Search results for ""Texas Christian University Press""

Miguel González-Gerth, an esteemed translator, poet, editor, and professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, has been publishing his original English and Spanish poetry since 1946. Born in Mexico City in 1926, González-Gerth moved to the United States in 1940 and made it his permanent home. He received his B.A. from the University of Texas in 1950 and a PhD from Princeton in 1973, and taught at UT for over thirty years.Editor David Colón has compiled a selection of González-Gerth’s poems that demonstrate the range of interests, themes, and styles that span more than a century of a life dedicated to Hispanic literature studies. The poems in this collection are arranged chronologically, exhibiting “the different phases of a poet’s life as well as different historical moments and literary traditions.”Many of the poems appear with side-by-side translation, demonstrating not only the creativity born of a unique cultural perspective, but the profound understanding and commitment to the process of translation, taking a poem through its original written language, rethinking the words, allusions, connotations, and presenting it in a different language and tradition. “He has two guiding principles as a translator of poetry: to keep the languages distinct, and to approach the act of reproduction as an art form itself. In the end, the translation must work on the terms of its own language. It is more important for it to be a successful poem than a faithful copy,” writes Colón in the introduction. Between Day and Night provides a record of González-Gerth’s achievement as a poet and translator, a writer who stays true to the languages and poetic styles of Latin America and Anglo-America, and “work[s] with essentially two minds.”

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Born in a demilitarized zone during the Vietnam War to a Vietnamese mother and American soldier, Sau Le arrived in the United States as a young woman with only twenty dollars in her pocket. Though bullied and abused since childhood, she nevertheless came to her new homeland armed with a commitment to build a decent life for herself, her infant son, and her traumatized mother. This is the story of how she overcame every conceivable hurdle—including significant culture shock, a language barrier, serious illness, heartbreak, and betrayal—to become a landlord, successful business owner, joyous wife and mom and a woman blessed with generous, loyal friends. She describes an arduous journey, both literal and figurative, from a place of terror and utter despair to a life she created that’s overflowing with prosperity, patriotism, and love. And ultimately, it’s the story of hope, something Sau thought she’d lost long ago in the minefields of Vietnam. In telling her story, Sau Le aims to uplift those who worry that their dreams cannot be realized. Her goal is also to remind everyone born on American soil that this is the greatest country on earth, and that anything in this land is possible for those willing to put dedication, faith, and passion to work.

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In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, regional strongmen vied with powerful generals and popular rebels for control of Mexico’s future. During this era of uprisings, government corruption, and political intrigue, Mexico took its first, faltering steps toward democracy. In the midst of the turmoil, plainclothes agents, traveling under multiple aliases and reporting in code to their superiors, served as “the eyes and ears” of the national government.In Spies, Politics, and Power: El Departamento Confidencial en México, 1922–1946, Joseph A. Stout traces the development of Mexico’s Departamento Confidencial (Confidential Department) from the years of its infancy to its later incarnation as a fully fledged international espionage agency on the order of the CIA, Russian KGB, and German Gestapo. Stout charts the department’s evolution under the administration of several powerful presidents—and a handful of puppets—from the postrevolutionary period through World War II, when the agency turned its attention from monitoring internal threats to focus on matters of national security. Stout devotes special attention to the agency’s wartime role in the investigation and containment of individuals whose Axis ties made them objects of government suspicion.Offering a twist on conventional history, Stout takes us behind the political curtain to illuminate the crucial role played by an unlikely assortment of government bureaucrats, international spies, low-ranking agents, and office clerks within the drama of Mexican nationhood. In his comprehensive and thoroughly researched account, Stout offers a narrative propelled not by the back-and-forth of rebel violence and brutal reprisal—though there is no dearth of such material—but by a story driven by the power of information. For Stout, intelligence, as much as military might, is the key to political power and the engine of national formation.A work rich in primary sources, Spies integrates details culled from archived letters and agent reports into the broader framework of Mexican politics and society in the first half of the twentieth century. In his unconventional approach, Stout sheds new light on the means and motivations of some of the period’s most influential figures.

