San Antonio businessman Red McCombs will visit Southwestern University Oct. 25 to autograph copies of his book, Big Red: Memoirs of a Texas Entrepreneur and Philanthropist. The book signing will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the McCombs Campus Center.

Big Red is based on a series of oral history interviews with Dr. Don Carleton, executive director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin.

The book begins with an account of McCombs’s childhood in the West Texas town of Spur, where he first went into business for himself at the age of ten by selling peanuts to farmworkers. After attending Southwestern and The University of Texas at Austin,  McCombs started selling cars in Corpus Christi and before long was one of the most successful Ford dealers in the country. He moved to San Antonio in 1958 and built a business empire that included automobiles, cattle, oil and gas, broadcasting, insurance, racehorses, motion pictures, real estate, politics and professional sports.

McCombs is the co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, and the Minnesota Vikings, and one of the backers of the Formula One racetrack being built southeast of Austin. He and his wife, Charline, have supported numerous organizations, including Southwestern University, The University of Texas at Austin, and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The Campus Center at Southwestern bears their name, as does the School of Business at UT-Austin.

Big Red was published in 2010 by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and is distributed by The University of Texas Press.