This summer, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg ’99 joined Trinity University Press and a host of city leaders at the Center for the Sciences and Innovation to celebrate the release of 300 Years of San Antonio and Bexar County, the official book commemorating San Antonio’s tricentennial. Published by the Press in collaboration with the city’s Tricentennial Commission, this collection of essays memorializes three centuries of history, highlighting cultural diversity at the heart of San Antonio’s founding and beyond. The book is a major centerpiece of the year-long, citywide event observing the legacy of the Alamo City from 1718 to the present.
The project, with dozens of contributors writing about different aspects of the city’s history, posed a unique challenge. “No one author could write a definitive history of San Antonio,” says Tom Payton, director of Trinity University Press. “We decided that a much more effective approach would be to engage a group of 46 writers who represent diverse voices and perspectives, embracing the richness of the city’s story.”
“The book has a thematic approach. It starts to tell the story, but there’s still more to add to the history books about San Antonio and Bexar County,” Nirenberg said at the book’s release event. Topics range from language and immigration to military history and the role of women, all of which convey the city’s large array of cultural identities. Rather than claiming to capture the entire scope of history, the essays taken as a whole provide readers with a springboard for further exploration into the many facets of a collective story. 300 Years of San Antonio and Bexar County encourages readers to become engaged with every slice of San Antonio history and use that knowledge to forge a path for the city’s future.
Georgie Riggs ’19 was a summer intern for Trinity University Press through Trinity’s Arts, Letters, and Enterprise program.
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