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'Of what use is one ugly little tree?' Atop a windswept hill, a crooked little tree stands alone...until one Christmas Eve, when an old woman labors up the hill with a box of ornaments, and tells the tree that he is special. He is to be the official Christmas tree for all of the homeless people in the city below!Year after year, colored balls and garland adorn the tree at Christmastime, but one year, the woman does not come. Will there be a Christmas for homeless?This story is based on actual events about a funny-looking mimosa tree that sits above a busy freeway in Fort Worth, Texas. A formerly homeless woman decorated the tree, year after year, so that the homeless would have a Christmas tree. When she died, neighbors took over the custom and now decorate it for Easter, Halloween, and other holidays as well. It can be seen on the north side of Interstate 30 near the Oakland exit.

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Did you ever need to spell ""dogie"" (as in, get-along-little) or need to know what a ""sakey"" is? This is the book that can tell you how to spell, pronounce, and define over 5,000 terms relative to the American West.Want to know what a ""breachy"" cow is? Turn to page 43 to learn that it's an adjective used to describe a cow that has a tendency to find her way through fences where she isn't supposed to be. It describes some teenagers we know!Spend hours perusing the dictionary at random, or read straight through to get a flavor of the West from its beginnings to contemporary days. Laced with photographs and maps, the ""Dictionary of the American West"" will make you sound like an expert on all things western, even if you don't know a dingus from a dinner plate.Compiled of words brought into English from Native Americans, emigrants, Mormons, Hispanics, migrant workers, loggers, and fur trappers, the dictionary opens up history and culture in an enchanting way. From ""Aarigaa!"" to ""zopilote,"" ""the Dictionary of the American West"" is a ""valuable book, a treasure for any literate American's library."" - Tony Hillerman.

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Heisman Trophy winners, All-Americans, All-Pros, MVPs and record-setters have, throughout the glamorous history of football in Texas, been all but commonplace. For decades, one set of superstars routinely replaced another, constantly adding to the proud legacy of the state's favorite sport. In ""Texas Football Legends"" you'll meet the cream of a rich and talented crop, reliving those days when they climbed to stardom from high school stadiums in out-of-the-way places to the Saturday afternoon cheers as collegians, and finally in the celebrated ranks of professional football.As you read of their individual deeds, you'll hear the cherished echoes of championship games won and lost, high goals achieved and adversities overcome. Borrowing from a long-used cliche in Texas, football has been elevated to a form of religion. That said, this collection of biographies of the greatest of the great serves as the game's Sunday Best.

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A compilation of author and journalist Bryan Woolley's The Dallas Morning News columns from 1999 through 2003, Texas Road Trip explores back roads, small towns and Texas originals. Follow him on his road trips across the Great State as he meets interesting people and heats fascinating, even bizarre, tales. As Woolley says, Texas Road Trip takes us beyond the ""super highways spewing diesel smoke and danger to the sparsely traveled farm to market roads and the old highways that used to connect the little towns before the interstates bypassed them."" Tinged with nostalgia for a bygone way of life, the essays acquaint us with the pleasure of drinking a Coca-Cola in a bottle that sports ice crystals (""Cold Drink"") or a Comanche ceremony in Palo Duro Canyon to re-sanctify the canyon that was once sacred (""Quanah's People""). He also explores more personal terrain in such stories as ""Boys,"" in which he recounts a trip he and his grown sons took in remembrance of their summer vacations in Fort Davis when the boys were young. Woolley's thoughtful take imbues each essay with a generosity of spirit and a real enthusiasm for his subjects. From the stars of the Davis Mountains to the sophistication of Austin and Dallas, Texas Road Trip is an homage to Texas - its history, people, and culture.

