Texas A&M University Press The Consortium Texas State Historical Association Press Texas Christian University Press Southern Methodist University Press • University of North Texas Press State House / McWhiney Press • Texas Review Press
FALL & WINTer 2010
Fall and WINTEr 2010
Texas A&M university press consortium 3
Texas A&M University Press
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Texas State Historical Association Press
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Texas Christian University Press
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University of North Texas Press
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State House Press / McWhiney Foundation Press
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Texas Review Press
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Recently published by Southern Methodist Uni足v er足s i足t y Press
Cover photograph by Klaus Nigge from Whooping Crane: Images from the Wild (See page 3)
Photograph by Klaus Nigge
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A stunning photographic celebration of the world’s last self-sustaining wild population of whooping cranes . . .
Whooping Crane Images from the Wild
Klaus Nigge, with an introduction by Krista Schlyer Foreword by George Archibald Approximately 250 wild whooping cranes nest in northern Canada and winter in south Texas, flying 2,500 miles annually between these two distinct havens: the coastal marshes of the Gulf of Mexico and the boreal wilderness on the border of Alberta and the Northwest Territories. Through twists of good fortune, each of these terminal migratory places is protected from human encroachment—by a U.S. national wildlife refuge on the one hand and a Canadian national park on the other. This last remaining natural flock of the species, its numbers small but slowly increasing, has thus become known by the names of its sanctuaries: Aransas–Wood Buffalo. On the flock’s wintering grounds at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, photographer Klaus Nigge has captured the daily activity of a single family over several weeks in two separate years, documenting their life in the salt marshes of the central Texas coast and, in one year, the happy arrival from the north of twin adolescents, itself an unusual event. Then, with the backing of National Geographic magazine, he received unprecedented permission from the Canadian government to photograph the cranes’ summer nesting sites in remote areas of Wood Buffalo National Park. To obtain these unique photographs, he sat in a cleverly constructed blind for six days and nights, watching as a chick hatched and the adults cared for their young. There he witnessed both the peace and the perils of the cranes’ summer haven. In three galleries, each containing portfolios of images of these magnificent birds in their natural habitat, Nigge captures the beauty and essential mystery that have led humans the world over to include cranes in their earliest myths and legends. Additionally, Nigge has written vignettes to accompany each of the portfolios. Krista Schlyer provides an introductory text that affords an overview of crane history. She chronicles the monumental efforts by humans to ensure the survival of the species and has added a profile of Nigge, outlining his extraordinary entry into the world of wild whooping cranes in order to acquire these breathtaking photographs.
“Uniquely in the pages of this book, Klaus Nigge takes us for the first time to the nesting habitat of a pair of whooping cranes and their newborn offspring in the wilderness of northern Canada, and also photographically depicts the lives of that migrating population in their more familiar wintering grounds on the Texas coast. . . . I hope a copy of this remarkable book can become a centerpiece in libraries and schools wherever cranes and humans converge.”—from the Foreword by George Archibald, Cofounder, International Crane Foundation
“Klaus Nigge’s photography captures the rarely seen behavior and astounding grace of whooping cranes. More importantly, it gives voice to the cranes’ continuing struggle for survival.” —Kathy Moran, Senior Editor, Natural History, National Geographic KLAUS NIGGE’s photographs can be seen in the National Geographic Image Collection and on his website, www.nigge.com. He is a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and a former president of the Society of German Nature Photographers (Gesellschaft Deutscher Tierfotografen, GDT). Nigge resides in Luenen, Germany. KRISTA SCHLYER is a Washington D.C.-based photographer and writer whose articles have appeared in National Parks Magazine, Defenders Magazine, and Wildlife Conservation. A member of the International League of Conservation Photographers, her current work documents the disruptions to both animal and human life caused by the construction of the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Whooping Crane 978-1-60344-209-1 cloth $45.00
11x12. 228 pp. 156 color photos. Birding/Ornithology. Photography. Conservation. September
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George P. Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability Jurgen Schmandt An energy tycoon, real estate developer, and philanthropist, George P. Mitchell is also an idealist, a big thinker who gave his time and fortune to the study of sustainability long before it became a household word. Jurgen Schmandt, who has worked for Mitchell for many years, explains and traces the idea of a sustainable society, from its origin in the eighteenth-century concept of the “commons” to its twentieth-century iteration in the 1987 United Nations report “Our Common Future.” He then chronicles Mitchell’s commitment to this idea from the early 1960s, when the focus was on population growth, to today, when climate change and global warming dominate the debate. Mitchell advanced his belief that humankind could create “a balance between economic and ecological well-being” by organizing and hosting conferences, awarding prizes, supporting scholars and scientists, and funding research and publications. He did it at the Aspen Institute, at The Woodlands Conferences, at the National Academy of Sciences, at the Mitchell Center for Sustainable Development, and at the Houston Advanced Research Center. (Paradoxically, he did not always do it in his own energy company.) Documenting one important man’s engagement with one important idea, Schmandt has preserved a significant episode in the ongoing quest to create societies that are “capable of reaching and then sustaining a decent quality of life for their citizens.”
“George Mitchell’s life is a story of America—a place where the children of immigrants who start with nothing can, through great intelligence and hard work, become billionaires. In this book, we learn how the same unique wisdom that Mitchell applied to oil and gas discovery generated his farsighted passion for focusing the best of science on sustainability issues, thereby producing a critical legacy for the future of the world. Read George P. Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability, and be inspired to follow his example.”—Bruce Alberts, President Emeritus, National Academy of Science and Editor-in-Chief, Science Magazine
RELATED INTEREST
JURGEN SCHMANDT is professor emeritus of public affairs in the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished fellow at the Houston Advanced Research Center, where he was formerly the director of the Mitchell Center for Sustainable Development.
Water from Stone The Story of Selah, Bamberger Ranch Preserve Jeffrey Greene 978-1-58544-593-6 cloth $24.95 978-1-60344-063-9 paper $16.95
The Offshore Imperative Shell Oil’s Search for Petroleum in Postwar America Tyler Priest 978-1-58544-568-4 cloth $39.95s 978-1-60344-156-8 paper $27.95s
The Woodlands New Community Development, 1964-1983 George T. Morgan 978-0-89096-306-7 cloth $32.95s
George P. Mitchell and the Idea of Sustainability 978-1-60344-217-6 cloth $32.00
6x9. 192 pp. 24 b&w photos. 15 figs. 5 Apps. Index. Biography. Business History. Sustainability. October
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“Without him, it’s highly unlikely I would have ever been President of the United States.”—George H. W. Bush
Going to Windward A Mosbacher Family Memoir
Robert A. Mosbacher Sr. with James G. McGrath Foreword by George H. W. Bush In a lifetime filled with exhilarating successes, heartbreaking failures, and tragic personal loss, Robert A. Mosbacher Sr. proved himself adept at navigating in calm seas and high winds alike. Whether besting the stiffest of national and international competition in a diverse array of amateur sailing championships over the course of a half century, or helping to chart his candidate’s course across the American political landscape on the way to the White House in 1989, Mosbacher was never one to turn his back on any goal to which he had dedicated himself. Now, in this informative, entertaining, and deftly written memoir composed with the assistance of writer and trusted friend James G. McGrath, Mosbacher chronicles, in his own words, a life well spent. His perspective informed by everything from his father’s meager childhood and remarkable successes as a trader on the New York Curb Exchange to his own three years of service as Secretary of Commerce in George H. W. Bush’s administration, Mosbacher, the grandson of immigrants, possessed a distinctive vantage point on U.S. business and politics. In this volume of tightly woven, lively memories, he takes readers on an unforgettable ride with his father through the New York City of the 1930s, narrates his discovery of a huge natural gas field in the 1950s, and tells of his deepening involvement with the business and political power structures of Texas and the nation, beginning in the 1970s. Along the way, Mosbacher offers insights from family, business, and public life, with stories that engage, charm, and instruct. A must-read for Texas, political, business, and energy historians as well as general readers everywhere, Going to Windward is an American success story that will warm the heart and capture the imagination.
RELATED INTEREST
THE HONORABLE ROBERT A. MOSBACHER SR., U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1989 to 1992, was a trustee for the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and chairman of the Americas Society/Council on the Americas. He served on the boards of the American Petroleum Institute, Texas Commerce Bank, and New York Life Insurance Company and was the founding owner of Houston’s Mosbacher Energy Company. Robert A. Mosbacher Sr. died January 24, 2010. JAMES G. McGRATH, who worked as a writer and editor at the White House from 1991 to 1993, serves as Pres. and Mrs. George H. W. Bush’s media consultant, producing speeches, statements, press events, and video presentations. McGrath also edited a collection of Bush’s speeches and statements, compiling them in Heartbeat: George Bush in His Own Words (Simon & Schuster, 2001). He lives in Houston.
The Leadership of George Bush An Insider’s View of the Forty-first President Roman Popadiuk 978-1-60344-112-4 cloth $30.00
Out of the Shadow George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War Christopher Maynard 978-1-60344-039-4 cloth $34.95s
Ben Love My Life in Texas Commerce Ben F. Love 978-1-60344-049-3 paper $23.95
Going to Windward 978-1-60344-221-3 cloth $30.00 6x9. 336 pp. 68 b&w photos. Index. Autobiography. Business History. American Politics. August
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How Things Really Work Lessons from a Life in Politics
Bill Hobby with Saralee Tiede Bill Hobby has spent most of his life in and around Texas government, including a record eighteen years as the state’s lieutenant governor. His candid recollections about his days in office, as well as his take on what state government should and should not do are part of How Things Really Work: Lessons from a Life in Politics, published by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. “Nostalgia is not my purpose,” Hobby writes in the book’s preface. “But I do hope to convey something of my admiration for the people that I had the honor to work with, the spirit of the times, and a sense of how things actually worked—at least in the legislative process.” His no-holds-barred opinions about everything from partisan politics to efforts to rewrite the Texas Constitution to government wiretaps and the war on drugs are included, as are his memories of working with Texas politicians Ben Ramsey, Dolph Briscoe, Bill Clements, and Ann Richards. Hobby’s years as lieutenant governor coincided with Texas’s transition from a state dependent on oil and agriculture to one with a more diversified economy strengthened by the technology and health care industries. Through it all, Hobby emphasized the need for Texas to make education a priority. He enjoyed the nuts and bolts of the legislative process, especially appropriations and redistricting. “To help people, government has to work,” he says. “Make the system work.”
Distributed for the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin
“Bill Hobby has been a history maker as well as a witness to history. I am grateful that he has preserved his memories and that he has now made them available to us all.”—Former Texas Governor Dolph Briscoe “No one knows more about Texas politics than Bill Hobby, and few people tell better stories. In How Things Really Work, this Texas legend is at his perceptive, funny, and provocative best.” —Historian H. W. Brands
RELATED INTEREST BILL HOBBY served eighteen years as lieutenant governor of Texas. He has taught at the LBJ School for Public Affairs and served as chancellor of the University of Houston System. Former reporter and Hobby chief of staff SARALEE TIEDE is director of communications at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
The Texas Senate, Volume I Republic to Civil War, 1836–1861 Patsy McDonald Spaw 978-0-89096-442-2 cloth $50.00s
The Texas Senate, Volume II Civil War to the Eve of Reform, 1861–1889 Patsy McDonald Spaw 978-0-89096-857-4 cloth $39.95s
John Hill for the State of Texas My Years as Attorney General John L. Hill 978-1-60344-072-1 cloth $35.00
How Things Really Work 978-0-9766697-4-6 cloth $29.95
6x9. 300 pp. 30 b&w illus. Memoir. Business History. Texas History. September
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The Texas Legacy Project Stories of Courage and Conservation
Edited by David Todd and David Weisman Foreword by Carter Smith A city dweller’s vacant lot . . . A rancher’s back forty . . . A hiker’s favorite park . . . When the places that we love are threatened, we can be stirred to action. In Texas, people of all stripes and backgrounds have fought hard to safeguard the places they hold dear. To find and preserve these stories of courage and perseverance, the Conservation History Association of Texas launched the Texas Legacy Project in 1998, traveling thousands of miles to conduct hundreds of interviews with people from all over the state. These remarkable oral histories now reside in an incomparable online and physical archive of video, audio, text, and other materials that record these extraordinary efforts by veteran conservationists and ordinary citizens to preserve the natural legacy of Texas. This book holds stories from more than sixty people who represent a variety of causes, communities, and walks of life—from a West Texas grocer fighting nuclear waste to an Austin lobbyist pressing for green energy. Each speaks from the heart in personal reminiscences and first-hand accounts of battles fought for land and wildlife, for public health, and for a voice in media and politics. These impassioned accounts remind us of the importance of protecting and conserving the natural resources in our own backyards . . . wherever they may be. The Texas Legacy Project is a companion to the interactive website www.texaslegacy.org. Records of the archive are available at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Five dollars of the cost of this book goes to environmentally friendly materials and processes.
“In a state where most of the wildlands are fenced in or marked with signs that say, ‘Keep out,’ The Texas Legacy Project reminds us not only what is at stake but why ‘the open space of democracy’ matters to the souls of all Americans. . . .”—Terry Tempest Williams, author, Finding Beauty in a Broken World
“No student should graduate from a Texas High School without reading this book . . . or even memorizing it.”—Bill Moyers, host, Bill Moyers Journal David Todd is the founder, coordinator, and interviewer for the Conservation History Association of Texas. He has worked as an environmental attorney, environmental donor, and cattle rancher, and has served on the boards of Audubon Texas, the Texas Conservation Alliance, Texas League of Conservation Voters, and Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. David Weisman is the director, cameraman, cataloguer, and video editor for the Conservation History Association of Texas. He has been producing awardwinning educational documentary and non-fiction film and video works since 1982, specializing in issues of social awareness and environmental concern.
RELATED INTEREST
Prairie Time A Blackland Portrait Matt White 978-1-58544-501-1 cloth $19.95
The Book of Texas Bays Jim Blackburn 978-1-58544-339-0 cloth $40.00
Caprock Canyonlands Journeys into the Heart of the Southern Plains, Twentieth Anniversary Edition Dan L. Flores 978-1-60344-180-3 flexbound $24.95
The Texas Legacy Project 978-1-60344-200-8 flexbound $30.00
9x10. 296 pp. 132 color. Map. 2 tables. 2 Apps. Index. Conservation. Biography. Nature. Texas. October
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Available again in paperback
Now available in a Texas A&M Press Edition
On Nature’s Terms
Aquatic and Wetland Plants of the Western Gulf Coast
Contemporary Voices
Edited by Thomas J. Lyon and Peter Stine
Charles D. Stutzenbaker
Outside, where the wind is blowing, we see the world on nature’s terms, and we see that it is severely endangered. Turning inward, we seek a sense of connection with nature that could perhaps help us through the current environmental crisis. In this book, some of the most observant Americans of our day explore these outer and inner worlds in powerful pieces that show the vitality and range of contemporary nature writing. John Hay’s “A Faire Bay,” an original collection of thoughts on the pollution of the Chesapeake, opens the book, and Edward Hoagland’s “A Year as It Turns,” a group of short seasonal pieces that originally appeared as editorials in the New York Times, serves as the conclusion. Some of the other authors represented here include Rick Bass, Marcia Bonta, Charles Bowden, Jean Craighead George, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, and Terry Tempest Williams. Whether swimming with dolphins in the Florida Keys or stalking deer with the mountain lions, these authors experience and reflect on the terms nature sets and the terms we set for nature. With them, we discover the importance of the jack pine in the Boundary Waters, uncover the hidden beauty of Sonoran cacti, explore the very alive world of a Pennsylvania winter, visit the startling silences of the Canadian River Gorge in the Southwest, experience the breathtaking world of life on arctic ice, and view Venus at daybreak from the Grand Canyon. These are stories of place, and of family and friends, both human and nonhuman. They are tales of understanding and coming to terms with the world around us. Number Thirteen: Louise Lindsey Merrick Natural Environment Series THOMAS J. LYON, of Carlsbad, California, edited the journal Western American Literature for over twenty years. He taught at Utah State University and has received awards from the Utah Wilderness Association and Bridgerland Audubon Society.
