Search results for ""Texas Tech Press,U.S.""

Explores questions of idleness, considering the labour both of humans and of the myriad other inhabitants of the world. Drawing on science, literature, poetry and personal observation, these playful essays pay attention to the exertions and activities of the other-than-human lives that are usually excluded from our built and settled spaces.

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The title of this debut collection, Nothing Follows, is reappropriated from a government document establishing the beginning of a refugee family’s time in the United States. At every coordinate of their lives, the refugee family provides affidavits, letters, and reams of paperwork as they work to beseech those in power to grant them “family reunification” visas for those they had to leave behind in 1975 after the fall of Saigon. Nothing Follows draws from the genres of memoir and poetry. Written from a young girl’s perspective, the center of this world is a military father, an absent mother, sisters who come and go, broken brothers, and friends she meets in San José. With each place the book travels through—from Butler, Pennsylvania, to San José, California—we see that racism, objectification, and sexual violence permeate the realities of the narrator and those close to her. In marking the journey, Lan Duong recreates the portraits of the girl’s friends and family and maps out refugee girlhoods. Spiked with violence, pleasure, and longing, these refuges are questionable sanctuaries for those refugee girls who have grown up during the 1980s in the aftermath of war.

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Ripped Apart: Unsettling Narratives of Transnational Migration is an innovative and interdisciplinary analysis of Latina narratives of transnational migration that underscore the intersections of the physical, psychological, sociocultural, and legal / structural traumas endured by migrants and their families. Grounded in theories of narrative empathy and the representation of trauma, Ripped Apart analyzes the techniques that Latina writers of various literary genres deploy to develop empathy, interrogate the representation of migrants in dominant discourse, and condemn the structures and institutions that continue to contribute to the separation of families.An excellent introduction to critical Latina texts that address migration and family separation, Ripped Apart incorporates an overview of US immigration policies and practices and notions of citizenship, legality, and whiteness that have resulted in conceptualizations of immigrants as permanent foreigners, criminals, or threats to US society, and provides sociohistorical context regarding the often obscured or omitted historical chapters that serve as the texts' backdrops. In describing how and why Latina narratives reveal the hidden stories of the impact of transnational migration on women and children, Ripped Apart demonstrates the power of literature and storytelling to unsettle the reader, modify cognitive schemas, and create real-world positive change.

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With words and photographs, Rain in Our Hearts takes readers into Alpha Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry, 196th LIB, Americal Division in 1969–1970. Jim Logue, a professional photographer, was drafted and served as an infantryman; he also carried a camera. "In order to take my mind off the war," he would say, "I took pictures." Logue's photos showcase the daily lives of infantrymen: setting up a night laager, chatting with local children, making supply drops, and "humping" rucksacks miles each day in search of the enemy. His camera records the individual experiences and daily lives of the men who fought the war. Accompanying Logue's over 100 photographs is the narrative written by Gary D. Ford. Wanting to reconstruct the story of Alpha Company during the time in which Logue served, Ford and Logue trekked across America to meet with and interview every surviving member whom they could locate and contact. Each chapter of Rain in Our Hearts focuses on the viewpoint and life of one member of Alpha Company, including aspects of life before and after Vietnam. The story of the Company's movements and missions over the year unfold as readers are introduced to one soldier at a time. Taken together, Rain in Our Hearts offers readers a window into the words and sights of Alpha Company's Vietnam War.

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Opus in Brick and Stone: The Architectural and Planning Heritage of Texas Tech University explores the campus architecture of the Texas Tech University System, which was inspired by the sixteenth-century Plateresque Spanish Renaissance architectural style. This book details the parallels between the buildings of Texas Tech and those of their forebears from this relatively short period in Spanish architectural history, while exploring the remarkable stories behind the construction itself. A crucial element of Opus in Brick and Stone is to provide a visual chronicle of the campus's unique architectural style. In addition to historic and contemporary photography, the book also includes a comparative drawing section that, through original common scale drawings of physical structures, explores in detail historic design sources alongside their campus counterparts. Opus in Brick and Stone also tells a fascinating history: included is biographic information on figures such as Houston architect William Ward Watkin, who was convinced that this Spanish architectural style aligned well with the South Plains of Texas, and later College Architect Nolan Barrick, a Watkin protégé. Through the stories of these and other key figures, readers come to understand how it was only through the vision of specific individuals that this fascinating architectural heritage came to be situated upon the plains of West Texas. The architectural history of Texas Tech University, then, is a carefully crafted, purposeful history. Opus in Brick and Stone celebrates and elevates this little-known history into a tradition that can be appreciated by all Red Raiders, past and present.

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What Is Gone is a story of violence and nostalgia, the inextricable connections between identity and place, narrated by a woman who grew up in the comforting cultural geography of Lincoln, Nebraska, a town that made her feel so safe she became almost incapable of comprehending danger. Even after her own encounter with violence—a brutal rape in nearby Omaha in 1985—she returns to her hometown convinced that it was the city she remembered, department stores staffed by familiar clerks, the buildings themselves repositories of comforting memories. But then, in the fall of 1992, Candice Harms, a fi rst-year student at theUniversity of Nebraska, disappears. This harrowing mystery, combined with evidence that the Lincoln she has known is disappearing—stores closing, her beloved downtown becoming strangely vacated—compels Brown to reconsider what she’d grown up accepting as truth.What Is Gone, centered in Nebraska but connecting to the larger landscape of the nation, examines questions both personal and universal: Do anchoring memories—the persistence of what was—leave you perennially at risk? How does—and should—experiencing violence alter who you are? As the months pass with Candice Harms still missing and the perpetrators of her disappearance at large, Brown reexamines her childhood and young adulthood. Probing pockets of dark experience she’d dismissed or rationalized away, she leads us to explore our own internal narratives of place— asking the reader to refl ect on how much of what we choose to believe is ever true.