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Stories from the Barrio offers a new look at the history of Fort Worth. In his search to discover the roots of the Hispanic community, Carlos E. Cuellar was surprised to discover the lack of historical documentation of the history of the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the city. Convinced that the story of these forgotten people deserved to be told - from the stories of early Mexicanos escaping hardship and terrors of the Mexican Revolution, to the attempts of second generation Mexican Americans to assimilate, to the political voice and freedoms secured by the Chicano generation - Cuellar began to delve into public records such as city directories and interview members of the Hispanic community. Cuellar explores the early barrios near major sources of employment and follows the rise of a business class, especially the restaurateurs. Mexicanos who served their country in World War II came home to racism and changed the landscape of the city. Today, Hispanic leaders play a proud role in the Mexican community and are an integral part of the leadership of the city. Cuellar's Stories from the Barrio, the first attempt to examine this community and its history, paves the way for further research into Fort Worth's diverse past.

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This historical guide explores the past and present of ""Cowtown"" and its neighbouring cities. It introduces the reader to the places where Tarrant County history was made. Book in hand you can visit these sites and many more.

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Aging cowboy and bronco-buster Wes Hendricks just wants to be left alone on his poor ranch, even when town developers offer him big money to sell it. Wes's grandson reluctantly tries to convince him to give up his home, but that was before he, too, succumbs to the ranch's--and a young cowgirl's--wild beauty.

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Known as ""The Emerald City,"" Dallas has its own rich heritage peculiar to its founding on the prairies and the Trinity River, and editor Frances Brannen Vick has collected a cornucopia of all things ""Big D in Literary Dallas"", the third in TCU Press' ""literary cities"" series.There is C. C. Slaughter who helped make Dallas a banking center; John Rosenfield, who made his city a haven for performing arts; Evelyn Oppenheimer, who made her career reviewing books; not to mention Frank X. Tolbert, both Chili King and writer.Natalie Ornish writes of the merchants who made Dallas a city where haute couture is comme il faut, but, where, as Prudence Macintosh avers, it is also possible to live a perfectly happy life and never wear a ball gown.Historians and journalists have interpreted the city for generations, and you will find A. C. Greene, Bob Compton, Stanley Walker, Kent Biffle, Paul Crume and Jay Milner, among others.The pivotal event in Dallas was the Kennedy assassination, and Vick researched the journalists, writers, poets and observers who tackled this subject, including Jim Lehrer, Bryan Woolley, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few.Fiction set in Dallas has been wide and deep. Authors explore various backdrops, and from a Catholic church to an English manor to local bars - and all the places in between - Dallas is covered.

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Eva Jean Wrather (1908-2001) spent most of her adult lifetime writing a biography of Alexander Campbell, founder of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the only Protestant denomination to spring from American soil. Shortly before Wrather's death, the manuscript totaled 800,000 words or 3,254 pages. Historian D. Duane Cummins worked with her until her death and then afterwards to craft a three-volume work comprising Campbell's lifetime of theological doctrine and literary writing. Volume three of this work bears Cummins' organization and structure, along with some of his own research, preserving as much as possible Wrather's inimitable writing style.

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Don Graham brings together the history, color, and character of Texas' capital city since 1839 when it was selected, on the advice of Mirabeau B. Lamar, as the site for a new capital of the then - Republic of Texas. Essays, fiction, and poetry reveal the variety of literary responses to Austin through the decades and are organized in a roughly chronological fashion to reveal the themes, places, and personalities that have defined the life of the city. Austin was always about three things: natural beauty, government, and education; thus, many of the pieces in this volume dwell upon one and sometimes all of these themes. Besides O. Henry, the other most important literary figures in the city's history were J. Frank Dobie, Roy Bedichek, and Walter P. Webb: folklorist, naturalist, historian. During their heyday, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, they were the face of literary culture in the city. They remain a source of interest, pride, and sometimes controversy. Austin is a well-known haven of liberal political activism, represented by such well-known figures as Lyndon B. Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Ann and David Richards, Liz Carpenter, Willie Morris, John Henry Faulk, and Molly Ivins. The city is also a haven for literary writers, many of whom appear in these pages: Carolyn Osborn, Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, Dagoberto Gilb, Stephen Harrigan, and Lawrence Wright, to name a few. Among the poets, Thomas Whitbread, Dave Oliphant, David Wevill, and Christopher Middleton have long been on the scene. Certain sites recur - the University Tower, Barton Springs, various watering holes of another kind - so that anybody who has ever spent time in Austin will experience twinges of nostalgia for vanished icons, closed-down venues, and long-gone sites of pleasure brought to life once again, in these pages.