From the preface: “When the first Spanish and French explorers encountered the western Gulf Coast, they were confronted by an immense and continuous wetland zone that ranged from shallow brackish bays, densely vegetated marshes, and wooded swamps to wet and poorly drained prairies. Early land value assessments were often negative . . . . Today, the original, boundless, and nearly impenetrable wetlands are found in smaller patches, punctuated by levees, ditches, and roadways. There have been major changes in plant distribution and species composition and abundance across the western Gulf Coast.” This book, originally published by Texas Parks & Wildlife Department but unavailable for years, fills a longstanding need for a comprehensive, easy-to-use guide to the aquatic and wetland plants of the Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Brownsville (including all of the Texas coast). Charles D. Stutzenbaker, a retired wildlife biologist, describes the habitat requirements, wildlife values, propagation, and management possibilities for more than 200 plants, which are illustrated by pen-and-ink drawings that accompany habitat and scale photographs for field identification. The plants are arranged by growth characteristics, ranging from free-floating aquatics to shrubs, and each plant occupies a handy, two-page spread. CHARLES D. STUTZENBAKER is now retired from the Parks and Wildlife Department. An authority on wetlands and migratory waterfowl, he is the author of The Mottled Duck and Wildlife Management: Science and Technology. He lives in Port Arthur.
PETER STINE is the author of Survival, a collection of literary essays. He was the editor-in-chief of Witness from 1987 to 2008 and during that time received ten editorial grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
On Nature’s Terms
Aquatic and Wetland Plants of the Western Gulf Coast
978-0-89096-522-1 paper $23.95
978-1-60344-222-0 paper with flaps $40.00
7x10. 224 pp. Bib. Index. Literary Nonfiction. Natural History. Nature Writing. September
81/2x11. 468 pp. 477 b&w photos. Map. 236 line drawings. Glossary. App. Bib. Index. Plants/Botany. Field Guides. Gulf Coast. October
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The Living Waters of Texas Edited by Ken Kramer Photographs by Charles Kruvand Foreword by Andrew Sansom In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand. Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainably (http://www.texaswatermatters.org/). Inside this book: Introduction: the Living Waters of Texas—Ken Kramer Where the First Raindrop Falls—David K. Langford Springing to Life: Keeping the Waters Flowing—Dianne Wassenich Hooked on Rivers—Myron J. Hess Falling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East Texas—Janice Bezanson On the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban Environment—Mary Ellen Whitworth A Taste of the Marsh—Susan Raleigh Kaderka Bays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?—Ben F. Vaughan III Rio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the Desert—Mary E. Kelly Leaving a Water Legacy for Texas—Ann Thomas Hamilton Texas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the Flow—Ken Kramer River Books, sponsored by the River Systems Institute at Texas State University
“When you read this book you are hearing from some of the most influential conservation leaders in Texas about the single most important resource issue of our time: water. They may have been more than a little battered by the Texas water wars but they are unbowed and you can see why.”—Larry McKinney, executive director, Harte Research Institute KEN KRAMER is the director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. He has an extensive record of involvement in water and other environmental issues, serving on advisory committees for state and local agencies. Awarded for his work by the governor of Texas, the Sportsmen Conservationists of Texas, the League of Women Voters, and the Nature Conservancy, he lives in Austin.
RELATED INTEREST
CHARLES KRUVAND is an Austin-based photographer whose work has been featured throughout Texas, including at the Dallas Museum of Natural History, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the McAllen International Art Museum. His photographs are also in the corporate collections of Kodak, Texas Instruments, Frito-Lay, and Citigroup. The San Marcos A River’s Story Jim Kimmel 978-1-58544-542-4 flexbound $24.95
Texas Water Atlas Lawrence E. Estaville 978-1-60344-020-2 flexbound $24.95
Flash Floods in Texas Jonathan Burnett 978-1-58544-590-5 hardcover $35.00
The Living Waters of Texas 978-1-60344-201-5 cloth $30.00
10x11. 164 pp. 102 color. Map. Table. App. Index. Rivers. Conservation. Water. October
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An illustrated guide to Central Texas gardening for the 21st century . . .
Cheryl Hazeltine’s Central Texas Gardener Cheryl Hazeltine For almost thirty years, gardeners from Dallas to San Antonio have come to depend on Cheryl Hazeltine for expert advice on getting the most from their trees, shrubs, yardscapes, flowering plants, and vegetables. Now, in this newly updated edition, lavishly illustrated in color throughout, Cheryl Hazeltine’s Central Texas Gardener brings readers reliable information on what to grow and how to grow it, including the latest tips on organic methods, a few favorite recipes, and helpful websites. Containing a generous sprinkling of sidebars, bulleted lists, and special icons that quickly guide users to pertinent information, this must-have book has the know-how you need for gardening success throughout the heart of the Lone Star State. Critical Praise for Previous Editions:
“An excellent overview to planting in 57 counties . . . .” —Austin American-Statesman “Amateur and seasoned gardeners will benefit . . . .” —Publishers Weekly “This is one you can read from front to back and gain a tremendous amount of knowledge about gardening, both general and regional. The authors’ conversational style and sense of humor will encourage you to linger over it, and you may soon find yourself making time to linger longer in your garden.”—Gardens “A wonderfully informative book for a region of the country with great gardening potential and challenges. . . .”—Current Books on Gardening and Botany
“Cheryl’s hunger for new gardening knowledge and her vast gardening experience make this book rich with invaluable information for Central Texas gardeners and yardeners.” —Doug Welsh, author, Doug Welsh’s Texas Garden Almanac
Number Forty-five: Louise Lindsey Merrick Natural Environment Series
RELATED INTEREST CHERYL HAZELTINE, of Austin, is a gardener and garden writer who has taught in the informal classes program at the University of Texas at Austin. A former landscape designer and consultant, she is the co-author of The Central Texas Gardener (1980) and The New Central Texas Gardener (1999), both published by Texas A&M University Press.
Doug Welsh’s Texas Garden Almanac Doug Welsh 978-1-58544-619-3 flexbound $24.95
Trees, Shrubs, and Vines of the Texas Hill Country A Field Guide, Second Edition Jan Wrede 978-1-60344-188-9 flexbound $24.00
Insects of Texas A Practical Guide David H. Kattes 978-1-60344-082-0 flexbound $27.00
Cheryl Hazeltine’s Central Texas Gardener 978-1-60344-206-0 flexbound $24.95
6x9. 392 pp. 254 color photos. 5 maps. 2 line art. 4 tables. Index. Gardening. November
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What Makes Heirloom Plants So Great? Old-fashioned Treasures to Grow, Eat, and Admire Judy Barrett In this must-have guide to heirloom plants, gardening expert Judy Barrett provides practical information about growing, eating, and enjoying these special plants. Barrett opens What Makes Heirloom Plants so Great? with a conversation about the characteristics of heirloom plants and why their toughness, ease of propagation, and wide variety make them ideal to grow in any garden. Add their occasional oddities, complex flavors and scents, histories, and family stories, and these plants can become as valuable and treasured as a cut-glass bowl or a handmade quilt. Barrett has favorites in every category—from food to flowers, trees, and herbs—and stories to tell about all of them: the headstrong pumpkin; the all-potato diet; the yam van; the porch petunia. In this book, she covers thirty-seven plants or groups of plants (such as annuals or perennials), teaches us why and how to save, store, and share all kinds of seeds from vegetables, flowers, and trees, and provides a primer on self- and cross-pollination. Nutritional information and well-tested recipes appear throughout, presented in Barrett’s signature informal style. This book is written for anyone who has ever clipped an old rose or bit into an heirloom tomato and wanted to know more. Number Forty-one: W. L. Moody Jr. Natural History Series
“Judy Barrett has gardening karma and charisma in spades. . . she conveys, almost subliminally, what it is to be a gardener—a gardener informed by family, memory, and a community of gardeners . . . . Smiles come often while reading this book.”—Cheryl Hazeltine, author of Cheryl Hazeltine’s Central Texas Gardener (Texas A&M University Press, 2010) “. . . a delight to read. Judy shares her experiences and seeds with the reader, as if you were paying a visit to her garden.”—Barbara A. Storz, AgriLife Extension agent for horticulture in Hidalgo County, Texas
RELATED INTEREST
JUDY BARRETT is author of What Can I Do with My Herbs? (Texas A&M University Press, 2009), now in its second printing, and long-time editor and publisher of the organic gardening magazine Homegrown. A frequent speaker at gardening events and conferences, she lives in Taylor, Texas. What Can I Do with My Herbs? How to Grow, Use, and Enjoy These Versatile Plants Judy Barrett 978-1-60344-092-9 flexbound $19.95
Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas Profiles of Organic Farmers and Ranchers across the State Pamela Walker 978-1-60344-107-0 flexbound $23.00
The Garden Lover’s Guide to Houston Eileen Houston 978-1-58544-613-1 paper $19.95
What Makes Heirloom Plants So Great? 978-1-60344-219-0 flexbound $19.95
6x81/2. 144 pp. 36 color. Table. 2 Apps. Index. Organic Gardening/Farming. November
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Seven heroes who received the nation’s highest decoration for bravery . . .
Texas Aggie Medals of Honor Seven Heroes of World War II
James R. Woodall Foreword by James Hollingsworth Every Medal of Honor represents a story of gallantry, courage, and sacrifice. Conceived in the early 1860s, the Medal of Honor, awarded “in the name of the Congress of the United States,” has been presented to 3,467 members of the United States armed forces. Seven of the 464 Medals of Honor awarded during World War II went to Texas Aggies. Author James R. Woodall, a 1950 graduate of Texas A&M University and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, carried out a dedicated search of archives, family collections, and scores of other resources to gather, for the first time, the complete stories of these seven courageous men: • Lloyd Hughes Jr., who completed his critical bombing mission at Ploesti at the cost of his own life; • Thomas Fowler, who continuously exposed himself to enemy fire in order to reconnoiter his unit’s advance, at the same time clearing a path through a minefield, personally capturing enemy combatants, and rendering aid to wounded comrades; • George Keathley, who crawled from foxhole to foxhole while under a vicious enemy barrage, gathering ammunition and rendering aid to the wounded and later leading his platoon in holding off an attack, even as he was bleeding to death from a mortal wound; • Horace Carswell Jr., who took heavy fire while persisting in his bombing attack on a Japanese fleet, then sacrificed his own life by refusing to abandon his damaged aircraft in order to save as many of his crew as possible; • Turney Leonard, who, despite being wounded and under withering fire, moved ahead of his troops to effectively direct anti-tank weaponry and reorganize confused and leaderless infantry units; • Eli Whitely, who charged through enemy mortar and small-arms fire in a fierce houseto-house attack, personally killing nine enemy combatants and capturing twenty-three others while sustaining severe injury; • William Harrell, who, unaided, held off an attack on his lonely command post, killing at least five enemy combatants and sustaining wounds that cost him his right hand.
Number 132: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series
“. . . a one-of-a-kind, scintillating story of seven innocent young Texas Aggies who went off to war and became heroes of the highest order. In a superbly organized and researched effort, Woodall tells their stories with completeness and eloquence.”—Thomas G. Darling ‘54, Major General, USAF (Ret.), Commandant Emeritus
RELATED INTEREST
JAMES R. WOODALL ‘50 holds, among other awards, the Silver Star and three Bronze Stars. Following his tenure as Corps Commandant at Texas A&M University, Colonel Woodall retired from the U.S. Army and presently makes his home in College Station. Texas Aggies Go to War In Service of Their Country, Expanded Edition Henry C. Dethloff 978-1-58544-470-0 cloth $40.00 978-1-60344-077-6 paper $22.50 978-1-60344-191-9 DVD $15.00
Softly Call the Muster The Evolution of a Texas Aggie Tradition John A. Adams Jr 978-0-89096-586-3 paper $12.95
Keepers of the Spirit The Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University, 1876–2001 John A. Adams Jr 978-1-60344-155-1 paper $34.95s 978-1-58544-127-3 Limited Edition $250.00
Texas Aggie Medals of Honor 978-1-60344-204-6 cloth $25.00
6x9. 192 pp. 32 b&w photos. 8 maps. 7 Apps. Bib. Index. Military History. Aggie Books. October
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| texas a&m university press | 13
Every Day a Nightmare
American Pursuit Pilots in the Defense of Java, 1941–1942 William H. Bartsch Foreword by Anthony Weller In December 1941, the War Department sent two transports and a freighter carrying 103 P-40 fighters and their pilots to the Philippines to bolster Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Far East Air Force. They were then diverted to Australia, with new orders to ferry the P-40s to the Philippines from Australia through the Dutch East Indies. But on the same day as the second transport reached its destination on January 12, 1942, the first of the key refueling stops in the East Indies fell to rapidly advancing Japanese forces, resulting in a break in their ferry route and another change in their orders. This time the pilots would fly their aircraft to Java to participate in the desperate Allied defense of that ultimate Japanese objective. Except for the pilots from the Philippines, almost all of the other pilots eventually assigned to the five provisional pursuit squadrons ordered to Java were recent graduates of flying school with just a few hours on the P-40. Only forty-three of them made it to their assigned destination; the rest suffered accidents in Australia, were shot down over Bali and Darwin, or were lost in the sinking of the USS Langley as it carried thirty-two of them to Java. Even those who did reach the secret field on Java wondered if they had been sacrificed for no purpose. As the Japanese air assault intensified daily, the Allied defense collapsed. Only eleven Japanese aircraft fell to the P-40s. Author William H. Bartsch has pored through personal diaries and memoirs of the participants, cross-checking these primary sources against Japanese aerial combat records of the period and supplementing them with official records and other American, Dutch, and Australian accounts. Bartsch’s thorough and meticulous research yields a narrative that situates the Java pursuit pilots’ experiences within the context of the overall strategic situation in the early days of the Pacific theater. Number 131: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series
“Every Day a Nightmare is a gripping account of an almost forgotten campaign of the Second World War. Bartsch’s command of the subject is impressive, and his skill as a first-rate historian is evident on every page. Highly recommended!”—Robert von Maier, Editor-inChief, Global War Studies
RELATED INTEREST WILLIAM H. BARTSCH is the author of Doomed at the Start: American Pursuit Pilots in the Pacific, 1941–1942 (Texas A&M University Press, 1992) and the awardwinning December 8, 1941: MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor (2003). Bartsch, a former United Nations development economist and independent consultant now exclusively researching and writing on the Pacific War, lives in Reston, Virginia.
Doomed at the Start American Pursuit Pilots in the Philippines, 1941–1942 William H. Bartsch 978-0-89096-679-2 paper $29.95s
December 8, 1941 MacArthur’s Pearl Harbor William H. Bartsch 978-1-58544-246-1 cloth $40.00
Hell’s Islands The Untold Story of Guadalcanal Stanley Coleman Jersey 978-1-58544-616-2 cloth $35.00
Every Day a Nightmare 978-1-60344-176-6 cloth $40.00
6x9. 504 pp. 45 b&w photos. 15 tables. 7 Maps. App. Bib. World War II. Military History. October
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New in paperback
New and expanded, now in paperback
Operation PLUM
The Son Tay Raid
The Ill-fated 27th Bombardment Group and the Fight for the Western Pacific
American POWs in Vietnam Were Not Forgotten, Revised Edition
Adrian R. Martin and Larry W. Stephenson
“ . . . a fine tale of a little-known chapter in World War II, complete with maps and excellent black-and-white photos. Martin and Stephenson, the latter the nephew of a 27th pilot, should take particular pride in their thorough research.”—Proceedings “Perhaps no story of World War II is more tragic, ironic, or honorable than that of the 1,209 officers and men of the 27th Bombardment Group (Light), an A-24 dive-bomber unit that reached the Philippine Islands on November 29, 1941, barely three weeks before the attack that plunged the U.S. into World War II.”—Air Power History “Adrian Martin and Larry Stephenson have collaborated to produce an interesting and much-needed examination of the fate of U.S. Army Air Forces fliers trapped in the Philippines during the Japanese invasion of December 1941 . . . the book is an excellent choice for anyone interested in examining the pioneering efforts of West Point graduates in the U.S. Army Air Forces of World War II, or who wishes to analyze firsthand accounts of aerial combat in the Pacific Theater.”—Assembly Number 117: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series ADRIAN R. MARTIN, a retired high school teacher, is the author of three books, including Brothers from Bataan: POWs 1942–1945. He lives in Menasha, Wisconsin. LARRY W. STEPHENSON, the nephew of Capt. Glenwood Stephenson, a participant in Operation PLUM, is the Ford-Webber Professor of Surgery at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. A retired Army colonel, Stephenson also serves as an associate editor of a major medical journal and has written six other books and more than three hundred articles.
