SOURCE: "Edna Ferber Tells a Big-as-Life Story of Oil-and-Cattle Texas," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, September 28, 1952, p. 1.

In the following favorable review of Giant, Bullock examines Ferber's themes, characterizations, and portrayal of contemporary Texas life.

Edna Ferber does best with a big story: Chicago in its burgeoning youth, the rugged Southwest, life on the Mississippi in show boat days, New England in her period of decline—and now, in Giant, she gives us this big, reluctantly loving portrait of the fabulously rich outsize state of Texas, and the Texians (as Miss Ferber's quick ear hears them calling themselves). Caught up in this very satisfying personal story is all contemporary Texas, with some of its romantic past thrown in to show what lies back of the vigorous, generous, brassily arrogant present and the good and rather different future that Miss Ferber foresees on the way.

In the...