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The Great Western Trail (GWT) is a nineteenth-century cattle trail that originated in northern Mexico, ran west parallel to the Chisholm Trail, traversed the United States for some two thousand miles, and terminated after crossing the Canadian border. Yet through time, misinformation, and the perpetuation of error, the historic path of this once-crucial cattle trail has been lost. Finding the Great Western Trail documents the first multi-community effort made to recover evidence and verify the route of the Great Western Trail.The GWT had long been celebrated in two neighbouring communities: Vernon, Texas, and Altus, Oklahoma. Separated by the Red River, a natural border that cattle trail drovers forded with their herds, both Vernon and Altus maintained a living trail history with exhibits at local museums, annual trail-related events, ongoing narratives from local descendants of drovers, and historical monuments and structures. So when Western Trail Historical Society members in Altus challenged the Vernon Rotary Club to mark the trail across Texas every six miles, the effort soon spread along the trail in part through Rotary networks from Mexico, across nine US states, and into Saskatchewan, Canada.This book is the story of finding and marking the trail, and it stands as a record of each community’s efforts to uncover their own GWT history. What began as local bravado transformed into a grass-roots project that, one hopes, will bring the previously obscured history of the Great Western Trail to light.

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Loyola University Chicago was ahead of its time when racial matters were forefront in a long overdue revolution in civil rights. The Ramblers of the 1962-1963 NCAA college basketball season were pioneers in race relations in sport, though most of the time they were simply playing the sport they loved.When the NCAA tournament began in March, the Ramblers engaged in a series for the ages, daring to be the first NCAA Division I school to play five black athletes on the court at once and capturing the most prestigious title in college basketball at a time when states below the Mason-Dixon line still had laws on the books preventing black and white athletes from mixing even in pick-up games.Records were set, rivals faced and one of the most famous and significant contests in college basketball playoff history played out in what incidentally became a model showcase for race relations. Nearly every time the Ramblers took the court, the game was unique in its magnitude.Relying significantly on exclusive interviews with surviving players, now in their seventies, Lew Freedman chronicles the entire journey, the adventure of the season that bound tight for a lifetime the group of men who lived through it.

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Warr’s combat history of the illustrious 1st Battalion, 5th Marines—relating their very human and often painful stories--is drawn from many years of research, the author’s personal memories, careful study of historical records. Despite the hardships of dealing with exotic countryside, extreme terrain and weather conditions, and threats from wildlife, not to mention sudden attacks from Viet Cong snipers, the marines of Charlie One Five emerged victorious in their every engagement.

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Along the San Marcos River, in and surrounding Palmetto State Park in south central Texas, lie two square miles of relict ecosystem named the Ottine Wetlands. This area of swamps, marshes, and ponds is especially notable for its geographic isolation from other wetlands in southeastern Texas and for its fascinating intermixture of eastern North American plants and animals and western flora and fauna. The scientific importance of the Ottine Wetlands in the surrounding, relatively dry region was first recognized as early as 1928, yet the swamps and marshes have not been thoroughly studied. This is the first examination of the invertebrates - insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and others - that depend directly or indirectly on the abundant moisture of the wetlands. With nearly 290 full-color illustrations, this book describes and illustrates 241 species of flies, beetles, grasshoppers, wasps, ants, bugs, spiders, scorpions, snails, crustaceans, and millipedes that inhabit the Ottine waters, wetlands, and woodlands. In a brief introduction the authors describe the geological formation of the region and discuss the plant life of the area. They also provide a description of Palmetto State Park, with its easily accessed hiking and nature trails. Following the species descriptions, the book concludes with a glossary and a thorough bibliography of other relevant works on invertebrates. Scientifically thorough, yet readable, this book will appeal to nature lovers of all kinds.

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Toward the end of World War II, Hitler's many health complications became even more pronounced, making an evil man yet more erratic and dangerous. While the subject of Hitler's health has been catalogued previously, never has it been done so this thoroughly or with this level of up-to-date medical expertise.Tom Hutton's new neurobehavioral analysis of Adolf Hitler draws from a lifetime of medical research and clinical experience to understand how the dictator's particular medical history further warped a deformed personality and altered Hitler's decision making.Dr. Hutton trained under the world-renowned neuropsychologist and father of modern neuropsychological assessment, Dr. Alexander Luria, giving him a uniquely qualified eye to undertake this most difficult assessment.While many books on the subject thumb through the annals of popular psychology to understand history's most famous monsters, Dr. Hutton's latest book uses contemporary clinical knowledge, lucidly synthesizing medical complexities for all audiences.Here Dr. Hutton undertakes a thorough medical history to elucidate a pivotal historical moment, examining how disease impacted Hitler's destructive life.

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Bob Horton began his journalism career as a reporter for the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. Innate skill and good fortune took him from a modest Texas farm upbringing to Washington, DC, where he was thrown into the high-pressure world of the wire service, first as a correspondent for the Associated Press, and later for Reuters news agency. The stress was intense, but he found the rush to be intoxicating.From his early days covering the Dallas murder trial of Jack Ruby, through three colorful decades as a newsman, Horton often found himself witnessing history in the making. He covered the Pentagon during the early days of the Vietnam War, was on board a Navy ship in the Mediterranean awaiting Israel’s expected attack on Egypt, was witness to the Watergate burglary trial, and attended a Beverly Hills church service with then President-elect Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy.The success Horton enjoyed as a journalist mostly hid the dark side of his career: a gradual descent into alcoholism. Of Bulletins and Booze candidly recounts the unforgettable moments of Horton’s career, as well as more than a few moments he would just as soon forget.