Operation PLUM
978-1-60344-019-6 cloth $29.95 978-1-60344-184-1 paper $18.95
6x9. 363 pp. 34 b&w photos. 8 maps. 5 Apps. World War II. Military History. August
John Gargus
In May 1970, aerial photographs revealed what U.S. military intelligence believed was a POW camp near the town of Son Tay, twenty-three miles west of North Vietnam’s capital city. When American officials decided the prisoners were attempting to send signals, they set in motion a daring plan to rescue the more than sixty airmen thought to be held captive. On November 20, a joint group of volunteers from U.S. Army Green Berets and U.S. Air Force Special Operations Forces perfectly executed the raid, only to find the prisoners’ quarters empty; the POWs had been moved to a different location. Initially, the Son Tay raid was a devastating disappointment to the men who risked their lives to carry it out. Many vocal critics labeled it as a spectacular failure of our nation’s intelligence network. However, subsequent events proved that the audacity of the rescue attempt stunned the North Vietnamese, who implemented immediate changes in the treatment of their captives. The operation also restored the prisoners’ faith that their nation had not forgotten them. John Gargus not only participated in the planning phase of the Son Tay rescue, but also flew as a lead navigator for the strike force. This revised edition incorporates the most recent information from raid participants and also includes recent translations of North Vietnamese perspectives. No previous account of this top-secret action has given such a full account or such insight into both the execution and the aftermath of Son Tay. Number 112: Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series JOHN GARGUS retired in 1983 from a twenty-seven-year career in the U.S. Air Force. Inducted into the Air Commando Hall of Fame in 2003, Gargus currently lives in Henderson, Nevada.
The Son Tay Raid 978-1-60344-212-1 paper $22.95
6x9. 368 pp. 23 b&w photos. 18 maps. 11 tables. App. Glossary. Bib. Index. Vietnam War. Military History. October
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| texas a&m university press | 15
A moveable feast . . .
Moctezuma’s Table
Rolando Briseño’s Mexican and Chicano Tablescapes Edited by Norma E. Cantú The table provides the food that sustains physical life. It is also the setting for people to share the fellowship that sustains cultural, community, and political life. In the vision of artist Rolando Briseño, food is a powerful metaphor, a way of understanding how culture nurtures the spirit. When cultures collide—as they inevitably do in borderlands settings—food, its preparation, and the rituals surrounding its consumption can preserve meanings and understandings that might otherwise have been lost to the mainstream social narrative. Briseño’s exhibit, La Mesa de Moctezuma/Moctezuma’s Table, originally hosted by San Antonio’s Instituto Cultural Mexicano and later by the Instituto de México, Montreal, Canada, brings to vivid life the artist’s conception of food as life source, social symbol, and embodiment of meaning. Now, editor Norma E. Cantú has gathered the art, along with the words of fifteen poets, writers, artists, and scholars who reflect in various ways on the layers of interpretation to be derived from Briseño’s works. Their thoughts provide focal points for musings about food, transborder relationships between food and art, personal connections to food, individual works within the exhibit, and the intense and immediate connections among culture, food, and self. Number Seventeen: Rio Grande/Río Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Traditions
“While Briseño’s art work enjoys world recognition, the collection of essays makes the impact and value of his work accessible to all readers . . . places Mexico’s long culinary history as a place/space of global influence.”—Meredith E. Abarca, associate professor of English, University of Texas at El Paso
NORMA E. CANTú is a professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, specializing in Latina/o and Chicana/o literature.
RELATED INTEREST
The art of ROLANDO BRISEñO is held in a number of prestigious collections, including the Brooklyn and Bronx Museums of Art and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D. C. He lives in San Antonio.
Capturing Nature The Cement Sculpture of Dionicio Rodríguez Patsy Pittman Light 978-1-58544-610-0 cloth $30.00
Santa Barraza Artist of the Borderlands Santa C. Barraza 978-0-89096-906-9 cloth $40.00
Voices in the Kitchen Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women Meredith E. Abarca 978-1-58544-477-9 cloth $40.00x 978-1-58544-531-8 paper $19.95s
Moctezuma’s Table 978-1-60344-183-4 cloth $42.00
91/2x10. 200 pp. 52 color paintings. Bib. Index. Art. Borderlands Studies. Foodways. September
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The working hands that powered the oil booms . . .
Oilfield Trash
Life and Labor in the Oil Patch Bobby D. Weaver When the first gusher blew in at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, in 1901, petroleum began to supplant cotton and cattle as the economic engine of the state and region. Very soon, much of the workforce migrated from the cotton field to the oilfield, following the lure of the wealth being created by black gold. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed the development of an oilfield culture, as these workers defined and solidified their position within the region’s social fabric. Over time, the work force grew more professionalized, and technological change attracted a different type of laborer. Bobby D. Weaver grew up and worked in the oil patch. Now, drawing on oral histories supplemented and confirmed by other research, he tells the colorful stories of the workers who actually brought oil wealth to Texas. Drillers, shooters, toolies, pipeliners, teamsters, roustabouts, tank builders, roughnecks . . . each of them played a role in the frenzied, hard-driving lifestyle of the boomtowns that sprouted overnight in association with each major oil discovery. Weaver tracks the differences between company workers and contract workers. He details the work itself and the ethos that surrounds it. He highlights the similarities and differences from one field to another and traces changing aspects of the work over time. Above all, Oilfield Trash captures the unique voices of the laboring people who worked long, hard hours, often risking life and limb to keep the drilling rigs “turning to the right.” Number Twenty-two: Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business History
“In Weaver’s capable hands, the gypsy lives of a nomadic generation of young men unfold on the rigorous stage of drilling fields across the Lone Star state.”—Paul Spellman, author of Spindletop Boom Days
RELATED INTEREST From 1979 to 2002, BOBBY D. WEAVER was a museum professional, serving variously as curator, archivist, and assistant director. Prior to that he worked for more than twenty years in the oilfield and petrochemical industries. Weaver resides in Edmond, Oklahoma.
Wildcatters Texas Independent Oilmen Roger M. Olien and Diana Davids Hinton 978-1-58544-606-3 paper $18.95
Claytie The Roller-Coaster Life of a Texas Wildcatter Mike Cochran 978-1-58544-634-6 cloth $24.95
Spindletop Boom Days Paul N. Spellman 978-0-89096-946-5 cloth $29.95
Oilfield Trash 978-1-60344-205-3 cloth $29.95
6x9. 320 pp. 42 b&w photos. Map. Bib. Index. Labor History. Texas History. Business History. Oil and Gas. October
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| texas a&m university press | 17
New in paperback
Assumed Identities
Maria von Blücher’s Corpus Christi
The Meanings of Race in the Atlantic World
Letters from the South Texas Frontier, 1849-1879
Edited by John D. Garrigus and Christopher Morris Introduction by Franklin W. Knight
With the recent election of the nation’s first African American president— an individual of blended Kenyan and American heritage who spent his formative years in Hawaii and Indonesia—the topic of transnational identity is reaching the forefront of the national consciousness in an unprecedented way. As our society becomes increasingly diverse and intermingled, it is increasingly imperative to understand how race and heritage impact our perceptions of and interactions with each other. Assumed Identities constitutes an important step in this direction. However, “identity is a slippery concept,” say the editors of this instructive volume. This is nowhere more true than in the melting pot of the early trans-Atlantic cultures formed in the colonial New World during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. As the studies in this volume show, during this period in the trans-Atlantic world individuals and groups fashioned their identities but also had identities ascribed to them by surrounding societies. The historians who have contributed to this volume investigate these processes of multiple identity formation, as well as contemporary understandings of them. Originating in the 2007 Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures presented at the University of Texas at Arlington, Assumed Identities: The Meanings of Race in the Atlantic World examines, among other topics, perceptions of racial identity in the Chesapeake community, in Brazil, and in Saint-Domingue (colonial-era Haiti). As the contributors demonstrate, the cultures in which these studies are sited helped define the subjects’ self-perceptions and the ways others related to them. Number Forty-one: Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press
Edited and Annotated by Bruce S. Cheeseman Foreword by Thomas H. Kreneck
“Maria is made of stern stuff. There are enough twists, turns, and reversals of fortune to make an epic. It isn’t too often that nonfiction stories are made into films, but this one ought to be.”—The Dallas Morning News “. . . Cheeseman has given readers a timely, rare glimpse of Corpus Christi’s rough-and-tumble beginnings.”—Corpus Christi Caller-Times “Maria’s letters add a new voice to the story of German Texas immigrants. In addition to being valuable sources of social history, the letters also document the process of language loss and acculturation on the frontier . . . a well-organized, beautifully illustrated resource . . .”—East Texas Historical Review “. . . lends much to our knowledge of early Corpus Christi, Texas, and the frontier experience.”—Journal of the West “This is a fascinating book. Maria von Blücher’s letters are highly informative reading for anyone who is interested in learning about the daily life of a woman and her family in nineteenth-century Texas, particularly from a German perspective. Maria von Blücher’s correspondence can also be viewed as one of the earliest examples of writing produced by a woman who wrote in the German language in Texas. . . a book well worth reading and rereading. . . .”—German-Texan Heritage Society Number Five: Canseco-Keck History Series BRUCE S. CHEESEMAN is former director of the Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur.
JOHN D. GARRIGUS and CHRISTOPHER MORRIS are both associate professors of history at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Assumed Identities
Maria von Blücher’s Corpus Christi
978-1-60344-192-6 cloth $29.95s
978-1-60344-223-7 paper $23.95
6x9. 168 pp. Illus. Index. World History. August
6x9. 320 pp. 20 b&w photos. Map. Chart. Index. Biography. Ethnic Studies. Texas History. Texas Women’s History. Women’s Studies. August
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Holy Ground, Healing Water
Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Springs, Kansas Donald J. Blakeslee
Most people would not consider north central Kansas’ Waconda Lake to be extraordinary. The lake, completed in 1969 by the federal Bureau of Reclamation for flood control, irrigation, and water supply purposes, sits amid a region known—when it is thought of at all—for agriculture and, perhaps to a few, as the home of “The World’s Largest Ball of Twine” (in nearby Cawker City). Yet, to the native people living in this region in the centuries before Anglo incursion, this was a place of great spiritual power and mystic significance. Waconda Spring, now beneath the waters of the lake, was held as sacred, a place where connection with the spirit world was possible. Nearby, a giant snake symbol carved into the earth by native peoples—likely the ancestors of today’s Wichitas—signified a similar place of reverence and totemic power. All that began to change on July 6, 1870, when Charles DeRudio, an officer in the 7th U.S. Cavalry who had served with George Armstrong Custer, purchased a tract on the north bank of the Solomon River—a tract that included Waconda Spring. DeRudio had little regard for the sacred properties of his acreage; instead, he viewed the mineral spring as a way to make money. In Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Springs, Kansas, anthropologist Donald J. Blakeslee traces the usage and attendant meanings of this area, beginning with prehistoric sites dating between AD 1000 and 1250 and continuing to the present day. Addressing all the sites at Waconda Lake, regardless of age or cultural affiliation, Blakeslee tells a dramatic story that looks back from the humdrum present through the romantic haze of the nineteenth century to an older landscape, one that is more wonderful by far than what the modern imagination can conceive. Number Twenty-four: Environmental History Series DONALD J. BLAKESLEE is a professor of anthropology at Wichita State University.
Holy Ground, Healing Water
978-1-60344-210-7 cloth $45.00x 978-1-60344-211-4 paper $22.00s
6x9. 288 pp. 19 b&w photos. 19 maps. 3 tables. Index. Bib. American History. Archaeology. Environmental History. September
The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites Method and Topic
Edited by Clarence R. Geier, Lawrence E. Babits, Douglas D. Scott, and David G. Orr
The recent work of anthropologists, historians, and historical archaeologists has changed the very essence of military history. While once preoccupied with great battles and the generals who commanded the armies and employed the tactics, military history has begun to emphasize the importance of the “common man” for interpreting events. As a result, military historians have begun to see military forces and the people serving in them from different perspectives. The historical archaeology of military sites has encouraged efforts to understand armies as human communities and to address the lives of those who composed them. Tying a group of combatants to the successes and failures of their military commanders leads to a failure to understand such groups as distinct social units and, in some instances, self-supporting societies: structured around a defined social and political hierarchy; regulated by law; needing to be supplied and nurtured; and often at odds with the human community whose lands they occupied, be they those of friend or foe. The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites will afford students, professionals dealing with military sites, and the interested public examples of the latest techniques and proven field methods to aid understanding and conservation of these vital pieces of the world’s heritage. The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites CLARENCE R. GEIER is a professor of anthropology at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. LAWRENCE E. BABITS is a professor of anthropology at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. DOUGLAS D. SCOTT is adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln specializing in nineteenth century military sites archeology and forensic archeology. DAVID G. ORR is an assistant professor of anthropology at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Historical Archaeology of Military Sites 978-1-60344-207-7 hardcover $50.00s
81/2x11. 416 pp. 93 b&w photos. 57 maps. 30 line art. 3 figs. 2 tables. Bib. Index. Archaeology. Military History. References. January
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| texas a&m university press | 19
A study of one of North America’s oldest human burials . . .
The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China
Arch Lake Woman
Physical Anthropology and Geoarchaeology Douglas W. Owlsey, Margaret A. Jodry, Thomas W. Stafford Jr., C. Vance Haynes Jr., and Dennis J. Stafford, et al
Hong Shang and Erik Trinkaus
For more than a century, scientists have returned time and again to the issue of modern human emergence—the when and where of the evolutionary process and the human behavioral and biological dynamics involved.
The Arch Lake human burial site, discovered in 1967 in eastern New Mexico, contains the third-oldest known remains in North America.
The 2003 discovery of a human partial skeleton at Tianyuandong (Tianyuan Cave) excited worldwide interest. The first human skeleton from the region to be directly radiocarbon-dated (to 40,000 years before present), its geological age places it close to the time period during which modern humans became permanently established across the Old World (between 50,000 and 35,000 years ago).
Since its original excavation and removal to Eastern New Mexico University’s Blackwater Draw Museum, the 10,000 radiocarbon-year-old burial has been known only locally. In February 2000 an interdisciplinary team led by Douglas W. Owsley reexamined the osteology, geology, archaeology, and radiocarbon dating of the burial. In this first volume in Peopling of the Americas Publications—released by Texas A&M University Press for the Center for the Study of the First Americans—Arch Lake Woman presents the results of this recent analysis of the skeleton and site.
Through detailed description and interpretation of the most complete early modern human skeleton from eastern Asia, The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China, addresses long-term questions about the ancestry of modern humans in eastern Asia and the nature of the changes in human behavior with the emergence of modern human biology.
In addition to color and black-and-white illustrations, Arch Lake Woman includes extensive tables describing the team’s discoveries and comparing their results with those of other ancient burials.
This book is a detailed, paleontological and paleobiological presentation of this skeleton, its context, and its implications. By providing basic information for this important human fossil, offering inferences concerning the population processes involved in modern human emergence in eastern Eurasia, and by raising questions concerning the adaptations of these early modern human hunter-gatherers, The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China will take its place as a core contribution to the study of modern human emergence.