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Return with us to yesteryear, when cowboys were cowboys and gunslingers lurked around every corner. Today that colorful period continues to resonate in the collective imagination of red-blooded Americans every-where - and now we have ""True West"", which illustrates, in hundreds of full-color illustrations, how America's mass media stamped that vision so indelibly on our collective unconscious over the past century, into today.Boasting hundreds of rare and colorful movie posters, pulp magazines, comic books, comic strips, television memorabilia, advertisements, paperback books, record album jackets, toys, and clothing, ""True West"" covers such hugely popular television series as Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, and Bonanza, along with classic western novels, including ""Shane"", ""The Searchers"", ""Welcome to Hard Times"", and that epic of all epics, ""Lonesome Dove"". It also bows to the icons who ruled the silver screen - Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, and Clint Eastwood, to name a few.And what would the Wild West be without an accompanying soundtrack? ""True West"" reproduces the sublime album covers and sheet music that served up classic odes like ""Streets of Laredo"" and ""Cool Water,"" narrative ballads like ""El Paso"" (with Marty Robbins bedecked in his black gunfighter togs on the cover!), and ""High Noon.

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Timothy Isaiah ""Longhair Jim"" Courtright operated on both sides of the law and became a legend in his lifetime and after his death. One of the most colorful characters from the wild and woolly days of Fort Worth's Hell's Half Acre, Courtright was at various times city marshal, deputy sheriff, deputy U.S. marshal, private detective, hired killer, and racketeer. Today, he is almost forgotten, either as a gunfighter or a lawman, except in Fort Worth. Little is known about Courtright's early life, though he apparently served in the Union army during the Civil War, But when he arrived in the West, Courtright seemed to attract trouble. He was involved in a shootout during the 1886 railroad strikes and was accused of murder in New Mexico. Deputies were sent to Fort Worth to escort him to New Mexico to stand trial. His escape from them, complete with guns hidden under a restaurant table, is one of Fort Worth's most colorful stories. Finally, he was killed in a shootout that he apparently provoked with gambler and gunman Luke Short. To this day nobody is sure what provoked that feud, but Courtright was honored with the longest funeral procession Fort Worth had ever seen. The myth of Courtright as legendary gunfighter was built in two previous biographies - one by a novelist and the other by a Franciscan priest. After exhaustive research into contemporary newspapers and other accounts and close study of the previous two books, historian Robert K. DeArment deconstructs the myth of Longhair Jim and reconstructs the gunfighter as a real human being, complex, flawed, often courageous, usually both honorable and dishonorable. This book is a must for all those interested in the legends of the West, its lawmen, and its outlaws.