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An essential component of every culture, food offers up much more than mere sustenance. Food is also important in religion, ceremony, celebration, and cultural knowledge and transmission. Colonial governments were well aware of the cultural importance of food. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, governments manipulated rations in attempts to control indigenous movement, induce culture change and assimilation, decrease indigenous independence, and increase dependence on provided goods. However, indigenous peoples often frustrated these plans by taking rations for their own reasons and with their own cultural interpretations of the process. Tamara Levi uses four case studies to examine food rationing policies, practices, and results in the United States and South Australia. She looks at government rationing among the Pawnees and Osages in Nebraska and Indian Territory and among the Moorundie Aborigines and Ngarrindjeris at Point McLeay in South Australia during the mid and late nineteenth century. She highlights similarities in the use of food rations by two settler societies. She also explores how differences in environment, indigenous and colonial populations, and overall indigenous policies impacted the rationales for and implementation of food rationing as a tool for forced acculturation.

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The poet William Waring Cuney (1906-1976) hails from an illustrious Afro-Texan family whose members include the charismatic politician Norris Wright Cuney (1846-1898) and his daughter, Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936),the concert pianist and writer. Waring Cuney's maternal line, after whom he was named, was equally eminent.Cuney was born and raised in Washington D.C., just a few blocks from Howard University where three generations of his family studied. Despite his privileged upbringing among the city's Black elite, Cuney embraced his family's passionate commitment to racial uplift and civil rights; in exploring the relationship between African Americans and their environment, he was thus able to transmute into two books of poetry a broad cross section of African American life; his poems and songs explore the lives of jazz musicians, athletes, domestic and railway workers, women and children, blues singers, prisoners, sharecroppers, and soldiers. In addition, Cuney published in all the major Harlem Renaissance journals and anthologies alongside the luminaries of the period, many of whom were good friends.Through 100 of his best poems, many never collected or published, and a detailed biographical monograph, Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney introduces readers to a newly recovered Harlem Renaissance poet, and to the history of a remarkable American family.

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A Dream in Which I Am Playing with Bees is a collection of poems made of natural imagery, queer metaphors, personal observations, and historical circumstances surrounding honeybees. In the aftermath of a fictional bee extinction, these poems are presented to the post-bee reader as "artifacts." These are poems in hindsight.Playing with Bees positions poetry in hindsight to contemplate poetry's "natural" inclinations towards building alternative worlds through earthbound metaphors. Whether in a line or an entire premise, none of the poems could think, speak, or see in the same way if bees—and the relations they make possible—suddenly disappeared. Like any natural resource, the bee is a wellspring of possibility. Essential. Fragile. Causal. And like any animal, the pollinating bee has enabled a diverse phylum of phrases and myths that humans trade to express our most hard-to-name feelings. What changes about our imaginations after a peg in the environment is removed? What could disappear from our minds, our fantasies, and our self-descriptors, if nature is no longer a mirror?Consider a museum of language. As artifacts, these poems are the residue of a dead species—but they are also the offshoots of a playful, abundant, delicate ecosystem. Playingwith Bees covets what's left. At the bottom of everything, we find the fragments an ecologically intact dream; an apocalypse in reverse.

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The Mallet Ranch, from its founding to the present, has followed the arc of most Texas ranches. It has experienced booms and busts, and its owners have fretted over droughts and floods as well as fights in courtrooms. Despite hardships that may have outnumbered successes, the Mallet, headquartered in Hockley County, Texas, perseveres to this day.But More Than Running Cattle is more than just a ranch tale. It is the story of a family both unique and conventional among Texas stock raisers. David M. DeVitt, like many before him, was not "born" to be a Texas cattleman. DeVitt began his career as a reporter in Brooklyn, New York, before he decided to leave that path behind to try his luck on the wide-open ranges of West Texas.David DeVitt passed down his hardy, independent spirit to his two daughters. Although Christine and Helen were raised in Fort Worth, both from a young age learned the lesson that the West Texas land—and the Mallet Ranch—were part of their souls. When their father died, the two sisters fought to retain control of the Mallet for the family.The discovery in 1938 of oil on the ranch, and the subsequent drilling of more than a thousand oil wells over the next few decades, transformed the Mallet from a struggling enterprise into one of the most profitable such entities in the nation. From that financial windfall sprung from the land, Christine and Helen generously reinvested back into the region. The two non-profit organizations founded by the DeVitt sisters have distributed more than $200 million.The story of the Mallet Ranch told within these pages illuminates and delves into this remarkable story of a family, their operation, and the land that made it all possible.

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Songs of Sonderling is the story of Jacob Sonderling's unique contributions to Jewish liturgical music. Rabbi Sonderling was many things: a descendant of Chassidic rebbes, a rationalist, a Reform rabbi, a Zionist, an army chaplain, a celebrated orator, an artistic soul. From his early career at the Hamburg Temple and German Army service in World War I, to his wandering years in the Eastern United States and founding of the Society for Jewish Culture–Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles, Sonderling cultivated a unique aesthetic vision of Judaism, a "five-sense appeal."Jonathan L. Friedmann and John F. Guest document and analyze Sonderling's experience and expression of Judaism through music. Rabbi Sonderling's vision yielded liturgical commissions from exiled Viennese Jewish composers who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s. Through these musical settings, activities at the Fairfax Temple, and involvement with the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Sonderling made an indelible mark on the city's Jewish community and the wider musical world.Songs of Sonderling focuses on the commissions Sonderling made from 1938 to 1945: Ernst Toch's Cantata of the Bitter Herbs, Arnold Schoenberg's Kol Nidre, Erich Wolfgang Korngold's A Passover Psalm and Prayer, and Eric Zeisl's Requiem Ebraico. Through musical analyses and an examination of Sonderling's career in Los Angeles, Friedmann and Guest contribute to the study of Jewish liturgical music, to Jewish history in the American West, to Jewish identity in the twentieth century, and to Jewish diaspora writ large.