Peopling of the Americas Publications, published for the Center for the Study of the First Americans DOUGLAS W. OWSLEY, lead investigator for this study, is the division head for physical anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. MARGARET A. JODRY is a Paleoindian archeologist and a senior adjunct scientist in the department of anthropology, National Museum of Natural History in Washington.
Number Fourteen: Texas A&M University Anthropology Series
THOMAS W. STAFFORD JR., of Lafayette, Colorado, is a geochronologist, biogeochemist, and quaternary geologist.
HONG SHANG is an associate professor and associate researcher in the Department of Paleoanthropology, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
C. VANCE HAYNES JR. is a Regents Professor Emeritus specializing in the geochronology of Paleoindian archaeological sites. He resides in Tucson, Arizona.
ERIK TRINKAUS, a prominent paleoanthropologist and expert on Neandertal and early modern human biology, is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
DENNIS J. STANFORD is the head of the division of archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History and director of the Smithsonian’s Paleoindian/Paleoecology Program.
The Early Modern Human from Tianyuan Cave, China
Arch Lake Woman
978-1-60344-177-3 cloth $45.00s
978-1-60344-208-4 cloth $30.00
6x9. 272 pp. 42 b&w, 8 color photos. 3 line art. 3 maps. 40 figs. 54 tables. Bib. Index. Anthropology. Archaeology. July
6x9. 128 pp. 9 color, 7 b&w photos. Map. 9 line art. 26 tables. Bib. Index. Archaeology. Anthropology. November
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Nixon’s SuperSecretaries
Reagan at Westminster
The Last Grand Presidential Reorganization Effort
Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War
Mordecai Lee
The Watergate scandal of 1973 claimed many casualties, political and otherwise. Along with many personal reputations and careers, President Richard Nixon’s bold attempt to achieve a sweeping reorganization of the domestic portion of the executive branch was also pulled into the vortex. Now, Mordecai Lee examines Nixon’s reorganization, finding it notable for two reasons. First, it was sweeping in intent and scope, representing a complete overhaul in the way the president would oversee and implement his domestic agenda. Second, the president instituted the reorganization administratively—by appointment of three “super-secretaries”—without congressional approval. The latter aspect generated ire among some members of Congress, notably Sam Ervin, a previously little-known senator from North Carolina who chaired the Government Operations Committee and, soon after, the Senate’s Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities—known to the public as “the Watergate Committee.” Asserting that Nixon’s reorganization effort represents a significant event in the evolution of the managerial presidency and public administration, Nixon’s Super-Secretaries presents the most comprehensive historical narrative to date concerning this reorganization attempt. The author has utilized previously untapped original and primary sources to provide unprecedented detail on the inner workings, intentions, and ultimate demise of Nixon’s ambitious plan to reorganize the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Joseph V. Hughes Jr. and Holly O. Hughes Series on the Presidency and Leadership MORDECAI LEE is a professor of governmental affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. He is the author of Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916–1933 (Texas A&M University Press, 2006), among other titles.
Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones
President Ronald Reagan’s famous address to the Houses of Parliament is now considered—in its spirit if not in its actual words—to be the initial enunciation of his “Evil Empire” stance. In this important volume by two experienced rhetorical scholars, Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones offer a historical-descriptive treatment that includes both rhetorical analysis and a narrative of the drafting of the speech. They consider Reagan’s focus on “ultimate definition,” “dialectical engagement,” and other rhetorical tools in crafting and presenting the momentous address. They also note the irony of Reagan’s use of Leon Trotsky’s phrase “ash-heap of history” to predict the demise of Communism. Rowland and Jones present three reasons for the importance of this speech. First, it offers new insights into President Reagan himself, through a view of his role in the drafting of the speech as well as the ideas it contains. Second, the speech is an act of rhetorical history, and its analysis helps recover a significant rhetorical artifact. Finally, the address ultimately expresses a rhetorical framework for the Cold War that systematically subverted the narrative, ideology, and values of Marxism. Although initial response to the speech was tepid, Reagan considered it one of his most important addresses, and the hindsight afforded by the fall of Communism a decade later lends validation to that view, the authors suggest. Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War will highly commend itself to students and scholars of rhetoric, the Presidency, and political communication. Library of Presidential Rhetoric ROBERT C. ROWLAND, professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, is the author or coauthor of four books, one of which, Shared Land/Conflicting Identity: Trajectories of Israeli and Palestinian Symbol Use, won the Karlyn Kohrs Campbell Prize in Rhetorical Criticism. JOHN M. JONES, associate professor of communication at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, has focused his research and publication on the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan.
Nixon’s Super-Secretaries 978-1-60344-179-7 cloth $55.00x
6x9. 288 pp. 3 b&w photos. Bib. Index. Presidential Studies. Political Science. September
Reagan at Westminster
978-1-60344-215-2 cloth $40.00x 978-1-60344-216-9 paper $19.95
51/2x81/2. 160 pp. 1 b&w photo. Bib. Index. Presidential Rhetoric. Political Science. American History. November
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White House Politics and the Environment
| texas a&m university press | 21
Also available in an open-access, full-text edition at http://www.hofstra.edu/academics/colleges/hclas/prssty/.
From Votes to Victory
Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush
Winning and Governing the White House in the 21st Century
Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman
Edited by Meena Bose
Presidents and their administrations since the 1960s have become increasingly active in environmental politics, despite their touted lack of expertise and their apparent frequent discomfort with the issue.
This volume examines the challenges of winning the White House and becoming president in the twenty-first century. Beginning with the resources candidates must secure to gain their party’s nomination, continuing through the general election campaign, and concluding with some of the challenges that the victor will face upon taking office, From Votes to Victory presents cogent analysis of the path from campaign to governance.
In White House Politics and the Environment: Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush, Byron W. Daynes and Glen Sussman study the multitude of resources presidents can use in their attempts to set the public agenda. They also provide a framework for considering the environmental direction and impact of U.S. presidents during the last seven decades, permitting an assessment of each president in terms of how his administration either aided or hindered the advancement of environmental issues. Employing four factors—political communication, legislative leadership, administrative actions, and environmental diplomacy—as a matrix for examining the environmental records of the presidents, Daynes and Sussman’s analysis and discussion allow them to sort each of the twelve occupants of the White House included in this study into one of three categories, ranging from less to more environmentally friendly. Environmental leaders and public policy professionals will appreciate White House Politics and the Environment for its thorough and wide-ranging examination of how presidential resources have been brought to bear on environmental issues. Joseph V. Hughes Jr. and Holly O. Hughes Series on the Presidency and Leadership BYRON W. DAYNES, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, was the 2006–2007 William J. Clinton Distinguished Fellow at University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service. GLEN SUSSMAN teaches political science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where he focuses on the presidency and environmental policy.
In focusing on the 2008 presidential race as a case study of twenty-first century presidential campaigns, the volume offers an early assessment of the structural changes that have reshaped presidential elections and governance in recent years. To address these questions about presidential campaigns and governance in the twenty-first century, the contributors met during a one-day symposium at Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency on April 3, 2008. From Votes to Victory: Winning and Governing the White House in the Twenty-first Century will be of interest to students of the American presidency and presidential elections and will be a valuable resource for classroom use as well as scholarly research. Contributors to this volume: Lara M. Brown, Villanova University; Lori Cox Han, Chapman University; David A. Crockett, Trinity University; Diane J. Heith, St. John’s University; Victoria Farrar-Myers, University of Texas at Arlington; Christopher A. Preble, Cato Institute; John C. Fortier, American Enterprise Institute; Timothy J. Ryan, University of Michigan; David Greenberg, Rutgers University; Shirley Anne Warshaw, Gettysburg College MEENA BOSE, the volume editor, holds the Peter S. Kalikow Chair in Presidential Studies at Hofstra University in Long Island, New York. She is the author of Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy: The National Security Decision Making of Eisenhower and Kennedy (Texas A&M University Press, 1998), and other books.
White House Politics and the Environment
From Votes to Victory
978-1-60344-202-2 cloth $45.00x
978-1-60344-227-5 paper $35.00s
978-1-60344-203-9 paper $24.95 6x9. 320 pp. Bib. Index. Presidential Studies. August
6x9. 216 pp. 6 figs. 35 tables. Index. Presidential Studies. Political Science. December
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José Antonio Navarro
In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas David McDonald The first biography to appear in more than a generation on the most influential Tejano leader of the nineteenth century, José Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas fills one of the most glaring gaps in the current historical literature on Texas. The product of a lifetime of research by author David McDonald, this volume is sure to stand as the definitive treatment of Navarro’s life for decades to come. McDonald corrects many long-standing misconceptions concerning Navarro and fleshes out the details of his life in a way no author has done before. Born in San Antonio in 1795, José Antonio Navarro lived through a tumultuous era in Texas history that saw the transitions of Texas from a Spanish colony to a Mexican state, an independent republic, an American state, a Confederate state, and an American state once again. More than just bearing witness to these events, however, José Antonio Navarro helped shape them. He served in the legislatures of Coahuila y Texas, the Republic of Texas, and the state of Texas. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a steadfast defender of the rights of all Tejanos and people of Mexican descent in Texas, ensuring at both the 1836 Consultation that created the Texas Republic and the 1845 drafting of the state constitution after annexation that political rights would not be restricted solely to those with white skin and pure European ancestry. José Antonio Navarro: In Search of the American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Texas is more than just a political biography; it is a story of the American Dream. Navarro and his family worked hard to improve their lives on the Texas frontier, starting with his father, an immigrant from the Mediterranean island of Corsica. Navarro was not only an influential politician, but a successful businessman and rancher. This pattern of improvement continued into the next generation of the family when Navarro’s son Ángel entered Harvard College to study law. José Antonio Navarro was also an early friend of Stephen F. Austin, sharing a vision of Texas with the famed empresario in which both Tejanos and Anglos could thrive. Navarro believed that Texas was a place where peoples of all colors and backgrounds should be able to realize the American Dream. Published with the generous assistance of the Friends of Casa Navarro Number Two: Watson Caufield and Mary Maxwell Arnold Republic of Texas Series
RELATED INTEREST
Peg Leg The Improbable Life of a Texas Hero, Thomas William Ward, 1807–1872 David C. Humphrey 978-0-87611-237-3 cloth $39.95
A Revolution Remembered The Memoirs and Selected Correspondence of Juan N. Seguín Jesús F. de la Teja 978-0-87611-185-7 paper $19.95
“David McDonald does an admirable job of rescuing Navarro from the obscure stereotype he has become for modern Texans, who often know him only as the token Tejano silently present at important events. Instead, Navarro comes to life as an active shaper of the world in which he lives, fighting to protect and promote his family, his community, and all Tejanos. This book should be read by all who wish to understand the true history of Texas.”—Richard B. McCaslin, University of North Texas
DAVID McDONALD is a self-employed historian from San Antonio. He worked for twenty-three years as manager and park historian for the Casa Navarro Historic Site. He translated and co-edited (with Timothy Matovina) Defending Mexican Valor in Texas: The Historical Writings of José Antonio Navarro. He has given presentations on Navarro for various audiences, worked as a translator for the Texas Antiquities Committee, been a consultant for PBS’s American Experience, and given workshops on Spanish paleography. Tejano Epic Essays in Honor of Félix D. Almaráz, Jr Arnoldo De León 978-0-87611-203-8 paper $19.95
José Antonio Navarro
978-0-87611-243-4 cloth $49.95 978-0-87611-244-1 paper $24.95
6x9. 352 pp. 9 maps. 21 drawings and photographs. Index. Biography. Texas History. Mexican American Studies. October
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| texas christian university press | 23
Comanche Sundown A Novel
Jan Reid Comanche Sundown is the story of the great war chief Quanah Parker, a freed slave and cowboy named Bose Ikard, and the women they love. In 1869 Quanah and Bose do their best to kill each other in a brutal fight on horseback in West Texas. But over several years, through the flash and chaos of war and killing they discover that they are friends, not enemies. They change from violent unformed youths into men of courage and decency. The son of the ferocious warrior Nocona and the tragic captive Texan Cynthia Ann Parker, Quanah suffers the wound of being slurred and rejected by many Comanches as someone of impure blood and certain bad luck. When told he cannot marry his youthful love Weckeah, he rides off and joins another band of his people in the canyonlands and plains of the Texas Panhandle. Later, when Quanah has just emerged as a war chief in a daring rout of army cavalry, in defiance of elders and tradition he elopes with Weckeah and leads a following of the wildest Comanche bunch of all. The enslaved son of a white physician, Bose is freed by the Civil War and rides on trail drives of longhorns into New Mexico Territory that are led by the pioneering Charles Goodnight. Bose winds up captured, utilized, and eventually valued by Quanah and his people. That period in young Bose’s life brings him into intoxicating friendship with Quanah’s other wife, To-ha-yea, a Mescalero Apache and born heart-breaker. Comanche Sundown lays out a sprawling and plausible recast of Southwestern history that brings Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Colonel Ranald “Bad Hand” Mackenzie, and General William T. Sherman into one fray. In the tradition of Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man, William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, and Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, Jan Reid’s novel offers a rich blend of historical detail, exquisite eye for the terrain and the animals, and insight into the culture, customs, poetry, and dignity of Native Americans caught up in a desperate fight to survive. JAN REID is a veteran writer-at-large for Texas Monthly and has contributed dozens of articles to Esquire, GQ, Slate, Men’s Journal, Garden & Gun, the New York Times Magazine, and many other leading publications. His highly praised nonfiction books include The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, The Bullet Meant for Me, and Rio Grande. Reid’s first novel, Deerinwater, was published in 1985. Since then, he has devoted time between his many projects and some perilous adventures to the research and crafting of Comanche Sundown. Praised for the versatility of his writing, Reid has won honors that include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, and awards by PEN and the Texas Institute of Letters. Born in Abilene, Texas, Reid grew up in Wichita Falls and for many years has made his home in Austin with his wife, Dorothy Browne.
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Killing Cynthia Ann Charles Brashear 978-0-87565-209-2 cloth $21.50
Woman of the People Benjamin Capps 978-0-87565-195-8 paper $15.95
Kiowa Voices, Volume II Myths, Legends and Folktales Maurice Boyd 978-0-912646-76-3 cloth $39.95
Comanche Sundown 978-0-87565-422-5 cloth $29.95
6x9. 320 pp. Literary Novel. September
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New in the Literary Cities series
Literary Houston Edited by David Theis The fifth in the “Literary Cities” series, Literary Houston gathers together historical and contemporary writing about this Texas city that everyone loves to hate. Rather than organize the pieces chronologically, Editor David Theis has assembled works according to themes such as biography and memoir; visitors; the city itself; events; poetry; and fiction. From Cabeza de la Vaca’s early experiences to the Enron debacle, Theis presents Houston in a new, critical light. After the Battle of San Jacinto, perhaps no one but the Allen brothers, land speculators from New York, could have imagined a city growing on the forlorn banks of Buffalo Bayou. But in what was the city’s first, but certainly not last, work of fiction, they sold their vision of a great city growing in a place that “Nature appears to have Designated . . . for the future Government. It is handsome and beautifully elevated, salubrious and well watered.” Well, Houston is well watered. Undeterred by the mosquitoes and the general swampiness of the land, Houston grew immediately and attracted such pen-in-hand nineteenth-century visitors as Frederick Law Olmstead and Andrew Sweet. The city has been the subject of sometimes appalled, sometimes thrilled commentary by passsers-through ever since; such vistors as H.L. Mencken, Jan Morris, Stanley Crouch, Norman Mailer, Ada Louise Huxtable, and even Simone de Beauvoir have reported on what they found. But it’s in the stories of Houstonians themselves (even the temporary Houstonians) that the city’s reason for being best comes into focus. It’s been a city of driven, ambitious people who often made an early mark here and moved on: Howard Hughes; Barbara Jordan; Walter Cronkite; the two Albert Guerards, father and son; and musicians like Lightnin’ Hopkins, Willie Nelson, and Townes Van Zandt, to name a few. Important writers have grown up here: Donald Barthelme, Vassar Miller, and Rick Bass. Other authors, like prose writers Larry McMurtry, Antonya Nelson, Mary Gaitskill, Phillip Lopate, Rosellen Brown, and Max Apple, and poets Tony Hoagland, Edward Hirsch, and Mark Doty came here to study, teach, and write. The city has fostered a burgeoning writing community outside the university. Lorenzo Thomas, Rich Levy, Daniel Rifenburgh, and numerous others have left their marks on a city that defies easy description.