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Ron Rozelle's new novel, ""Touching Winter"", is a four-part evocation of memory and place and the yearning for home. Each part of the novel begins with a meditation on one aspect of the protagonist's life as he watches the unpredictable weather of East Texas. When Will was a young boy, he and his grandfather enjoyed being out in the spectacular East Texas storms. These sessions taught Will many things about life - ranching, weather, character, how to be a man - and bound Will to the family land and to his grandfather. Only at the ranch does Will feel like the person he was, or would like to be, before wrong decisions turned his life down an entirely different path. A powerful, early romance proved disastrous, and the relationship haunts him. To compensate for lost love, Will carved a niche for himself in the competitive concrete industry, inventing a technique to make mixing trucks more efficient and becoming wealthier than he could have dreamed. His marriage to a Houston socialite is thin and brittle, unsatisfying for his wife, Lauren, and for himself. Their daughter Aimee lives in California, as far away from her family as possible. As Will ages, he turns to the ranch as a place of clarity in times of crisis, eventually moving back there entirely. He exchanges the public life he and Lauren led in Houston for the simplicity of walks along the rustic fence, lunch with old friends at the town's only diner, and long evenings on the porch watching the stars. Along the way, a fierce, red-breasted hawk comes to represent the spiritual for Will, and he is forced to face the consequences of earlier decisions.

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Tom Lea's The Wonderful Country opens as mejicano pistolero Martin Bredi is returning to El Puerto [El Paso] after a fourteen-year absence. Bredi carries a gun for the Chihuahuan warlord Cipriano Castro and is on Castro's business in Texas. Fourteen years earlier - shortly after the end of the Civil War - when he was the boy Martin Brady, he killed the man who murdered his father and fled to Mexico where he became Martin Bredi. Back in Texas Brady breaks a leg; then he falls in love with a married woman while recuperating; and, finally, to right another wrong, he kills a man. When Brady/Bredi returns to Mexico, the Castros distrust him as an American. He becomes a man without a country. The Wonderful Country clearly depicts life along the Texas-Mexico border of a century-and-a-half ago, when Texas and Mexico were being settled and tamed.

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This story of the Texas frontier dramatizes the capture by a Comanche band of a ten-year-old white girl and her five-year-old sister from the upper reaches of the Brazos River a decade before the Civil War.

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Texas State Parks: The First 100 Years, 1923–2023 examines the history of one of Texas’s most treasured assets: our state parks. From the legislative establishment of the original Texas State Parks Board to the present, the development of our state and national parks over the last one hundred years has depended upon an evolving concept of public lands for public use and enjoyment. One of America’s best ideas has been a parks system for all—first at the national level, then among the states. In Texas, leaders have emerged at every stage of this hundred-year history to lend their names and reputations to the cause of conservation and preservation, which has met growing acceptance among the public at large. This book explores the contributions of these giants at all levels. Together, they gave meaning to Teddy Roosevelt’s call to arms for the preservation of public lands as one of the country’s foundations of an “essential democracy.” After successful careers in politics, then business, George Bristol turned to a complementary endeavor that would utilize his skills and reflect a lifelong love of nature and parks: advocacy for parks and people. In 1994, he received a presidential appointment to the National Parks Foundation, launching his new journey. He established the Texas Coalition for Conservation in 2001 and began an eighteen-year effort that culminated in the people of Texas overwhelmingly voting to direct all revenue generated from the Sporting Goods Sales Tax to state parks and historic sites—as originally intended.

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This book explores the friendship of two quesadillas and all the fun they have at Flavor Valley Summer Camp with new foodling friends who come from all different backgrounds. And when Diego Queso and Gary Gouda switch places before returning home, they realize that even in different homes, love looks and feels the same in every way.

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In the early 1950s, a Mexican American man named Gus has become a top Texas civil rights attorney—a climb that has been bedeviled by his competing obsessions with the law, la raza, the ladies, and Chivas Regal whisky.On the day he learns his failed marriage has rendered him homeless, Gus hastily takes on a new client, a man accused of shooting and killing a man outside a bar in Edna. The case becomes one about equal representation when his associates uncover a disturbing fact: no minority or person of color has sat on a Jackson County jury in at least twenty-five years. Without funds, without political support, Gus and his team courageously pursue a demanding course that forces them to battle the system at every turn.The case and Gus himself are targeted by Symmetry, an elitist, ultraconservative secret society bankrolled by Texas oil barons. A representation of the many extant southern white supremacist groups of the day, the group engages Gus’s longtime nemesis to stop the progression of the case using schemes of persuasion and bribery.Gus finds occasional solace when he begins a relationship with the world’s first female bullfighter, but his unresolved past threatens his well-being. The story also introduces a young Mexican American girl who learns the complications of being shades darker than her sister and struggles to find her voice.