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Zitkala-Ša, also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, was born on the Yankton Sioux reservation in 1876 and went on to become one of the most influential American Indian writer/activists of the twentieth century. "Help Indians Help Themselves": The Later Writings of Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (Zitkala-Ša) is a critical collection of primary documents written by Bonnin who was principally known for the memoir of her boarding school experience, "Help Indians Help Themselves" expands the published work of Zitkala-Ša, adding insight to a life of writing and political activism on behalf of American Indians in the early twentieth century. Edited by P. Jane Hafen, "Help Indians Help Themselves" documents Bonnin's passion for justice in Indian America and outlines the broad scope of her life's work. In the American Indian Magazine, the publication of the Society of American Indians, and through her work for the National Council of American Indians, Bonnin developed her emphasis, as Hafen writes, on "resistance, tribal nationalism, land rights and call for civil rights." "Help Indians Help Themselves" also brings to light Bonnin's letters, speeches, and congressional testimony, which coincide with important developments of the relationship between American Indians and the U.S. federal government. Legislation such as the Citizenship Act of 1924, the Meriam Report of 1928, and the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 is reflected through the work collected in "Help Indians Help Themselves". In these writings, in newsletters, and in voluminous correspondence—most of which have never before been published—Bonnin advocates tirelessly for "the Indian Cause.

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Energy scholar Vaclav Smil wrote in 2003, “Tug at any human use of energy and you will find its effects cascading throughout society.” Too often public discussions of energy-related issues become gridlocked in debates concerning cost, environmental degradation, and the plausibility (or implausibility) of innovative technologies. But the topic of energy is much broader and deeper than these debates typically reveal.The literature of energy bears this out—and takes the notion further, revealing in vivid stories and images how energy permeates the fundamental nature of existence. Readings in this collection encompass a wide array of topics, from addiction to oil to life “off the grid,” from the power of the atom to the power of bicycle technology. Presenting a wide array of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and interviews—ranging from George Eliot's nineteenth-century novel Mill on the Floss to Sandra Steingraber's recent writing on the subject of fracking—this first-of-its-kind anthology aims to capture the interest of the general reader as well as to serve as a potential textbook for college-level writing classes or environmental studies classes that aspire to place the technical subject of energy into a broader cultural context.

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Over thousands of years, Native Americans in what is now Texas passed down their ways of roasting, boiling, steaming, salting, drying, grinding and blending. From one generation to another, these ancestors of Texas’s Mexican American community lent their culinary skills to combining native and foreign ingredients into the flavour profile of indigenous Texas Mexican cooking today.Building on what he learned from his own family, Adán Medrano captures this distinctive flavour profile in 100 kitchen-tested recipes, each with step-by-step instructions. Equally as careful with history, he details how hundreds of indigenous tribes in Texas gathered and hunted food, planted gardens and cooked.Offering new culinary perspective on well-known dishes such as enchiladas and tamales, Medrano explains the complexities of aromatic chiles and how to develop flavour through technique as much as ingredients. Sharing freely the secrets of lesser-known culinary delights, such as turcos, a sweet pork pastry served as dessert, and posole, giant white corn treated with calcium hydroxide, he illuminates the mouth-watering interconnectedness of culture and cuisine.The recipes and personal anecdotes shared in Truly Texas Mexican illuminate the role that cuisine plays in identity and community.

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In the 1880s, there wasn't much in Anson, Texas, in the way of entertainment for the area’s cowhands. But Star Hotel operator M. G. Rhodes changed that when he hosted a Grand Ball the weekend before Christmas. A restless traveling salesman, rancher, and poet from New York named William Lawrence Chittenden, a guest at the Star Hotel, was so impressed with the soiree that he penned his observances in the poem “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball.”Re-enacted annually since 1934 based on Chittenden’s poem, the contemporary dances attract people from coast to coast, from Canada, and from across Europe and elsewhere. Since 1993 Grammy Award-winning musical artist Michael Martin Murphey has played at the popular event.Far more than a history of the Jones County dance, Paul Carlson analyses the long poem, defining the many people and events mentioned and explaining the Jones County landscape Chittenden lays out in his celebrated work. The book covers the evolution of cowboy poetry and places Chittenden and his poem chronologically within the ever-changing western genre.Dancin’ in Anson: A History of the Texas Cowboys' Christmas Ball is a novel but refreshing look at a cowboy poet, his poem, and a joyous Christmas-time family event that traces its roots back nearly 130 years.

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When Markku Henriksson was growing up in Finland, the song ""(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66"" was one of only two he could recognize in English or Finnish. It was not until 1989 that Henriksson would catch his first glimpse of the legendary highway. It was enough to lure Henriksson four years later to the second international Route 66 festival in Flagstaff. There he realized that Route 66 was the perfect basis for a multidisciplinary American Studies course, one that he has been teaching at the University of Helsinki ever since.Forming the soul of this work and yielding a more holistic and complex picture than any previous study are Henriksson's 1996 (east to west) and 2002 (west to east) journeys along the full length of the Route and his mastery of the literature and film that illuminate the Route's place in Americana. Not a history of the road itself and the towns along the way, Henriksson's perspective offers insight into America and its culture as revealed in its peoples, their histories, cultures, and music as displayed along the Mother Road.

