitol Extension Room E2.010