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And what a reunion it is! Dan Jenkins reunites many of the most memorable and irascible characters from his most memorable and hilarious novels - starting with Semi-Tough. Billy Clyde Puckett, Shake Tiller, T. J. Lambert, Barbara Jane Bookman, Big Ed Bookman, Slick Henderson, Juanita Hutchins, Doris Steadman - the list goes on, and they're all packin' heat. It all begins when Herb's CafÉ - modeled after a Fort Worth landmark renowned for its chicken- fried steak - goes up for sale after Herb's death and the establishment's disastrous sequel as a trendy restaurant featuring outrageous nouvelle cuisine. Tommy Earl Bruner buys the place, rehires most of the old staff, and invites all its former denizens to Fort Worth for a grand celebration. The uproarious outcome could only have been dreamed up by comic mastermind Dan Jenkins.

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Who knew a street mutt could win the hearts of a whole town?Happy, a scruffy stray dog, becomes a beloved hero when a fire threatens his new home. He will need all the help he can get in a town without a fire department or even fire hydrants. In this true story, neighbors work together to find a creative way to put out the fire, and Happy discovers that having a friend is the best reward.

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What? And Give Up Show Business? is the hilarious autobiography of James Hampton, who for over fifty years has been one of the most familiar faces in television and film. A wonderful slice of life in Hollywood told through the personal stories of one of its most prolific actors, this book will appeal to nostalgia buffs, classic film and television aficionados, fans of celebrity autobiographies and biographies, and people who just enjoy a good laugh and great storytelling. This enchanting memoir also includes some of the author's favorite recipes, which are woven into stories about such show business icons as Doris Day, Clint Eastwood, and Michael J. Fox. Never-before-seen photographs of Hampton and his friends, who happen to be some of the world's favorite entertainers, pepper this jewel of a tale chronicling life in La-La Land. Everyone who loves classic television and films will enjoy What? And Give Up Show Business?

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The Feudist: A Novel of the Pleasant Valley War is both a traditional Western - tense, authentic, fast-paced - and an anti-Western that tells the story of what was perhaps the bloodiest range war in US history, Arizona's 1880s Pleasant Valley War. The narrator - a small-time rancher named Ben Holcomb who reflects back on his adolescent experiences - begins the story as a stockboy in Globe City, Arizona. Bored with his job, he agrees to become an apprentice cowboy. His journey to his employer's ranch leads him into a smoldering range war. Over the next year, he rides with a charismatic trickster; a Texas 'colonel' and his idealist daughter; a polygamous Mormon elder with a teenaged wife; and a winsome, mixed-race cowboy who is deeply embroiled in the feud. Though Ben tries to stay out of the quarreling, he finds himself embroiled as he stumbles through passionate love, devastating loss, and moral uncertainty. Herman's attention to historical forces, his spare style, his self-deprecating narrator, and his authentic characters give the novel a verisimilitude that transcends the genre Western and far surpasses Zane Grey's 1922 romance about the Pleasant Valley War, To the Last Man.

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This collection of Guerrero's new and selected work documents the struggle to both honour and disrupt cultural, social, and familial traditions and histories. Hers is an honest and fearless examination of racism, sexism, domestic abuse, illness, and loss.Feminist writer, mother, and educator, Guerrero has been described by the San Antonio Current as 'a badass of poetic proportions'. In her poems, bodies sway 'above the cotton like sheets on a line', women turn into roosters, grief is carried like a newborn, snake venom is made in the marrow of the atlas bone, and the greatest revolution is 'to sing graveside, to whisper intention into bowls of beans, to dance / without fear or fight'.With her unfailingly bold imagery and sharp eye, this collection of Guerrero's work is a carefully constructed artifact by a poet who works and thinks with her hands.