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The vast rangelands of south Texas—that portion of the state lying south of San Antonio and extending west and south to the Rio Grande and east to the Gulf of Mexico—are home to many species of grasses, some beneficial and some noxious. Careful identification is important for ranch and farm management, conservation, and scientific study.This field guide catalogs 250 taxa, representing 9 subfamilies, 15 tribes, and 88 genera. Detailed descriptions, accompanied by color photographs, cover 175 native species and 75 that were introduced—exotic invaders that took hold as agricultural practices, urban development, road construction, and other perturbations eliminated extensive areas of native vegetation.High-resolution photographic scans of pressed field samples show detailed characteristics necessary for identification. Included for each species are common and scientific names and their importance to livestock, wildlife, and man. Detailed keys are provided for the genera and species covered. Although the guide covers grasses that occur in a 31-county area, the extensive ranges of many represented species also make Grasses of South Texas a useful reference for other areas of the state, the American Southwest and the Great Plains, and northern Mexico.

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He was the top male box office attraction at the movies, one of the most widely read newspaper columnists in America, a radio commentator with an audience of more than 60 million, and a globetrotting speaker who filled lecture halls across the land. But how did humorist Will Rogers also become one of the most powerful political figures of his day? From just before World War I, through the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, and the Great Depression, Rogers provided a refreshing yet sobering appraisal of current events and public policy. Through him, millions formed their opinion of President Wilson's quest for a League of Nations, debated freedom of speech and religion during the Scopes Monkey Trial, questioned the success of several disarmament conferences, took pity upon the sufferers of the Great Flood of 1927, and tried to grasp the awful reality of the Great Depression. Rogers visited Washington often to attend congressional sessions and official receptions, testify at hearings, meet with cabinet officers, and speak at the exclusive Gridiron and Alfalfa Clubs. His open access to the Oval Office, the Senate cloakroom, and other inner sancta of national power was unmatched for someone not holding public office. In this groundbreaking biography Richard D. White argues that the nation's most popular entertainer was not only an incisive political commentator but also a significant influence upon national leaders and their decisions. When Will Rogers perished in a plane crash in Alaska in 1935, Americans lost their most popular and beloved humorist, a man who put smiles on their faces, took their minds off war and depression and, for a moment, allowed them to laugh at his cracker-barrel humor and ultimately themselves. But Americans also lost their most trusted source of reason, a man who, more than any other, broke down the complex issues of the day and gave them a critically honest appraisal of American politics and world affairs.

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When a thirteen-year-old boy strikes out on his own in 1885, leaving his Civil War-ravaged Mississippi homeland for the wild Red River border land between North Texas and Indian Territory, the American West is a land beyond the reach of the law. Crime thrives in the absence of law officers, courtrooms, judges, and jails. Vigilante justice, the posse, and the hangman's noose fill the void. But by the time the young man - now a veteran outlaw dies by the gun in 1929 after a tempestuous career, the Old West has been largely tamed, its official legal systems firmly in place. In this companion volume to ""Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier"", veteran defense attorney and prosecutor Bill Neal takes readers from Mississippi to the frontiers of West Texas, Indian Territory, New Mexico Territory, and finally the frozen Montana wilderness through a series of linked, true-life tales of crimes and trials. Tracing the struggles of incipient criminal justice in the Southwest through an engaging progression of outlaws and lawmen, plus a host of colorful frontier trial lawyers and judges, Neal reveals how law and society matured together. Virtually an anecdotal textbook, ""From Guns to Gavels"" follows a bloody trail from the Wild West through the decade after World War I, when the gavel-wielding, black-robed Judge Blackstone at last gained ascendancy over Judge Winchester and Judge Lynch.

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Nick is on a mission. Deeply troubled by the loss of a young friend at the Battle of San Jacinto, he wants desperately to return to the scene of the battle - to alter history. But when he furtively opens the mysterious trunk, now in Mr. Barrington's attic, he is transported instead to Gonzales, Texas, in 1835. There he meets many historical characters, including the young Alamo defenders William King, John Gaston, and Galba Fuqua (Will, Johnny, and Galba are introduced in Book 1 of the series). Once befriended by them, Nick finds himself caught up in the excitement leading up to the Battle of Gonzales. Hannah and Jackie, knowing they must stop Nick and bring him back safely, follow by trunk in hot pursuit. After falling down a riverbank, Hannah is rescued by Lieutenant Ramirez, a member of the Alamo de Parras Company of dragoons sent to retrieve the Gonzales Come and Take It cannon. The girls are escorted to his camp, where they learn about life in the Mexican army and the tensions that are building in Texas.

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Through his stunning photography, Wyman Meinzer chronicles the life of the coyote from a flea-covered, one-pound fuzzball whelp into a glistening, furry jewel that moves with fluid grace across the Texas plains. The coyote has become the symbol of western freedom in popular culture, and historically its range was limited to west of the Mississippi River. Yet now in spite of a hundred-year effort to exterminate this wild caninecoyote howls can be heard from Los Angeles to the Bronx and from Alaska to Costa Rica. Apart from the mythology, until recently little has been known about this intelligent, adaptable creature. As he did with ""The Roadrunner"", Meinzer gives us a personal account of the years he spent observing and photographing this often maligned animal. Seasoned with humor and poignancy, his observations give us a glimpse into the heart and soul of this intelligent and adaptable native North American.