RELATED INTEREST DAVID THEIS moved to Houston in 1984 to study in the creative writing program at the University of Houston. He then began publishing journalism in Houston City Magazine, The Houstonian, Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, and numerous other publications. In 1989 Theis became a staff writer for the Houston Press where he wrote news, features, and film reviews. In 2002 his novel Rio Ganges was published by Winedale Press. He is currently at work on a second novel. Literary Austin Don Graham 978-0-87565-342-6 cloth $29.50
Literary Dallas Frances Brannen Vick 978-0-87565-382-2 cloth $29.50
Literary El Paso Marcia Hatfield Daudistel 978-0-87565-387-7 cloth $29.50
Literary Houston 978-0-87565-419-5 cloth $32.50
7x10. 544 pp. Index. Literary Studies. Texas Urban History. October
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| texas christian university press | 25
Hill Country Deco
Modernistic Architecture of Central Texas David Bush and Jim Parsons Foreword by Mark Wolfe Using a host of vibrant images, David Bush and Jim Parsons’ Hill Country Deco: Modernistic Architecture of Central Texas captures the essence of the Art Deco style of architecture as represented in the Hill Country of Texas. Hill Country Deco explores how the rich history of these structures collides with progressive notions of historic preservation for remodeling buildings and restoring facades. This collection of historical and modern photographs will encourage a newfound appreciation for Art Deco as seen in Central Texas. The Art Deco style covers a range of buildings, from commercial to residential. The sweeping curves of the Alameda Theater in San Antonio exhibit typical Art Moderne style. The Austin U. S. courthouse brings WPA Deco up to date from the 1940s, and the San Antonio Express-News Building showcases the classic style of what most people today think of as Art Deco. Not only does this book of photography embrace the history of Art Deco, it takes a series of edifices and recognizes the artistic elements and economic purposes of each one. The authors offer insight on architectural preservation while providing an appreciative view of sometimes overlooked corners of Central Texas. Some buildings are obscure and hardly recognizable as what they once were; others were fortunate enough to have their Deco style maintained over the span of decades. Bush and Parsons have made it a personal mission to ensure that the readers of Hill Country Deco will, upon viewing these beautiful buildings, yearn for a road trip to some of these sites to discover Art Deco history for themselves.
RELATED INTEREST
DAVID BUSH was born and raised in New Orleans where his parents and grandparents encouraged his appreciation of historic architecture. He holds a master’s degree in historic preservation from Middle Tennessee State University. Since 1990, he has worked professionally with preservation organizations in Connecticut, Florida, and Texas, spending most of his career with the Galveston Historical Foundation and the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance. With Jim Parsons, he is co-author and co-photographer of the book Houston Deco: Modernistic Architecture of the Texas Coast, released in 2008. JIM PARSONS, a native of Baytown, Texas, puts his lifelong interest in Texas history and architecture to use as director of Greater Houston Preservation Alliance’s Museum of Houston and volunteer chairman of its Walking Tours Program. A freelance writer, editor, and photographer, he lives in Houston.
Early Texas Architecture Gordon Echols 978-0-87565-223-8 cloth $34.95
Inside Texas Culture, Identity and Houses, 1878–1920 Cynthia Brandimarte 978-0-87565-092-0 cloth $60.00
Hill Country Deco 978-0-87565-413-3 cloth $35.00
10x10. 224 pp. 340 color photos. Bib. Index. Architecture. October
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Smurglets Are Everywhere Alan Birkelbach Illustrations by Susan J. Halbower What are Smurglets? Why, Smurglets are little creatures that make friends instantly, enjoy dressing up—and love to hide! Where do you find Smurglets? They’re everywhere! Every page of this fun-filled poetry book is bursting with delight for kids and adults alike. Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach tells you not only where Smurglets come from, but using captivating rhythms, goofy rhymes, and wonderfully made-up words he tells readers from ages five to fifty why Ogres Hate Okra, about what happens when Blob Junior Goes to Camp, and the dire consequences of losing your Galoopa! It’s all wild and wacky! Delightfully illustrated by prize-winning artist Susan Halbower, kids will return again and again to read about, and marvel at, Giggleville, Komodos, and Weldon Wing (The Armpit King!), not to mention all the other creatures and crazy situations. Here’s a goofy excerpt from the poem “What’s on the Menu”:
The wicked witch’s house next door was made of gingerbread. Since people don’t eat sweets as much she used lunch meat instead. What happens next? You’ll have to read to find out! Parents will be reminded of the fun poems they grew up with, the poems they would memorize and then recite again and again. The topics include pizza and dinosaurs and anacondas—plus, wherever you look there’s a Smurglet! While the book might be targeted for five to twelve year-olds, everyone who is a child at heart will find something to enjoy. Teachers will discover this is the new book they have been searching for at story-time and for teaching about poetry. It’s playful, entertaining, easy to read, and easy to memorize. Not too hard to understand, not too grown-up, and not too many pages—it’s the perfect book to get kids to read (and make them giggle.)
Susan J. Halbower has a degree in art from Kenyon College, but she learned to watercolor making books for her three young nephews. From that came a line of cards and stationery, bow wow CARDS, and various design commissions ranging from t-shirts to invitations. She was delighted to have the opportunity to illustrate Alan Birkelbach’s vivid poems, and thanks the many smurglets who guided her in this project, and continue to surprise her.
Smurglets are Everywhere! And soon you’ll see why!
RELATED INTEREST
Alan Birkelbach New and Selected Poems Alan Birkelbach 978-0-87565-340-2 cloth $15.95
The Homeless Christmas Tree Leslie Gordon 978-0-87565-384-6 hardcover $19.95
Alan BirkELbach has been writing poetry since he was twelve years old. In fact, his first poem ever was about his pet raccoon! Since then he has written thousands of poems, mostly about Texas, its towns, its history, and its geography. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Grasslands Review, Borderlands, The Langdon Review, and Concho River Review. He has five collections of poetry: Bone Song, Weighed in the Balances, No Boundaries, New and Selected Poems (the first in the TCU Texas Poet Laureate Series from TCU Press), and Translating the Prairie: Plano, Texas in Words and Pictures. In 2005 Birkelbach was named the poet laureate of Texas.
Texas in Poetry 2 Billy Hill 978-0-87565-267-2 cloth $40.00
Smurglets Are Everywhere 978-0-87565-415-7 hardcover $19.95
7x10. 48 pp. 48 color drawings. Poetry. Young Readers. September
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| texas christian university press | 27
Karla K. Morton
Legacy of the Sacred Harp
New and Selected Poems Karla K. Morton Introduction by Billy Bob Hill
As the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate, Karla K. Morton believes that poetry is everyone’s art, and has carved her place in Texas Letters with this stunning collection. With well-loved titles such as “For Love and Michelangelo,” “The Closer,” “Why God Needs a Shotgun,” “Alamo Coastline,” “Woman in the Pipe Shop,” and “When Texas No Longer Fits in the Glove Box,” Morton’s poetry will take you on a journey; her flowing style sparks memories and stirs emotions. Here’s a short poem, inspired by a talk with her son, words of advice when he first fell in love:
Don’t Be Nervous when you see her. Don’t worry about what you will say, or how you will say it. Just look at her, and wonder how your hand will fit in the small of her back; how many pins it takes to hold up her hair . . . It’s no wonder Morton has been called “one of the more adventurous voices in American poetry . . .” TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series Karla K. Morton’s work has been published in such esteemed literary journals, both electronic and print, as Amarillo Bay, REAL, descant, Langdon Review, New Texas, Illya’s Honey, Borderlands, and Southwestern American Literature. In 2010 Morton has three other new releases: Becoming Superman (Zone Press); Stirring Goldfish (Finishing Line Press); and Names We’ve Never Known (Texas Review Press) in addition to the TCU Press title.
Chloe Webb
Sacred Harp music or shape-note singing is as old as America itself. The term sacred harp refers to the human voice. Brought to this continent by the settlers of Jamestown, this style of singing is also known as “fasola.” In Legacy of the Sacred Harp, author Chloe Webb follows the history of this musical form back four hundred years, and in the process uncovers the harrowing legacy of her Dumas family line. The journey begins in contemporary Texas with an overlooked but historically rich family heirloom, a tattered 1869 edition of The Sacred Harp songbook. Traveling across the South and sifting through undiscovered family history, Webb sets out on a personal quest to reconnect with her ancestors who composed, sang, and lived by the words of Sacred Harp music. Her research irreversibly transforms her rose-colored view of her heritage and brings endearing characters to life as the reality of the effects of slavery on Southern plantation life, the thriving tobacco industry, and the Civil War are revisited through the lens of the Dumas family. Most notably, Webb’s original research unearths the person of Ralph Freeman, freed slave and pastor of a pre-Civil War white Southern church. Wringing history from boxes of keepsakes, lively interviews, dusty archival libraries, and church records, Webb keeps Sacred Harp lyrics ringing in readers’ ears, allowing the poetry to illuminate the lessons and trials of the past. The choral shape-note music of the Sacred Harp whispers to us of the past, of the religious persecution that brought this music to our shores, and how the voices of contemporary Sacred Harp singers still ring out the unchanged lyrics across the South, the music pulling the past into our present. Chloe Webb has been singing all her life, from kindergarten music class, to church soloist, to a short stint as a professional singer, and now in a Fort Worth church choir. An award-winning ASID designer, Webb was more at home in high-rise buildings of Dallas than in one-room country churches with no air conditioning, where she and her husband Doug now spend some of their happiest hours. Now in retirement, Chloe and Doug Webb attend every Sacred Harp singing they can fit into their calendar, traveling from coast to coast.
karla k. morton: New and Selected Poems
Legacy of the Sacred Harp
978-0-87565-414-0 hardcover $15.95
978-0-87565-416-4 paper $20.00
6x9. 96 pp. 1 b&w photo. Poetry. September
6x9. 256 pp. 50 b&w photos. Memoir. American History. Folklore. November
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Birthing a Better Way
12 Secrets for Natural Childbirth Kalena Cook and Margaret Christensen, M.D. Foreword by Christiane Northrup, M.D. Birthing a Better Way: 12 Secrets for Natural Childbirth presents a fresh, proactive, and positive approach to why you may want to consider the safest and most satisfying kind of birth—natural childbirth—especially in these times of overused medical interventions. Kalena Cook, a mother who experienced natural childbirth, and Margaret Christensen, M.D., a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist, have written this much-needed book for expectant mothers and their caregivers, imparting proven safe or “evidence-based” information with compelling narratives. Think of What to Expect in Natural Childbirth meets Chicken Soup for the Natural Birthing Soul! Unlike other books that overwhelm with data, Birthing a Better Way simplifies the best key points. Going beyond actual birth accounts, the authors reveal 12 Secrets which bring confidence in the normal process of birth and inspire you to believe in what your body is beautifully designed to do—a far cry from what is portrayed in the media or from some fear-based conventional medical practices. More than fifty powerful testimonials include healthy mainstream women who answer why they chose natural birth (instead of Pitocin, inductions, epidurals and C-sections), what it was like, and even how it compared to a medicated birth. Six physicians share why they birthed their own children naturally, and not in the hospital. Through Birthing a Better Way, choose whether you want a doctor or a midwife and decide where to birth: in a hospital, birth center, or at home. Get informed about the variety of births such as waterbirths, breech birth, twins, VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean), and using hypnosis. Find out about ways to avoid Pitocin, an induction, or an unnecessary C-section. Discover what is in an epidural and its effects. Know what safe comfort measures truly work and how to overcome fear. Learn what you need to know about ultrasound and nutrition. Approach natural childbirth with a mind-body-spirit stance to strengthen your commitment.
“Through positive birth stories, Birthing a Better Way helps women work out what they want and gain self-confidence.”—Sheila Kitzinger, author of Pregnancy & Childbirth: Choices and Challenges
Number Four: Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series
RELATED INTEREST
Saving Ben A Father’s Story of Autism Dan E. Burns 978-1-57441-269-7 cloth $22.95
See Sam Run A Mother’s Story of Autism Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe 978-1-57441-244-4 cloth $22.95
“Thank you for writing Birthing a Better Way; it’s exactly what we need now. The storytelling model plus expert commentary is perfect. We need this alternative. I love the book and will recommend it to everyone!”—Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom
William & Rosalie A Holocaust Testimony William Schiff 978-1-57441-261-1 paper $12.95
At age 39, KALENA COOK gave birth naturally to a healthy 8 lb., 4 oz. boy with the help of a midwife. The positive and life-changing event inspired her to write about the latest evidence-based research and seek compelling stories from more than fifty interviews with women, doctors, midwives, hospitals, and birth centers. MARGARET CHRISTENSEN, M.D., a board certified obstetrician-gynecologist, currently runs the Christensen Center for Whole Life Health, a holistic outpatient functional medicine practice. She is the mother of four children, all born drug-free. Birthing a Better Way
978-1-57441-297-0 cloth $24.95 978-1-57441-298-7 paper $14.95
6x9. 384 pp. 7 b&w illus. Glossary. Notes. Bib. Index. Pregnancy/Childbirth. Medical Humanities. Literary Nonfiction. August
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| university of north texas press | 29
Out the Summerhill Road A Novel
Jane Roberts Wood From Jane Roberts Wood comes a quietly riveting novel revealing the banal faces of evil in a small East Texas town. In 1946 a young couple is brutally murdered in Cold Springs. And, now, thirty-four years later, the rumor is that Jackson Morris, who had been the only person of interest in the murders, has come home. Or has he? When the four women of the Tuesday bridge club hear this rumor, their responses range from a reckless excitement to a shaky uneasiness. There’s Isabel, compelling and passionate, who foolishly and inexplicably longs to see Jackson, her first love, again while the seemingly innocent Mary Martha prays that the sheriff will put Jackson’s head in a noose. Although the eternally optimistic Sarah looks to the law to determine Jackson’s fate, the fourth woman, an Irish immigrant and a misfit in Cold Springs, is guided by the spirit world, including a cat, in deciding his guilt or innocence. When a second murder occurs after Jackson’s return, Cold Springs reacts with fear and paranoia while the women struggle to protect their friend’s reputation and desperately try to find a murderer.
Praise for the Lucy Richards Trilogy: “It’s a winner!—A real down-to-earth story that keeps you spellbound from page to page.”—Liz Carpenter, former White House press secretary “A truly fine tale of the indomitable human spirit, told in the honest voice of a strong young schoolmarm in early day West Texas.”—Larry L. King, author of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
Praise for Jane Roberts Wood’s Fiction: “A genuine Texas treasure.”—The Dallas Morning News
“Wood’s lively, eccentric characters leap off the page and will live in the reader’s heart long after the book is closed.”—Jean Stapleton, actress
“Wood handles whatever she touches with delicate precision, and leaves an impression, not of bitterness of life, but of the tenderness of the human soul.”—The New Mexican
“Wood has a rare gift for transcending the ordinary and this heartwarming continuation of her earlier novels is no exception. Wood’s narration is seamless and she is especially masterful in creating meaningful characters.”—Publishers Weekly Number Five: Evelyn Oppenheimer Series
RELATED INTEREST
The Train to Estelline Jane Roberts Wood 978-1-57441-078-5 paper $15.95
A Place Called Sweet Shrub Jane Roberts Wood 978-1-57441-079-2 paper $15.95
JANE ROBERTS WOOD is the award winning author of the Lucy Richards trilogy: The Train to Estelline, A Place Called Sweet Shrub, and Dance a Little Longer, as well as Grace and Roseborough, all published in paperback by UNT Press. Wood is a Fellow of both the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities. She and her husband, J. W. “Dub” Wood, live in the horse country of Argyle, Texas, with their two dogs.