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Once there was a place called Smeltertown, and it was known as the largest industrial city on the banks of the Rio Grande. The smokestacks of the American Smelting and Refining Company, which polluted the air for three miles in every direction, grew so tall over the decades that they became a landmark just inside the El Paso side of the US-Mexico border. In a community of small adobe houses, many with dirt floors and without indoor plumbing, both the men employed at the smelter and the women who raised families and made homes there form the history of Smeltertown.Through interviews with the women and their now middle-aged children, the realities of everyday life in Smeltertown are revealed—as is the strength of the women who forged a community and preserved a culture in these primitive conditions. Current photographs of the interviewees and historical photographs of Smeltertown illustrate the history of an area not even native El Pasoans knew.

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This book of genuine wanted posters distributed by law enforcement agencies at the turn of the twentieth century will change your perspective on the genre. Wanted in America: Posters Collected by the Fort Worth Police Department, 1898–1903 features fifty posters and the fascinating true crime stories behind them. While some of the offenders are virtually unknown today, others, such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, remain household names. You will meet fugitive pickpockets, embezzlers, robbers, kidnappers, murderers, and more, along with their associates and their victims. They are a cross-section of America—men and women of all ages, social classes, and many races and nationalities. Though the notices were created on a local level, they reflect national social and economic changes in a growing population. The fifty posters published here represent only a small sample of the hundreds available for research. The stories behind the posters demonstrate how twentieth-century advances in mass media distribution, law enforcement techniques, transportation, and communication impacted the ability of lawmen to locate the fugitives they sought and the ability of the suspects to stay on the run. They reveal that the game of cat and mouse continued as both hunter and hunted found ways to use technology to their advantage. Over thirty-five professors, journalists, and historians generously contributed their talents to research and craft the essays that accompany these posters. The tales themselves run the gamut from amusing to puzzling to horrific. These may not be the wanted posters of popular imagination, but they are the real thing-which makes them all the better.

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Voices of America: Veterans and Military Families Tell Their Own Stories collects dozens of personal accounts of military life from World War II to the present day. These narratives from Texas Christian University students, faculty, staff, alumni, and family range from deadly combat to downtime, from family dynamics to life after military service. Although the contributors share a connection with TCU and each experience is unique, they share a common bond with all Americans who have served their country across far-flung zones of conflict and decades of history, and speak with urgent relevance to American society today.

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In March of 1861 Texas seceded from the Union, and the Love brothers of Limestone County - Cyrus, Samuel, James, and John - enlisted to fight for the Confederate cause. For the next four years, the brothers travelled the war-torn South as cavalry in Terry's Texas Rangers, seeing action in some of the fiercest battles in the Western Theater, yet faithfully sending letters home to their expectant family. Complete with a scholarly introduction shedding insight into the Love family, their travels, and their family communication network, this volume collects, transcribes, and annotates 78 letters by eight authors spanning the entire Civil War. In addition to soldiers' correspondence, the collection also contains letters written to and from their female relatives on the domestic front. Yours in Filial Regards: The Civil War Letters of a Texas Family offers a fascinating inside perspective of the Civil War from both the Confederate battle lines and the home front.

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A missionary and shelter, a home and salvation, Union Gospel Mission has been a place of refuge for many since 1888. From cowboys to the homeless and jobless, to drug addicts and drunks, Union Gospel Mission of Fort Worth has unrelentingly helped and provided for people of all different backgrounds and struggles in life to help ease their pain, hunger, and need, while bringing them closer to Christ.This book takes readers through the 1800s as the Mission cared for and housed prostitutes, cowboys, and drifters, to the 1900s, when it transformed more by the message of Jesus Christ's saving grace, to now as it has physically expanded to a campus and partners with other organizations and churches to help not only the homeless but all those in need. Fighting debt, eviction, and addiction, the Union Gospel Mission has provided food, shelter, jobs, and spiritual sustenance to thousands of struggling souls for well over a century.This inspiring journey through time will amaze you in the ways the Union Gospel Mission's selfless acts have helped lives through Christ.