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Ravensbrück was the only major Nazi concentration camp for women. Between 1939 and 1945, it was the site of murder by slave labour, torture, starvation, shooting, lethal injection, medical experimentation, and gassing. In its six-year history, 132,000 women from twenty-seven countries were imprisoned in Ravensbrück. Only about 15,000 in all survived.The Jewish Women Prisoners of Ravensbrück reclaims the lost identities of these victims. Together with a team of researchers, Judith Buber Agassi interviewed 138 survivors of Ravensbrück on four continents. Using the survivor testimonies to corroborate her research from major archives in Germany, Israel, and the United States, as well as from transport and death registration lists and from records that were smuggled out of the camp before liberation, Buber Agassi constructs an image of the women of Ravensbrück: their countries of origin, age distribution, professional roles prior to the war, religious backgrounds, and the types of social interactions and emotional support that existed among and between the various groups of women. To date, Buber Agassi has recovered the identity of over 16,000 Ravensbrück prisoners.Now in paperback, this study of Ravenbrück, largely overlooked in favour of more notorious killing campus, continues the female approach to understanding the Holocaust.

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The Birthright of Sons is a collection of stories centered around the experiences of marginalized people, namely Black and LGBTQ+ men. Though the stories borrow elements from various genres (horror, suspense, romance, magical realism, etc.), they're linked by an exploration of identity and the ways personhood is shaped through interactions with the people, places, and belief systems around us. Underpinning the project is a core belief – self-definition is fluid, but conflict arises because society often fails to keep pace with personal evolution. In each of these stories, the protagonists grapple with their understanding of who they are, who and how they love, and what's ultimately most important to them. In almost every case, however, the quest to know or protect oneself is challenged by an external force, resulting in violence, crisis, or confusion, among other outcomes.The Birthright of Sons colors in "the other" as three-dimensional, by highlighting the unique obstacles that marginalized people face while simultaneously centering their humanity and unearthing universal struggles and commonalities. Be it experiencing a sexual awakening, contemplating the cumulative effects of racial tension in the workplace, or searching desperately for a moment of peace in the attention economy, the collection amplifies underrepresented voices in a playful and contemporary way, elevating, critiquing, and confronting its characters.Through a mix of heart, dark humor, and social observation, The Birthright of Sons ponders the power of difference in a world defined by rigid definitions, ideological silos, and an unwillingness to change.

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Drowning Dragon Slips by Burning Plains counters the narrative held in the West about women and the land of the quaintly "lush" and "charming" Mekong Delta. A rice field in the middle of the communist and American-backed government, the delta was an essential resource that fed both sides of the war in Vietnam. The Mekong Delta went through countless massacres on an immense scale. Yet, history wiped the injuries away as if the river forgot. In her debut collection, Khải Đơn explores the meaning of being a woman in a land robbed of its innocence. Through a collage-like approach of personal history and fables, Khải Đơn's poems present an insidious flow of recollections that young people do not want to remember and that old people avoid discussing. In poems that lament and wonder, Khải Đơn reclaims the narrative for her people by unexpected material yielded from social research, CIA documents, and American military evaluations to erode the dominant narrative about the Delta in and after the war. Her poems tell tales of the old bombs turning into mangoes, rice germinating out of bullet holes, and every woman losing her way home.

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The life and work of poet Walt McDonald contains multitudes. A fighter pilot and Vietnam veteran who came to poetry late, Walt went on to publish over 2,000 poems in his career. His voice appealed to all kinds of readers. His poems appeared in journals ranging from First Things to The Nation, from JAMA to The Atlantic Monthly. He published over twenty books of poetry and served as the poet laureate of Texas.Turning on candid observation, quietly resonant sound, and a present narrative sensibility, Walt's poems move from a cockpit over Vietnam to the big West Texas emptiness and the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 2019, Walt sat with his prolific collection of poetry and began selecting his favorite works, grouping them together in four distinct movements. The results are before you here in this comprehensive collection of a lifetime's effort. The Essential Walt McDonald is a must-have poetic opus, shaped by a giant of the Texas community of letters.

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From his home on the Texas Panhandle, John R. Erickson, rancher and author of the bestselling Hank the Cowdog series, saw firsthand the raw power of two megafires that swept across the high plains in 2006 and 2017. "These were landmark events that are etched onto the memory of an entire generation and will be passed down to the next. They made the old-time methods of fighting fire with shovels, wet gunny sacks, and ranch spray rigs a pathetic joke."Yet Bad Smoke, Good Smoke, while relating a tale of gut-wrenching destruction, also provides a more nuanced view of what is often a natural event, giving the two-sided story of our relationship with fire. Not just a first-hand account, Bad Smoke, Good Smoke also synthesizes and explains the latest research in range management, climate, and fire. Having experienced the bad smoke, Erickson tries to understand a rancher's relationship to good smoke and to reconcile the symbiotic relationship that a rancher has with fire.Evocatively chronicled, Erickson tells what it is like trying to stop the unstoppable: Bad Smoke, Good Smoke gives voice to the particular pains that ranchers must face in our era of climate change and ever more powerful natural disasters.

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As the Vietnam War was beginning to turn towards its bitter end, Le Quan fought under beloved general Tran Ba Di in the army of South Vietnam. An unlikely encounter thrust the two men together, and they developed a mutual respect in their home country during wartime. Forty years later, the two men reconnected in a wholly unlikely setting: a family road trip to Key West.Soldier On is written by Le Quan's daughter, who artfully crafts the road trip as a frame through which the stories of both men come to life. Le Quan and Tran Ba Di provide two different views of life in the South Vietnamese army, and they embody two different realities of the aftermath of defeat. Le Quan was able to smuggle his family out of Saigon among the so-called boat people, eventually receiving asylum in America and resettling in Texas. General Tran Ba Di, on the other hand, experienced political consequences: he spent seventeen years in a re-education camp before he was released to family in Florida.A proud daughter's perspective brings this intergenerational and intercontinental story to life, as Tran herself plumbs her remembrances to expand the legacy of the many Vietnamese who weathered conflict to forge new futures in America.