Dance a Little Longer Jane Roberts Wood 978-1-57441-080-8 paper $19.95
Out the Summerhill Road 978-1-57441-299-4 cloth $24.95
51/2x81/2. 260 pp. Fiction. October
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Life and Death in the Central Highlands An American Sergeant in the Vietnam War, 1968–1970
James T. Gillam Foreword by Allan R. Millett In 1968 James T. Gillam was a poorly focused college student at Ohio University who was dismissed and then drafted into the Army. Unlike most African-Americans who entered the Army then, he became a Sergeant and an instructor at the Fort McClellan Alabama School of Infantry. In September 1968 he joined the First Battalion, 22nd Regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. Within a month he transformed from an uncertain sergeant—who tried to avoid combat—to an aggressive soldier, killing his first enemy and planning and executing successful ambushes in the jungle. Gillam was a regular point man and occasional tunnel rat who fought below ground, an arena that few people knew about until after the war ended. By January 1970 he had earned a Combat Infantry Badge and been promoted to Staff Sergeant. Then Washington’s politics and military strategy took his battalion to the border of Cambodia. Search-and-destroy missions became longer and deadlier. From January to May his unit hunted and killed the enemy in a series of intense firefights, some of them in close combat. In those months Gillam was shot twice and struck by shrapnel twice. He became a savage, strangling a soldier in hand-to-hand combat inside a lightless tunnel. As his midsummer date to return home approached, Gillam became fiercely determined to come home alive. The ultimate test of that determination came during the Cambodian invasion. On his last night in Cambodia, the enemy got inside the wire of the firebase, and the killing became close range and brutal. Gillam left the Army in June 1970, and within two weeks of his last encounter with death, he was once again a college student and destined to become a university professor. The nightmares and guilt about killing are gone, and so is the callous on his soul. Life and Death in the Central Highlands is a gripping, personal account of one soldier’s war in Vietnam.
“Jim Gillam experienced real combat in his Vietnam tour. His stunning accounts of killing and avoiding being killed ring true.”—Allan R. Millett, author of Semper Fidelis and coauthor of A War to Be Won “[Gillam] looks back on his experiences of Vietnam not solely as a participant in the war, but also with the critical eye of a trained historian.”—Journal of Military History review by James H. Willbanks, author of The Tet Offensive
Number Five: North Texas Military Biography and Memoir Series
RELATED INTEREST JAMES T. GILLAM is professor of history at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. He holds a doctorate in Chinese history from The Ohio State University and has served as editor of the Southeastern Review of Asian Studies. Gillam has published numerous essays for scholarly journals and contributed expert commentary on a History Channel documentary about tunnel warfare.
Rattler One-Seven A Vietnam Helicopter Pilot’s War Story Chuck Gross 978-1-57441-221-5 paper $14.95
The Bridges of Vietnam From the Journals of a U.S. Marine Intelligence Officer Fred L. Edwards 978-1-57441-138-6 paper $18.95
CAP Môt The Story of a Marine Special Forces Unit in Vietnam, 1968–1969 Barry L. Goodson 978-1-57441-004-4 cloth $32.50
Life and Death in the Central Highlands 978-1-57441-292-5 cloth $27.95
6x9. 368 pp. 23 b&w illus., 7 maps. Bib. Index. Vietnam War. Memoir. September
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| university of north texas press | 31
Walls That Speak
The Murals of John Thomas Biggers Olive Jensen Theisen John Thomas Biggers (1924–2001) was one of the most significant African American artists of the twentieth century. He was known for his murals, but also for his drawings, paintings, and lithographs, and was honored by a major travelling retrospective exhibition from 1995 to 1997. He created archetypal imagery that spoke positively to the rich and varied ethnic heritage of African Americans, long before the Civil Rights era drew attention to their African cultural roots. His influence upon other artists was profound, both for the power of his art and as professor and elder statesman to younger generations. Olive Jensen Theisen’s long-time commitment to the art of John Biggers resulted from the serendipitous discovery of an early Biggers mural in a school storeroom in the mid-1980s. Theisen immediately recognized the artist, the work, and its significance. She then set about returning The History of Negro Education in Morris County, Texas to a place of honor and found herself becoming a friend and recorder of John Biggers’s stories and experiences relating to the creation of his other murals too, including Family Unity at Texas Southern University. Containing more than eighty color and black-and-white illustrations, Walls That Speak is a richly illustrated update of the earlier edition published in 1996. The artist completed new murals between its publication and his death in 2001. In addition to the inclusion of the new murals, Theisen has added a chapter on Biggers’s African art collection. The only work exclusively dedicated to his murals, this book will appeal to all those interested in murals or African American art.
“As a result of her friendship with Dr. Biggers, Dr. Theisen clearly has unique access to the works that are now held by the Biggers estate. Her interviews provide a deeply personal insight into the mind of this remarkable man and the symbols he employed in his art.” —R. William McCarter, Regents Professor of Art, University of North Texas
RELATED INTEREST OLIVE JENSEN THEISEN is a long-time art educator living in Frisco, Texas. Theisen has received many awards for her teaching, including being named the Minnie Stephens Piper Professor for Art Education in 1991. Her book on John Thomas Biggers’s lithographs, A Life on Paper, was published by UNT Press in 2006.
A Life on Paper The Drawings and Lithographs of John Thomas Biggers Olive Jensen Theisen 978-1-57441-220-8 cloth $29.95
Charles T. Williams Retrospective, with Friends Diana R. Block 978-1-57441-045-7 paper $25.00
The Performing Set The Broadway Designs of William and Jean Eckart Andrew B. Harris 978-1-57441-212-3 cloth $37.95
Walls That Speak 978-1-57441-289-5 cloth $29.95
81/2x11. 160 pp. 47 color and 38 b&w illus. Notes. Bib. Index. Art. African American Studies. Biography. November
32 | university of north texas press
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www.tamupress.com
Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction
A Bright Soothing Noise
The Johnson-Sims Feud
Romeo and Juliet, West Texas Style
Peter Brown
Bill O’Neal
The title, A Bright Soothing Noise, refers to the sound that fire makes, promising not only warmth and light but also violence and destruction. Brown’s greatest hero is Frank O’Connor, and like O’Connor’s his stories uncover the final bleakness of a national life but in the same moment glow with its promise of love and life and belonging. Brown’s Americans will try almost anything to connect. They tend to drink too much, to drive too fast, are a little too violent in their passions and even a little too religious. Too often they believe, they trust—and then again they don’t, depending not so much on what’s getting proffered as who’s proffering. They are always on the verge of something better. They only want a little more, only a little too much, and while we as readers want with all our hearts for them to get it, we also fear they might.
“This highly entertaining collection of stories has the scenic intensity and quality of Tennessee Williams’s one-act plays. Meet a varied cast of characters in strange settings, and enjoy their provocative and witty company.” —Josip Novakovich, author of April Fool’s Day: A Novel and judge Number Nine: Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction PETER BROWN works as an IT manager for the Harvard University Economics Department. Along with his fiction, he has published translations from Spanish and French and has received support from the PEN America Center and the French Embassy for his work as a translator. The Massachusetts Cultural Council awarded him an artist’s grant in 2006 for his fiction. He also helps edit the journal Salamander and lives in the Boston area.
In the early 1900s, two families in Scurry and Kent counties in West Texas united in a marriage of fourteen-year-old Gladys Johnson to twenty-one-year-old Ed Sims. Billy Johnson, the father, set up Gladys and Ed on a ranch, and the young couple had two daughters. But Gladys was headstrong and willful, and Ed drank too much, and both sought affection outside their marriage. A nasty divorce ensued, and Gladys moved with her girls to her father’s luxurious ranch house, where she soon fell in love with famed Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. When Ed tried to take his daughters for a prearranged Christmas visit in 1916, Gladys and her brother Sid shot him dead on the Snyder square teeming with shoppers. One of the best lawyers in West Texas, Judge Cullen Higgins (son of the old feudist Pink Higgins) managed to win acquittal for both Gladys and Sid. In the tradition of Texas feudists since the 1840s, the Sims family sought revenge. Sims’ son-in-law, Gee McMeans, led an attack in Sweetwater and shot Billy Johnson’s bodyguard, Frank Hamer, twice, while Gladys—by now Mrs. Hamer—fired at another assassin. Hamer shot back, killed McMeans, and was no-billed on the spot by a grand jury watching the shootout through a window. An attempt against Billy Johnson failed, but a three-man team shotgunned the widely respected Cullen Higgins. Texas Rangers and other lawmen caught one of the assassins, extracted a confession, and then prompted his “suicide” in a Sweetwater jail cell. Number Nine: A.C. Greene Series BILL O’NEAL is the author of more than twenty-five books, including The Johnson County War (2005 NOLA Book of the Year), The RegulatorModerator War, Historic Ranches of the Old West, Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters, and Cheyenne, 1867-1903. He is retired from teaching at Panola College.
A Bright Soothing Noise
The Johnson-Sims Feud
978-1-57441-291-8 paper $14.95
978-1-57441-290-1 cloth $24.95
51/2x81/2. 256 pp. Collection of Short Fiction. November
6x9. 224 pp. 60 b&w illus. Notes. Texas History. Western History. Southern History. August
www.tamupress.com
| university of north texas press | 33
Written in Blood
Savage Frontier
The History of Fort Worth’s Fallen Lawmen, Volume 1, 1861–1909
Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, Volume IV, 1842–1845
Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster
In 2009 Fort Worth unveiled an elaborate, million-dollar memorial to its fallen police and firefighters going all the way back to the city’s beginnings in 1873. Fifty-eight of the ninety-five names on the memorial were policemen. Written in Blood is a more inclusive version of that idea because it covers more than just members of the Fort Worth Police Department; it includes men from all branches of local law enforcement who died defending law and order in the early years: policemen, sheriffs, constables, “special officers,” and even a police commissioner. Richard F. Selcer and Kevin S. Foster tell the stories of thirteen of those early lawmen—an unlucky number to be sure. They range from Tarrant County Sheriff John B. York through Fort Worth Police Officer William “Ad” Campbell covering the years from 1861 to 1909. York was the first local lawman to die—in a street fight. Campbell was last in this era— shot-gunned in the back while walking his beat in Hell’s Half-Acre. Co-authors Selcer and Foster bring academic credentials and “street cred” to the story, explaining how policemen got (and kept) their jobs, what special officers were, and the working relationship between the city marshal’s boys and the sheriff’s boys. “Written in Blood is quite detailed in its account of the histories and personal lives of the law officers involved and the persons accused of gunning them down, as well as the ensuing trials.”—Robert K. DeArment, author of Bat Masterson and Alias Frank Canton RICHARD F. SELCER is the author of Fort Worth Characters (UNT Press) and Hell’s Half-Acre: The Life and Legend of a Red-Light District. He resides in Fort Worth. KEVIN S. FOSTER has been a Fort Worth police officer for 29 years and a sergeant for more than 21 years. He lives in Weatherford, Texas.
Written in Blood
Stephen L. Moore
This fourth and final volume of the Savage Frontier series completes the history of the Texas Rangers and frontier warfare in the Republic of Texas era. During this period of time, fabled Captain John Coffee Hays and his small band of Rangers were often the only government-authorized frontier fighters employed to keep the peace. Author Stephen L. Moore covers the assembly of Texan forces to repel two Mexican incursions during 1842, the Vasquez and Woll invasions. This volume covers the resulting battle at Salado Creek, the defeat of Dawson’s men, and a skirmish at Hondo Creek near San Antonio. Texas Rangers also played a role in the ill-fated Somervell and Mier expeditions. By 1844, Captain Hays’ Rangers had forever changed the nature of frontier warfare with the use of the Colt five-shooter repeating pistol. This new weapon allowed his men to remain on horseback and keep up a continuous and deadly fire in the face of overwhelming odds, especially at Walker’s Creek. Through extensive use of primary military documents and first-person accounts, Moore sets the record straight on some of Jack Hays’ lesser-known Comanche encounters. “Moore’s fourth and final volume of the Savage Frontier series contains many compelling battle narratives, but there is a wealth of social as well as military history lurking in these chapters. No one who is interested in the people and the problems of the Texas Republic can afford to leave these pages unread.”—James E. Crisp, coauthor of How Did Davy Die? And Why Do We Care So Much? STEPHEN L. MOORE is a sixth-generation Texan and author of volumes 1, 2, and 3 of Savage Frontier: Rangers, Riflemen, and Indian Wars in Texas, covering the years 1835–37, 1838–39, and 1840–41. He is also the author of several other titles, including Eighteen Minutes: The Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Independence Campaign and Taming Texas: Captain William T. Sadler’s Lone Star Service.
Savage Frontier
978-1-57441-295-6 cloth $39.95 978-1-57441-296-3 paper $16.95
978-1-57441-293-2 cloth $34.95 978-1-57441-294-9 paper $19.95
6x9. 392 pp. 51 b&w illus. Notes Texas History. Western History. Biography. October
51/2x81/2. 288 pp. 24 b&w illus. 5 maps. Texas History. Southern History. Western History. Military History. September
34 | university of north texas press
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New in paperback
Charreada
Always for the Underdog
Mexican Rodeo in Texas
Leather Britches Smith and the Grabow War
Al Rendon
Keagan LeJeune
Louisiana’s Neutral Strip, an area of pine forests, squats between the Calcasieu and Sabine Rivers on the border of East Texas. Originally a lawless buffer zone between Spain and the United States, its hardy residents formed tight-knit communities for protection and developed a reliance on self, kin, and neighbor. In the early 1900s, the timber boom sliced through the forests and disrupted these dense communities. Mill towns sprang up, and the promise of money lured land speculators, timber workers, unionists, and a host of other characters, such as the outlaw Leather Britches Smith. That moment continues to shape the place’s cultural consciousness, and people today fashion a lore connected to this time. In a fascinating exploration of the region, Keagan LeJeune unveils the legend of Leather Britches, paralleling the stages of the outlaw’s life to the Neutral Strip’s formation. LeJeune retells each stage of Smith’s life: his notorious past, his audacious deeds of robbery and even generosity, his rumored connection to a local union strike—the Grabow War—significant in the annals of labor history, and his eventual death. As the outlaw’s life vividly unfolds, Always for the Underdog also reveals the area’s history and cultural landscape. Often using the particulars of one small town as a representative example, the book explores how the region remembers and reinterprets the past in order to navigate a world changing rapidly.
San Antonio photographer Al Rendon has captured the story of El Charro, or man on horseback, as well as women, charras, in Charreada: Mexican Rodeo in Texas. Rodeo life, riding and roping maneuvers, and elaborate riding formations all come to life in seventy-three beautiful duotone photographs. The essays, by F. E. Abernethy, Bryan Woolley, and Julia Hambric, describe the history of the charreada and its roots in Mexican culture. Hambric’s essay also details the costumes and events prescribed by tradition and the Federacion Nacional de Charro. “Al Rendon . . . captures the pageantry of the charreada in grand, voluptuous still lifes—particularly . . . the ‘Escaramuza Charra,’ the female form of the charreada. Shot with a wide lens, the synchronized riding drills are painterly, ethereal portraits of the charras.”—Shermakaye Bass, Austin-American Statesman “The unique character of Mexican-style rodeo is deftly explained and well illustrated in this work.”—Dallas Morning News “Unlike other rodeos, the events focus on style rather than speed . . . There are no barrel races or bronco riding, but plenty of thrills keep the spectators on the edge of their seats with charros leaping onto the backs of charging mares and tailing the bulls.”—Cowboys & Indians
Number Twenty-three: Texas Folklore Society Extra Book KEAGAN LeJEUNE is Professor of English and Folklore at McNeese State University. Born in Louisiana, he has studied and traveled Louisiana’s Neutral Strip for more than a decade and has completed an annotated bibliography of research on the region. LeJeune has served as President of the Louisiana Folklore Society. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Number Fifty-nine: Publication of the Texas Folklore Society AL RENDON is the owner of Rendon Photography & Fine Art in San Antonio. His images have appeared in Newsweek, USA Today, Texas Monthly, and numerous other books and magazines.