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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.

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For more than half a century, Austin artist Don Collins crisscrossed Texas looking for traces of the past. Most often he has found them in a variety of old buildings. Drawings of these places, thirteen a year, appeared for three decades in popular calendars issued in Austin by the Miller Blueprint Company. The publications themselves have become collectors' items.In order to prepare his annual calendars, Don frequented less-traveled byways and often forgotten places. When he discovered that he had begun retracing his routes, he bought a stack of Texas county road maps. The artist marked the courses that he had taken so that he would be sure to see new country on each subsequent foray: ""I would seek out roads that followed the path of least resistance, often up a creek. I would follow them and usually find an old structure."" In time he expanded his geographical range to more distant areas of the state: ""I wanted to go there and see what it's like.""In this book, Collins has chosen seventy from more than three hundred works of art that he created for the Miller Blueprint calendars. The carefully detailed renderings record buildings from farmhouses to industrial plants, from shanties to mansions. Through these pages viewers tour the state both visually and through the artist's own recollections about the remarkable range of places he has recorded with pencil and paper.

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In August 1914, recently orphaned Cooper Harrison arrives in El Paso to live with grandparents she's never met. The minute the fifteen-year-old steps off the train, everything seems wrong. The heat is stifling, her grandfather Luther is cold and appraising and, worse, doesn't even mention the recent loss of both parents. Her grandmother, Angelica, is remote and child-like and wears only black and diamonds. When Cooper asked to come live with her grandparents, she wanted to help in the family antique business and soon shows her aptitude for the field. But, she discovers that Luther not only runs a shady concern but also profits from the Mexican Revolution smuggling arms across the border. Luther leaves for Mexico with a wagonload of bullets hidden in sacks of corn and is kidnapped by Pancho Villa's men. Cooper realizes she's the only one to carry the ransom to Villa's camp. She meets a Hollywood actor and cameraman - in El Paso to film Villa's life - and convinces them to join her in the attempt to rescue her grandfather. The ensuing adventure takes the reader on wild ride deep into the Mexican countryside.

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This volume records impressions of life on the 19th- and early-20th-century American frontier by 21 artists better known for their paintings, sculptures and photographs. Most, but not all, of the selections come from journals or diaries kept during trips to the West.

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Outfoxing all other military and political personnel in the territory of Baja California Norte, Colonel Esteban CantÚ, on becoming governor, astutely played the leaders of the Mexican Revolution one against another. A compelling figure in the Mexican Revolution, he maintained his independence from Mexico City until he was forced from office in August 1920. While CantÚ was appointed governor by Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, and Eulalio Gutierrez of the Convention Government, he followed their orders only when it suited him and published the laws of the government in Mexico City to give the appearance that he was loyal to the central power when in fact he was not. He was more concerned with neighboring Sonora and supported every anti-central government movement in that state to secure his own independence. When he gained power, CantÚ faced an indescribable morass of crime and immorality in Tijuana and Mexicali: white slavery and prostitution; opium dens; cocaine, morphine, and heroin dealers; and gambling halls, saloons, and dives of all descriptions. Governor CantÚ either licensed many of these or became connected to them in some other way, personally profiting from such activities but also employing much of this revenue to create the territory's first reliable infrastructure. This engaging account reveals the complexity of the Mexican Revolution, with a cast of characters that includes officers and officials of the Porfirian regime, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries, US investors, crackpots, German spies, Japanese schemers, Chinese workers, and purveyors of every sort of vice.

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