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In A Haven in the Sun, nature writer B. C. Robison presents a unique portrayal of birds of the Texas Coast. Through the stories of birds that have a special bond with coastal Texas--Attwater's Prairie Chicken, White-tailed Hawk, Whooping Crane, Redhead, and migratory shorebirds and songbirds--Robison shows not only the importance of the Texas Coast to North American bird life but also the intimate dependence of coastal birds on our use of the land. At the heart of these stories lies the natural landscape and an account of how we have altered it to the benefit or harm of our native birds. The Laguna Madre, the great ranches of South Texas, the marshes of Aransas, the coastal prairie, and the famed migratory sanctuaries of Bolivar Flats and the oak woods of High Island have all played a vital role in our vibrant coastal bird life. Throughout the book, Robison asks several crucial questions: How can there be enough room for birds and people in the crowded world of the Texas Coast? Will we be endowed with this panorama of bird life twenty-five or fifty years from now? What can we do to help preserve this rich natural heritage? More story than polemic and more conversation than taxonomy, A Haven in the Sun will appeal to anyone who cares about bird life and its future on the Texas Coast.

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LaVern Roach, a skinny kid from the small town of Plainview, Texas, rose from obscurity to become one of boxing’s most popular figures during the 1940s. Roach’s rise to prominence occurred during an era when boxing shared the spotlight with baseball as the nation’s top two professional sports. As a result of Roach’s death— which marked the first nationally televised fight during which a boxer died from injuries received in the ring—the sport of boxing came under closer scrutiny by the general public than ever before. West Texas Middleweight is the story of Roach’s all too brief journey from a West Texas amateur, to enlistment in the US Marines, where he captained the nation’s most successful military boxing team, to becoming a Madison Square Garden main eventer. He received the distinction of being named The Ring Magazine’s “Rookie of the Year” for 1947 and was considered a top ten contender for the middleweight championship of the world. This book chronicles Roach’s road to his final fight—and it explains why, as noted by legendary boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, “boxing changed because of LaVern Roach.”

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Glenn Ohrlin (1926–2015) was a cowboy singer, working cowboy, rodeo rider, storyteller, and illustrator. In The Hell-Bound Train he has gathered dozens of his favorite songs, which chronicle the range and rodeo life he lived. Ohrlin was known for singing in an unornamented Western style, accompanying himself on the guitar and harmonica. Most of his repertoire comes from the period of 1875 to 1925. The book includes music and lyrics for songs such as “My Home’s in Montana,” “The Texas Rangers,” and “Bull Riders in the Sky,” along with Ohrlin’s commentary on each work’s provenance and meaning. This collection is a must-have for any fan of cowboy and folk music.

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In the early 1940s, American designer Emily Wilkens went beyond her previous experience in children's wear to create costumes for two teenage characters in a Broadway play. Recognizing the growing importance of the teenager in American culture, she soon launched Emily Wilkens Young Originals, the first designer label specializing in upscale, fashionable clothing for teenage girls. Within the space of a few years, Wilkens skyrocketed from obscurity to national recognition, yet even today many fashion insiders would not recognize her name.Fashion historian Rebecca Jumper Matheson explores intertwining stories of female agency through the history of Wilkens and her teenage clientele. Wilkens retained both artistic and business control over her label in an era when most American ready-to-wear designers were anonymous employees of manufacturers. Wilkens parleyed her relative youth into a big-sister image which, like her dresses themselves, allowed her to mediate between the concerns of her teenage clients and their parents. Contrary to popular wisdom, Wilkens’s designs declared that even a teenager could be fashionable. In doing so, Wilkens laid the foundation for the seismic shift that would occur later in the twentieth century, when youth became the fashionable ideal.Young Originals traces Wilkens’s career from fashion illustrator in the 1930s to spa and beauty expert in the 1980s, emphasizing her consistent ideal of healthy, youthful beauty.

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During his long career, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise received letters with only two words written on the envelope: “Rabbi USA.”But the United States Postal Service was never in doubt about the intended recipient: there was only one “Rabbi USA.” No other rabbi before or since Wise has dominated the American and the international scene with such passion and power. Both his admirers and opponents—there was no shortage of either group—acknowledged him as the premier leader of the American Jewish community and a major political figure. Pillar of Fire goes behind the headlines and the once-closed archives of the White House and the State Department to reveal the complex and controversial personal relationship between Wise and President Franklin D. Roosevelt when millions of lives hung in the balance during the Holocaust. It also explores Wise’s remarkable relationships with both President Woodrow Wilson and United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis. Finally, the book describes how Wise’s extraordinary actions in the realm of social justice and human rights permanently influenced every clergyperson, seminary, and house of worship in America.

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The stories in John J. Clayton's newest collection are luminous, expressing a struggle to see growth and meaning in life as much as possible. Nearly all focus on family, and the characters, most of them Jewish, grapple with questions of living, dying, loving and worshipping. Clayton has published several novels, including Mitzvah Man (TTUP, 2011), but he is best known for his critically-acclaimed short fiction, which have been included in O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories and Pushcart Prize anthologies. His collection Radiance was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.The ten stories in Many Seconds into the Future were written after Clayton’s collected stories were published in Wrestling with Angels in 2007. Many of these new stories originally were published in Commentary and some in literary magazines. Some are appearing for the first time. They are masterful stories of spiritual questing, emotional depth and often great humour.

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Three remarkable and innovative women who revolutionized the field of maternity fashion.In 1938, two optimistic young women raised $500 and began a new business: designing and manufacturing maternity clothing. Within a few years, a third sister joined the business, Page Boy Maternity Clothing, which quickly became the foremost maternity clothing manufacturing concern in the United States. Dressing entertainment icons such as Loretta Young, Elizabeth Taylor, and Florence Henderson, the trio devised innovative marketing strategies and business ideas that made them leaders and celebrities themselves.