Always for the Underdog
Charreada
978-1-57441-288-8 cloth $29.95
978-1-57441-302-1 paper $19.95
6x9. 304 pp. 22 b&w illus. Map. Folklore. Southern History. Texas History. December
9x9. 120 pp. 73 duotone photos. Photography. Mexican American Studies. Texas Folklore. Sports. November
www.tamupress.com
| university of north texas press | 35
New in paperback
New in paperback
Queen of the Confederacy
Spartan Band
Burnett’s 13th Texas Cavalry in the Civil War
The Innocent Deceits of Lucy Holcombe Pickens
Thomas Reid
Elizabeth Wittenmyer Lewis
“Submissiveness is not my role, but certain platitudes on certain occasions are among the innocent deceits of the sex.” A strong character with a fervent belief in woman’s changing place, Lucy Holcombe Pickens (1832-1899) was not content to live the life of a typical nineteenth-century Southern belle. Feeling that “a woman with wealth or prestige garnered from her husband’s position could attain great power,” she married Francis Wilkinson Pickens, soon to be the secessionist governor of South Carolina on the eve of the Civil War. Lucy urged Pickens to accept a diplomatic mission to the court of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Upon returning to the States, she became First Lady of South Carolina just in time to encourage a Confederate unit named in her honor (The Holcombe Legion) off to war. This is the story of the only woman to have her face engraved on Confederate paper currency. “Lucy has been rescued by Elizabeth Lewis’s diligent research and devoted writing. Lewis captures the essence of Lucy—her hauteur, independence, flirtations (including Tsar Alexander II), courage, and patriotism—and so reveals much about Rebel society.”—Frank E. Vandiver “Queen of the Confederacy is a highly readable account of one woman’s view of Civil War events and is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on women and the Civil War.”—North Carolina Historical Review ELIZABETH WITTENMYER LEWIS graduated from Jefferson Medical School with an RN and served as first lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps in World War II. She married a Southerner and spent most of her life in Virginia, Florida, Missouri, and Texas.
In Spartan Band (coined from a chaplain’s eulogistic poem) author Thomas Reid traces the Civil War history of the 13th Texas Cavalry, a unit drawn from eleven counties in East Texas. The cavalry regiment organized in the spring of 1862 but was ordered to dismount once in Arkansas. The regiment gradually evolved into a tough, well-trained unit during action at Lake Providence, Fort De Russy, Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, and Jenkins’ Ferry, as part of Maj. Gen. John G. Walker’s Texas division in the TransMississippi Department. “The hard-marching, hard-fighting soldiers of the 13th Texas Cavalry helped make Walker’s Greyhound Division famous, and their story comes to life through Thomas Reid’s exhaustive research and entertaining writing style. This book should serve as a model for Civil War regimental histories.”—Terry L. Jones, author of Lee’s Tigers “A splendidly crafted account . . . . Regimental histories in the TransMississippi theatre are rare, and thoroughly researched well-written efforts are rarer still. This volume is among the best.”—Civil War Book Review “Reid has written the definitive history of the 13th Texas Cavalry. . . . More than 100 individuals, Reid tells us in the preface, furnished him with diaries, letters, photos and accounts of family traditions. The upshot is a history of the 13th Texas Cavalry that might have been written by one of the veterans of the regiment.”—Civil War News Number Nine: War and the Southwest THOMAS REID teaches history at Lamar University, where he received his Master of Arts degree. Formerly an employee of the Department of the Army, he served six years on active duty and sixteen in the Army Reserve. He lives in Woodville, Texas.
Queen of the Confederacy
Spartan Band
978-1-57441-300-7 paper $19.95
978-1-57441-301-4 paper $19.95
6x9. 288 pp. 25 b&w photos. Notes. Biography. Southern History. Civil War. Women’s Studies. September
6x9. 256 pp. 7 b&w photos. 8 maps. Notes. Civil War. Texas History. Military History. August
36 | state house
/ mcwhiney foundation press |
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Love and War
The Civil War Letters and Medicinal Book of Augustus V. Ball Edited by Donald S. Frazier and Andrew Hillhouse Translated by Anne Ball Ryals Introduction by Donald S. Frazier Love and War: The Civil War Letters and Medicinal Book of Augustus V. Ball is not a typical Civil War letter collection. Ball’s circumstances and experiences allowed him to glimpse the war through two sets of eyes, that of a loving husband, and of an increasingly disillusioned physician. The inclusion of Ball’s medicinal recipe book is the first of its kind to appear in print completely annotated. Readers will find themselves not only sympathetic to the struggles of one newlywed couple, but educated about the medical and herbal lore of that era. During the war, Ball and his wife, Argent, managed to stay in contact, not only with each other, but with their various friends and family throughout the South. Ball’s letters home give an account of one man’s experiences in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the Civil War with the Twenty-third Texas Cavalry, and later with McMahan’s Light Artillery Battery. The mail he and his wife received from others gives a cross-section of the Southern experience in general. DONALD S. FRAZIER is Professor of History at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. He is the award-winning author of three books on the Civil War, including Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest; Cottonclads! The Battle of Galveston and the Defense of the Texas Coast; and Fire in the Cane Field: The Federal Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861–January 1863. His other work includes serving as co-author of Frontier Texas, Historic Abilene, The Texas You Expect, Abilene Landmarks, as well as general editor of The United States and Mexico at War. ANDREW HILLHOUSE, is a recent graduate of the University of Missouri in Columbia with a Ph.D. in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, where he sought to determine genetic and hormonal factors that contribute to Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
ANNE BALL RYALS trained at the Dental School, University of Alabama–Birmingham, she taught dental assistanting in the first accredited school for dental assistants in the United States, located in the vocational department of the Birmingham School System. She received her masters degree in elementary education and taught at Maxwell Air Force Base until retirement.
RELATED INTEREST
Fire in the Cane Field The Federal Invasion of Louisiana and Texas, January 1861–January 1863 Donald S. Frazier 978-1-933337-36-4 cloth $39.95
20 Good Reasons to Study the Civil War John C. Waugh 978-1-893114-46-3 paper $12.95
The Civil War A Concise Account by a Noted Southern Historian Grady McWhiney 978-1-893114-49-4 paper $12.95
Love and War 978-1-933337-42-5 cloth $59.95
6x9. 608 pp. 21 maps, 41 b&w photos, 20 illustrations. Bib. Index. Civil War. Letters. Civil War/Reconstruction. Military History. June
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| texas review press / sam houston state university | 37
From the winner of five Pushcart Prizes . . .
Rivers Last Longer Richard Burgin As teenagers in Brookline, Massachusetts, Barry and Elliot were best friends, sharing their passions for sports, music, movies, and girls, as well as their dreams of literary fame. Years later, when it appears Barry’s mother will inherit over a million dollars, the friends start planning a literary magazine to jumpstart their careers, only to bitterly fight once the inheritance finally arrives. For six years they don’t see or speak to each other. When they finally reunite in New York, Elliot is a struggling writer with a dead-end teaching job in Philadelphia, and Barry is a millionaire offering Elliot a free apartment where his deceased mother used to live. The friends decide to finally do the magazine they planned and seem ready to conquer the literary world, but Barry has a terrible secret and a terrifying double life that threatens to destroy not only their magazine but the woman they both fall in love with. At once a highly suspenseful psychological thriller and an ambitious literary work told from multiple points of view, Rivers Last Longer takes its turns, sometimes satirically, through the New York literary, art, and film worlds as it tells its story of friendship, ambition, murder, and love.
Praise for Richard Burgin: “Without showiness or fuss, Burgin writes gorgeous evocative prose.... A writer at once elegant and disturbing, Burgin is one of our finest artists of love at its most desperate”—The Chicago Tribune “The motley psyches in Mr. Burgin’s gallery expose themselves in eerily funny monolgues. . . . But it is not their strangeness alone that fascinates. . . . Rather it is the way they twist messages from a saner world to fit their peculiar neuroses. And that is why Mr. Burgin’s stories are so dexterous. In them, he has paused near a border; shifting his weight nervously, sizing up the wild, surrealistic landscape that lies just a few paces ahead” —The New York Times Book Review
RELATED INTEREST
Across the River William Orem 978-1-933896-35-9 paper $16.95
Degenerate George Williams 978-1-933896-34-2 paper $14.95 978-1-933896-41-0 cloth $24.95
Shadow of Violence Daniel Robinson 978-1-933896-47-2 paper $18.95
RICHARD BURGIN is the author of twelve books, including a novel, Ghost Quartet, and six story collections. (A seventh is forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press.) His book The Identity Club: New and Selected Stories was listed by The Times Literary Supplement as one of the Best Books of 2006, and three of his other story collections were listed as Notable Books of the Year by The Philadelphia Inquirer. Five of his stories have won Pushcart Prizes, and others have been reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction 2008, among numerous others. Burgin’s nonfiction books include Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges and Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer. He is the founder and editor of Boulevard, now in its 25th year of publication.
Rivers Last Longer
978-1-933896-45-8 cloth $26.95 978-1-933896-46-5 paper $18.95
6x9. 224 pp. Literary Fiction. October
38 | texas review press
/ sam houston state university |
www.tamupress.com
Poetry, fiction, and art from Texas Death Row inmates.
Texas Death Row
Reflections of a Different World Edited by Jennifer Gauntt, Julia Guthrie, Trina Kowis, H. Dave Lewis, Shana Templeton, Robert Uren, and Linda Wetzel Following on the heels of the highly successful Upon This Chessboard of Nights and Days: Voices from Texas Death Row, which enjoyed international exposure through a Voice of America piece that appeared on television, radio, and the Internet, this sequel introduces readers once again to the world of the inmates who sit on Texas Death Row, awaiting their date with death. The first book focused exclusively on nonfiction prose and art, whereas this second book presents an even greater range of their creative expressions through fiction, poetry, and art. Readers will be amazed to discover the level of talent that resides among these forgotten members of society who do, indeed, live in another world.
Mark Robertson #000992 “When It’s At Your Door” You sit, lay the tax, and wait for nothing— another damp night in the yellow light of cheap bulbs within the gray walls amongst men, killers, who struggle for their lives. “You will be laid into the earth” they say, “Laid by men in linen clothes and white linen hats, For the state doesn’t buy wool.” Hmpf. You sleep at dusk, dawn, night or day. It doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter at all. You have the responsibilities of a rock: just sit and wait till some force comes and holds you sway and makes you cry, like the cold, hard men whom I’ve seen with tears in their eyes. I shouldn’t be surprised.
It drives you mad. It drives you crazy, but you cannot go insane; the sanity is all that keeps you going, when darkness surrounds your day. And when the sleep does not come you just lie there, wearily, wondering when you’ll fly out of your body and into the bliss of night, still wondering if there really is a hell; a place where you’ll burn for the pleasures procured. So you count the tickets of sin, the receipts of your deeds, but you’re always in the red. And you hear the voices prattling all the time, some of god, some of money, some of love gone by, and you think how stupid their conversation is. They argue and scream, making a constant fuss, yet if they are silent, mute and still,
then perhaps, just perhaps, they will become just like you. But do you really fear? Yes, perhaps a little, as the child, who once feared the dark room with the open, closet door, yet as with all trips, as with all fears in time, you learn to learn what’s feared and what’s trite, and you care for neither, for neither care for you, so over you roll, slapping your pillow, looking at the time, hoping your neighbor does not hear, cannot hear, the thoughts within your mind.
RELATED INTEREST The editors of Texas Death Row, Reflections of a Different World were members of the Fall 2009 graduate Editing and Publishing Practicum taught by Paul Ruffin at Sam Houston State University. All are pursuing master’s of arts degrees from SHSU.
Upon this Chessboard of Nights and Days Voices from Texas Death Row Dana Allen, et al 978-1-933896-36-6 paper $26.95
Have a Seat, Please Don Reid 978-1-881515-33-3 paper $20.00
Wanted Historic County Jails of Texas Edward A. Blackburn 978-1-58544-308-6 cloth $39.95
Texas Death Row 978-1-933896-51-9 paper $18.95
6x9. 160 pp. Literary Novel and Short Stories. Criminal Justice. September
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| texas review press / sam houston state university | 39
A new voice in Texas poetry.
Winner of the 2009 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize
Blue Norther and Other Poems
Maker of Shadows
William Bedford Clark
Joshua Coben
These are poems that range in subject and setting from the profane to the sacred. Rooted in the life and culture of the South and Southwest and employing a variety of forms and voices, they address the mysteries of the past, personal and collective, and survey the possibilities and liabilities of the present. Whether conversational or incantatory, each strives to approximate music, in keeping with the author’s insistence that dancer and dance be one.
Maker of Shadows finds regions on the map–Mumbai, Cape Cod, the Midwest, the Middle East–and in the mind where violence alternates with laughter, and despair gives way to desire. Tropical islands soon to be submerged plead for tourists, and Sun Belt cities beckon those who would deny death. Yet these poems find humor and solace in daily life, from irreverent looks at banks, dogs, and gods, to glimpses into the inner lives of a rat exterminator and a father bathing his child. “One of the very best collections ever to grace the Texas Review Press’s series. The poems are wonderfully fresh and closely packed, with a lot of superior music going on. A strong and varied collection.”—X.J. Kennedy
Demographics My Texas town is filled with lean philosophers Who give the University the widest berth They can, and wisely so. They feel the straining earth Wheeze Sein und Zeit as day goes down, know work confers No automatic dignity. The Mexican On the child’s bike who pumps his angling way toward home (A peeled duplex) anticipates the shower and comb That will affirm the baptized grace of errant man. We worry at a tissue of signifiers, And deconstruct the Holocaust as social text: Juan Ramos caught his finger in some stubborn pliers And cursed—will send real money home on Friday next.
“Joshua Coben is a lyric poet of the first order, which means he understands that there are moments when form must be sacrificed to satisfy the demands of language, the only way to achieve the necessary seamlessness of truly accomplished metrical poetry. Whether writing in syllabic, accentual/syllabic, accentual, or in a jazzy modulated free verse, his poems are easy on the ear, and fitting for the interestingly odd take he has in these poems on much of what we take for granted in the world. His subject is no less than the internal and external landscapes of post-modernity, and he is more than up to the task both as a poet and as a trustworthy chronicler of the random dash through space we call our history.”—Bruce Weigl JOSHUA COBEN was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He spent two years in France before moving to Boston, where he lives with his wife and three children and teaches in an elementary school. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, College English, The Evansville Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, and other journals, as well as in Arguing through Literature (McGraw-Hill, 2005).
WILLIAM BEDFORD CLARK is a native Oklahoman who lived in Louisiana, Connecticut, and North Carolina prior to settling in Texas in 1977. A professor of English at Texas A&M University, he has published widely in the field of American literature and is general editor of the Robert Penn Warren Correspondence Project.
