Why Texas is Booming: How Low Taxes & Small Government are Transforming the Lone Star State

"A state like this where you see so much growth and so much change...having a limited government apparatus on top of that and a robust private sector has been really good for us," says Erica Grieder, senior editor of Texas Monthly and author of the book Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas. "For the past 10 to 12 years, every economic metric you look at is better than the country as a whole—is better than what you see in most states—and is also pretty broad-based."