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The cave at Mount Bonnell, not far from the school Hannah, Nick, and Jackie attend in Austin, has attracted many visitors over the years, from Indians to Boy Scouts to historic re-enactors. But when Jackie’s grandfather takes the trio there on an impromptu excursion, they meet a traveller of an entirely different sort: explorer Elijah Barrington—ancestor of their formidable history teacher—who has arrived there from the past. And accompanying him is a trunk that looks oddly familiar. A slam of the trunk’s lid Translator ports the girls into a melee of swirling hoof beats and bright war paint. Before they know it, they’ve been taken captive by Comanche warriors in a raid on Victoria, Texas, in 1840. Hannah is forced into servitude, while Jackie is adopted as a daughter. As they learn about life among the natives and participate reluctantly in another raid, Nick races east from Mount Bonnell on horseback in the company of Bigfoot Wallace, Jack Hays, and other Texas Rangers. In a fast-paced adventure infused with the fascinating cultural and historical details Melodie Cuate’s stories are known for, her latest instalment pits the old order against the new as they square off in the Battle of Plum Creek—and make friends in unexpected places.

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The long-intertwined communities of the Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation and the bordering towns in Sheridan County, Nebraska, mark their histories in sensational incidents and quiet human connections, many recorded in detail here for the first time. After covering racial unrest in the remote northwest corner of his home state of Nebraska in 1999, journalist Stew Magnuson returned four years later to consider the border towns’ peoples, their paths, and the forces that separate them. Examining Raymond Yellow Thunder’s death at the hands of four white men in 1972, Magnuson looks deep into the past that gave rise to the tragedy. Situating long-ranging repercussions within 130 years of context, he also recounts the largely forgotten struggles of American Indian Movement activist Bob Yellow Bird and tells the story of Whiteclay, Nebraska, the controversial border hamlet that continues to sell millions of cans of beer per year to the “dry” reservation. Within this microcosm of cultural conflict, Magnuson explores the odds against community’s power to transcend misunderstanding, alcoholism, prejudice, and violence.

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Lynwood Krenecks screenprints are recognized throughout the world for their imaginative, often humor-filled content, vivid colors, and always superb technical execution. His print series, such as ""Space Probes"", ""Earths Mysteries Solved"", ""Great Moments in Domestic Mishaps"", and ""Clownz"", show wit combined with care and passion for the screenprinting form. This personal, casual, and straightforward story follows the artists rise from a lonely childhood on a South Texas farm to recognition as one of the leading printmakers in the world today. The story begins with Krenecks youth during the lean World War II years and continues through his education in advertising at the University of Texas in Austin, his mentoring by printmaker and teacher Constance Forsyth, and his decision to abandon a successful advertising career to make his own art. After earning his MFA at the University of Texas, Kreneck joined the faculty at Texas Tech University, where he has remained through a career of nearly four decades. As a teacher, Kreneck has himself been a mentor to many printmakers. He is also the founder of Colorprint U.S.A., one of the most influential print exhibits in the world today, and he has had a primary influence on the development of water-based inks, which have made screenprinting labs safer for teachers, students, and professional artists. This book is filled with full-color reproductions of many of Krenecks screenprints, and it includes a step-by-step description of the artists new screenprinting technique, which he calls no prints. It also gives readers a glimpse of some of the outrageously inventive ideas of this colorful yet careful printmaker, who has dedicated his career to making his art, paving the way for others to make their art, and promoting printmaking as an art form. Owning this beautiful book will be a pleasure not only for the insight it gives into Krenecks body of work, but also for its fascinating, personal resume of his life and career.

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Although the Latino/a population of the United States has exploded since the 1960s, an analysis of its place in the history of American sport has, until recently, been sorely underrepresented. The thoughtful and coherent essays in More Than Just Peloteros demonstrate that participation in sport and recreation develops identity and involvement in the lives of Spanish-speaking people throughout what is now the United States. The articles feature accounts of eras and events as varied as the Latino experience itself, including horse racing in colonial San Antonio, boxing in New York City, baseball in the barrios of 1930s Chicago, basketball in a 1950s Arizona mining town, and, of course, high school football in South Texas. As the nation’s demographics continue to change, more and more Latinos/as will, undoubtedly, leave their marks on the fields of athletic competition at levels ranging from the local to the professional, the business offices of franchises and colleges, and as general consumers of American sporting events and goods. This volume recognizes and encourages the role that sport and recreation play in the day-to-day existence of Spanish speakers in the United States.

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Reared in Freedmen's Town, Texas, Emmett J. Scott was a journalist, newspaper editor, government official, author, and chief of staff, adviser, and ghostwriter to Booker T. Washington. He was frequently called "the power broker of the Tuskegee Machine": he was a Renaissance man, scholar, and political fixer. However, his life has not received a full examination until now. Built upon fifty years of research, Maceo C. Dailey's Emmett J. Scott offers fascinating detail by describing Scott's role in promoting the Tuskegee Institute. Before his death, Dailey had nearly singular access to the Scott papers at Morgan State University, which have been officially closed for decades. Readers will finally be exposed to Scott's behind-the-scenes contributions to racial uplift and will see Scott's influential role in advancing not only the Tuskegee Institute but also the Booker T. Washington agenda.Editors Will Guzmán and David H. Jackson lend their own expertise in bringing Dailey's lifetime project to fruition. Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis, a close friend of Maceo Dailey, provides a timely foreword. Former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown, granddaughter of Emmett J. Scott, reflects on her relationship with Scott and his impact in the afterword.Taken together, this work of biography is an impressive reference and an essential endeavor of recovery, one that restores to prominence the life and legacy of Emmett J. Scott.

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