Blue Norther and Other Poems
Maker of Shadows
978-1-933896-43-4 paper $14.95
978-1-933896-42-7 paper $14.95
51/2x81/2. 56 pp. Poetry. July
51/2x81/2. 80 pp. Poetry. July
40 | texas review press
/ sam houston state university |
www.tamupress.com
New from the 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate
New from the real-life teacher of Dead Poets’ Society
Names We’ve Never Known
Journeys Sam Pickering
Karla K. Morton
“This is one of my favorite collections of poetry so far—poetry pulled from the heart; poetry of life and love; a rebirth of spirit, of all the magic in life we thought we had lost along the way. This is a discovery of the beauty that lays in wait all around us—in every moment, in every being, in every living thing. This is poetry to open us back up; to give us permission to feel again; emotions deep and real and tangible, whether we name them or not.”—Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate “We should have been prepared for this level of lyrical quality—just based on her Beastie book. But there’s no way we could have anticipated this level of passion, wisdom, and sensitivity. There is a subtext that runs through Karla’s work, an in-the-moment hunger, a realization that yes, all life is fleeting—but look how glorious and rich it can be. She knows how to name things, how to give the most common of items a special magic and meaning. Read the poem ‘Charmer’. The images are all images we know and understand but in Karla’s hands they are transformed into something deeper, they turn into images that transcend the moment. That is what good poetry is supposed to do. And Karla’s poems do it—again and again and again.”—Alan Birkelbach, 2005 Texas State Poet Laureate KARLA K. MORTON, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate, is a graduate of Texas A&M University and a Board Member of the Greater Denton Arts Council. A Betsy Colquitt Award Winner and North Texas Books Awards Finalist, she has been widely published in literary journals, and is the author of Wee Cowrin’ Timorous Beastie (a 17th Century Scottish Epic book/CD), Redefining Beauty (Dos Gatos Press), and Becoming Superman (Rogers Publishing/Wheeler Press). Her upcoming books include Stirring Goldfish (a Sufi poetry book by Finishing Line Press), and the TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series (TCU Press). A native Texan, she has trekked hundreds of miles in her Little Town, Texas Tour, bringing poetry and the arts into schools and communities across her beloved state.
Journeys is a collection of essays in which Sam Pickering mulls traveling. He travels to Nova Scotia and New Zealand. He wanders the South and makes speeches in the Mid-West. He haunts libraries in hopes of stumbling across intriguing oddity. As he meanders he ponders teaching and the natural world, especially the green minutiae of this last. In several essays he explores the classroom. In others he explores matters medical, in them finding the staff of life and humor. Family and age are his closest companions, both bruising him at times but both making him smile. As he ages he wonders about his changing perception of Time, his thoughts bringing delight, however, not melancholy, as befits someone constitutionally happy. SAM PICKERING is a native Tennessean who has spent most of his life in New England. He is also an inveterate wanderer, having spent years in the Mid-East, Britain, Canada, and most recently in Australia and New Zealand. He teaches English at the University of Connecticut and has written more than twenty books and two hundred articles. Years ago a reviewer said that reading Pickering was like “taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend.”
Names We’ve Never Known
Journeys
978-1-933896-39-7 paper $14.95
978-1-933896-49-6 paper $22.95
51/2x81/2. 80 pp. Poetry. July
6x9. 160 pp. Literary Novel. September
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| texas review press / sam houston state university | 41
Winner of the 2009 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize
The Shadow of Violence Daniel Robinson A noir novella set in Depression-era Southern Colorado. Following his release from jail for robbery, the novella’s unnamed narrator drives into Trinidad, Colorado, looking for Ida Rose, the woman who stole the money from him that he had originally stolen. All he wants is his share of the loot, nothing more. For the past few years, he has thought of little besides that money. Like a man at the bottom of a well looking at the light above, that money has been all he could see. He’ll lie and fight for it; he’s willing to kill for it, and he may die because of it. What he wants in life, however, is not what he needs, and his desire for the money may prevent him from finding what he truly needs.
Alone. I had been waiting for her to come to me. When she didn’t, I started the automobile and drove into the darkness ahead, my car lights shining empty tunnels into the night. I had no job, I had left five men dead, and I had a full tank of gas to get me anywhere from Trinidad. Into the darkness of that night I would drive. Within my headlights, skeletal trees momentarily glowed liked bleached bones on the sides of the road, and the borrow ditch remained cast in shadows like a portential thread. I had five thousand dollars in a can of coffee beans on the floorboard of my Model A. That was more money than most town banks held at the time, more money than entire counties in Oklahoma would see in a year. I would have traded it back, most of it at least, had she come with me. Only, I didn’t know that until it was too late. I was the sap.
DANIEL ROBINSON studied in the writing program at the University of Denver. He has published stories in numerous reviews and magazines, and his first novel, After the Fire, was published by The Lyons Press in 2003. That novel was based on his first career—fighting wildfires. Robinson lives with his wife and daughter in Fort Collins, Colorado.
I drove on. The road was wet but not muddy. It had long ago been packed hard as concrete from use, and it was as flat as a washboard. I bumped along that washboard road. I was as happy as a broken heart. —from the book RELATED INTEREST
Rivers Last Longer Richard Burgin 978-1-933896-45-8 cloth $26.95 978-1-933896-46-5 paper $18.95
Degenerate George Williams 978-1-933896-34-2 paper $14.95 978-1-933896-41-0 cloth $24.95
Hog to Hog Jack Smith 978-1-933896-23-6 paper $24.95
the Shadow of Violence 978-1-933896-47-2 paper $18.95
51/2x81/2. 152 pp. Fiction. July
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A powerful memoir of single motherhood and transracial adoption . . .
On the Outskirts of Normal Forging a Family against the Grain Debra Monroe Mired in debt and on the run from a series of broken homes, about-to-be-divorced Debra Monroe pulls up in front of a tumbledown cabin outside a small Texas town. Its isolation—miles from her teaching job in a neighboring city—feels right. She buys the house and ultimately doubles its size as she waits for the call from the adoption agency to tell her she’s going to be a mom. Now in her forties, she is swept into the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by the fact that she’s white and her daughter is black. As Monroe learns to deal with her daughter’s hair and to re-enter the dating scene, all the while coping with her own and her daughter’s major illnesses, they live under the magnified scrutiny of the small, conservative town. Confronting her past in order to make a better life for her daughter, Monroe rebuilds not only a half-ruined cabin in the woods but her sense of what it is that makes a sustainable family. “Having driven across the country to see her brand-new adopted granddaughter, Debra Monroe’s mother says the first thing that comes into her head: ‘I knew she’d be black, but not this black.’ Monroe simply says, ‘Mom, there’s a blank in the baby book called Grandma’s First Words.’ The sly, dry humor of this, the offering of the second chance, the reminder that everything, even the mistakes, will be written down—tells you most of what you need to know about Monroe’s approach to life, and to memoir. Her generosity of spirit never fails her.”—Marion Winik, author of First Comes Love “On the Outskirts of Normal is a modern story for modern times with a generous dose of old-fashioned values at its core. The adoption of a beautiful black baby girl by a white single woman shouldn’t still be news in today’s America, but it is, perhaps especially so in a small Texas town. Told in a voice that is feisty, wise, unsentimental, humorous, candid, and consoling, Debra Monroe’s memoir will entrance its readers, as she struggles to create a whole new conversation about the true meaning of family. This book is both a literary triumph and a triumph of the heart.”—Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of In These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle
“An extraordinarily poignant, powerfully written memoir of one woman’s tenacious journey into strength and unlikely motherhood with its unexpected joys, gathering along the way the brave yet painful knowledge of what love costs.”—Bob Shacochis, National Book Awardwinning author of Easy in the Islands “The high-velocity verve and gripping insight of Debra Monroe’s story is matched in rare form by the level of her compassion.”—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of You and Yours
RELATED INTEREST DEBRA MONROE grew up in Wisconsin and moved to Texas in 1992. She is the author of two collections of stories, The Source of Trouble, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award, and A Wild, Cold State, and two novels, Newfangled and Shambles (Southern Methodist University Press, 2004). She teaches at Texas State University and lives in Austin, Texas.
Shambles A Novel Debra Monroe 978-0-87074-486-0 cloth $22.50
Full Moon at Noontide A Daughter’s Last Goodbye Ann Putnam 978-0-87074-555-3 cloth $22.50
Last Stands Notes from Memory Hilary Masters 978-0-87074-492-1 paper $15.95
On the Outskirts of Normal 978-0-87074-560-7 cloth $22.50
6x9. 248 pp. Memoir. Literary Nonfiction. May
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Star-studded desert tales . . .
One Day the Wind Changed Stories
Tracy Daugherty
“I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time: it includes stories to explain West Texas to me. I don’t mean in the fabled ‘cowboy’ way, but in a more useful way, more honest and brave. Daugherty provides answers to the question, What does geographical isolation do to the human spirit in the post-post cowboy era? The stories create a thoughtful, recursive pattern in which ordinary life is quietly amplified and ordinary objects acquire a kind of totemic quality.”—Cynthia Shearer, author of The Celestial Jukebox The sixteen stories in Tracy Daugherty’s fourth collection of short fiction explore American deserts—real geographical spaces as well as metaphorical areas of emptiness and possibility. The stories are mostly set in the desert Southwest, though the concluding novella, which features a Texas exile, is set in New York City. Several of the stories deal with stars and astronomers; many feature architecture and the built environment. Daugherty’s characters struggle with asthma, night fears, inertia, and the sense of being isolated in a world full of people. In “Very Large Array,” a brief late-night encounter between a solitary New Mexico rancher and a visiting astronomer at the VLA radio telescope installation sparks a meditation on loneliness and isolation. In “Magnitude,” the director of a failing planetarium in north Texas tries to cope with family losses in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, and with his commitments to his patrons—the needy and homeless who use the planetarium for shelter and the schoolchildren who come to the facility for inspiration. In “Bern,” the longest of the stories, a transplanted Texan in New York, working as an architect post-9/11, considers public and private space, as well as unexpected desire, when he encounters a vital young woman on one of his evening walks.
“Daugherty writes loneliness—emotional, spiritual, professional, cultural—as well as anyone alive. The outcasts who populate these intricately layered stories want to know how best to keep on living after 9/11, Katrina, and Oklahoma City. A terrific book.”—Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness “Here is the world and the people who inhabit it brought to us viscerally by a fine writer at the top of his game.”—Laura Kasischke, author of The Life Before Her Eyes
RELATED INTEREST TRACY DAUGHERTY is the author of four novels, three previous short story collections, and a book of personal essays. Hiding Man, his acclaimed biography of Donald Barthelme, was published in 2009. A four-time winner of the Oregon Book Award, he is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at Oregon State University.
The Woman in the Oil Field Stories Tracy Daugherty 978-0-87074-402-0 cloth $22.50 978-0-87074-403-7 paper $12.95
It Takes a Worried Man Stories Tracy Daugherty 978-0-87074-469-3 cloth $22.50
Late in the Standoff Stories and a Novella Tracy Daugherty 978-0-87074-498-3 cloth $22.50
One Day the Wind Changed 978-0-87074-559-1 cloth $22.50
51/2x81/2. 208 pp. Fiction. June
44 | recently published books from southern methodist university press
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A young man’s letters home from the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey . . .
Fiasco
George Clinton Gardner’s Correspondence from the U.S.-Mexico Boundary Survey 1849-1854 Edited by David J. Weber and Jane Lenz Elder “When young George Clinton Gardner was appointed assistant surveyor on the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission in 1849, he began a journey that took him across the tropical Isthmus of Panama, the desert lands of California, the Territory of New Mexico and Texas, and into the political whirlwind of the commission itself. David J. Weber and Jane Lenz Elder have done a remarkable job in presenting Gardner’s letters home to his family in which he complains of the dust in his meals at camp in California, the lack of pretty women in El Paso del Norte, and the unending squabbles of the senior officers of the commission which gravely hindered the survey. This is the inside story of the international survey from a young man who tells it in a straightforward manner not found in any other correspondence. This is a gem; Gardner’s lively letters will be a delight to anyone interested in the history of the Southwest.”—Joseph Werne, author of The Imaginary Line: A History of the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey, 1848-1857 (Texas Christian University Press, 2007) “George Clinton Gardner’s observations about the Southwest are as fresh and vivid as the day he wrote them, thanks to the painstaking work of the editors. Their commentaries help us understand the conflicting personalities and problems that plagued this first boundary survey. This treasure trove of information about the people and places along the border is a valuable addition to the primary sources available to researchers who study early U.S.-Mexican border history.”—Richard Griswold del Castillo, author of The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conquest “A useful primary source, gracefully prepared.”—Benjamin H. Johnson, co-author of Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place Number Six: DeGolyer Library Series
“Masterfully edited and annotated, these personal letters of a young American surveyor paint a detailed and colorful portrait of the men and women, Indians, Mexicans, and Americans of the border region at the moment of its making.”—John Mack Faragher, coauthor of The American West: An Interpretive History
RELATED INTEREST
The author of several prize-winning books on the American Southwest, DAVID J. WEBER directs the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. JANE LENZ ELDER was founding associate director of the Clements Center and is now a theological reference librarian at the Bridwell Library at SMU. Trading in Santa Fe John M. Kingsbury’s Correspondence with James Josiah Webb, 18531861 Jane Lenz Elder and David J. Weber 978-0-87074-390-0 paper $19.95s
Documents of the Coronado Expedition, 1539-1542 Richard and Shirley Cushing Flint 978-0-87074-496-9 cloth $75.00s
New Spain’s Far Northern Frontier Essays on Spain in the American West, 1540–1821 David J. Weber 978-0-87074-280-4 paper $13.95s
Fiasco 978-0-87074-562-1 cloth $50.00s
6x9. 432 pp. 4 maps. 21 b&w illus. Bib. Index. Borderlands Studies. Western History. April
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Fiction debut of linked stories off the beaten path . . .
Cold Snap
Bulgaria Stories Cynthia Morrison Phoel
As in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, place is at the center of Cynthia Morrison Phoel’s debut collection of linked stories. Quirky, remote, and agonizingly intimate, the ragged village of Old Mountain is home to a cast of Bulgarian townsfolk who do daily battle with the heat or the bitter cold, with soul-crushing poverty, with petty disagreements among themselves—all the while attempting to adapt to changing times and keep up with their neighbors. Money is tight in this valley of run-down Communist blocks and crumbling plaster houses, but community is tighter. When a largely unemployed father in “A Good Boy” trades his much-needed summer earnings for a hulking satellite dish, everyone knows about it. The same way everyone knows about the shop lady who rests her finger on the scale to drive up the price of cheese in “Galia.” In “Satisfactory Proof,” a budding mathematician completes a prestigious master’s degree in number theory but fails to recognize the patterns of care and compassion everywhere around him. And in the concluding novella, “Cold Snap,” as the town endures freezing temperatures and waits for the central heat to be turned on, the characters we have already met make a satisfying encore appearance—as the brittle cold pushes them to the edge of reason. “This collection of connected stories is a wonderful trip to Bulgaria. Cynthia Phoel brings together a gallery of characters, portraying them in depth, with a sense of humor and benevolence. Here are the distinctive flavors, melodies, and colors of Bulgaria.”—Josip Novakovich, author of April Fool’s Day “In her tender, moving, and very funny stories, Cynthia Phoel introduces us to an unforgettable cast of characters. Cold Snap offers an enthralling look at life in the forgotten zones of Eastern Europe.”—Katherine Shonk, author of The Red Passport
“An audacious achievement. Phoel’s intricate, moving, altogether original fiction conjures a Bulgaria at once beautifully specific and untethered to the map: a place of hardship, cold weather, satellite TV, and fierce, crooked longings that erupt through the cracks like weeds. Her characters are so stubbornly alive, rendered with such generosity and precision and humor, it seems nothing—neither their small apartments nor their limited prospects, not even the pages of a book—can contain them.”—Robert Cohen, author of Amateur Barbarians
RELATED INTEREST CYNTHIA MORRISON PHOEL served as a Peace Corps volunteer in a Bulgarian town not unlike the one in her stories. She holds degrees from Cornell and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. Her work has appeared in the Missouri Review, Gettysburg Review, and Harvard Review. She lives near Boston with her husband and children.
Mrs. Somebody Somebody Stories Tracy Winn 978-0-87074-554-6 cloth $22.50
God’s Dogs A Novel in Stories Mitch Wieland 978-0-87074-553-9 cloth $22.50
North of the Port Stories Anthony Bukoski 978-0-87074-521-8 cloth $22.50
Cold Snap 978-0-87074-561-4 cloth $22.50
51/2x81/2. 208 pp. Fiction. June
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