Search results for ""texas a m university press""

Bruce A. Glasrud and Deborah M. Liles have gathered over thirty years of scholarship—articles, book excerpts, and new, original essays—to offer for the first time an overview of the history of African Americans in Central Texas. From slavery and agriculture in the nineteenth century to entrepreneurship and the struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century, African Americans in Central Texas History: From Slavery to Civil Rights fills in the critical missing pieces of an often-overlooked region in the state's history. African Americans first entered Central Texas with Spanish explorers, but few remained. White slave holders later brought black residents—as slaves—to this region. With the end of the Civil War, slavery may have ended but the brutalities of racial prejudice persisted. During Reconstruction, new attempts to ensure civil and political rights were resisted through terror, racial violence, and systemic denial of justice.Well into the twentieth century, segregation persisted, but years of individual and mobilized protest finally led to significant reform. Organizations such as the NAACP provided vital support. Before efforts to disenfranchise the black vote became successful, some politicians even courted black voters to further their own political agendas.African Americans in Central Texas History is a rare source that sheds light on the African American experience in the heart of the state.

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Thirteen millennia ago, in a small creek valley in western South Dakota, two mammoths perished. The mammoths, an adult and a juvenile, likely a cow and calf pair, died at the edge of an ancient pond.The Lange/Ferguson site is the earliest dated archaeological site in South Dakota and one of the few North American sites that provides evidence of a Clovis-period mammoth butchering event. In addition to the preserved remains of the two mammoths, the site yielded diagnostic Clovis weaponry—three Clovis projectile points recovered in context and stratigraphically associated with the mammoth bonebed—and flaked bone tools. The site offers a rare snapshot in time detailing early Paleoindian interactions with now-extinct megafauna nearly 13,000 years ago.In Clovis Mammoth Butchery: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology, L. Adrien Hannus provides a comprehensive look at one of the few New World Clovis-era sites with in-place buried deposits exhibiting evidence for an expedient bone tool technology. Multidisciplinary investigations include paleoenvironmental and geochronological reconstructions—pollen and phytoliths, geology and geomorphology, diatoms and ostracodes, mollusks, and vertebrate paleontology—as well as taphonomic evaluations and a microwear analysis of the chipped stone tools.Clovis Mammoth Butchery offers readers a rare glimpse into a singular moment in prehistory that captures human interaction with extinct animals during a rapidly changing world for which there is no modern comparison. This book shares great insight into hunting and procurement strategies used by big game hunters during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.

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Texans in World War II offers an informative look at the challenges and changes faced by Texans on the home front during the Second World War. This collection of essays by leading scholars of Texas history covers topics from the African American and Tejano experience to organized labor, from the expanding opportunities for women to the importance of oil and agriculture. Texans in World War II makes local the frequently studied social history of wartime, bringing it home to Texas.An eye-opening read for Texans eager to learn more about this defining era in their state's history, this book will also prove deeply informative for scholars, students, and general readers seeking detailed, definitive information about World War II and its implications for daily life, economic growth, and social and political change in the Lone Star State.

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This collection by Teresa Palomo Acosta—poet, historian, author, and activist—spans three decades of her writing, from 1988 through 2018. The collection is divided into four parts: poems, essays, a children’s story, and plays. Each work addresses cultural, historical, political, and gender realities that she experienced from her childhood to the present.The plays, set in the Central Texas Blackland Prairies where Acosta was raised, provide a unique Latina vision of memory, identity, and experience and are a vital contribution to Chicana feminist thought. The essays focus on Acosta’s literary heroes Jovita GonzÁlez de Mireles, Sara Estela RamÍrez, and Elena Zamora O’Shea, important writers who contributed significantly to Tejana literature and to Texas letters. The children’s story, “Colchas, Colchitas,” is based on Acosta’s most notable poem, “My Mother Pieced Quilts,” which pays homage to her mother and the many women of her generation who employed needles and thread, creating both practical and symbolic artifacts.This collection is a creative and, indeed, essential expansion of boundaries for what we think of as history, offering a unique and compelling look into the lived experiences and interior contemplations of a Texas artist well worth knowing. Readers will increase their understanding of Tejana experience in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Tejanaland promises to become an important addition to the cultural record, informing historical perspectives on the experiences of Tejana women and contributing significantly to the existing body of work from Tejana writers.

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Most general histories of the Civil War pay scant attention to the many important military events that took place in the Lower Rio Grande Valley along the Texas-Mexico border. It was here, for example, that many of the South's cotton exports, all-important to its funding for the war effort, were shuttled across the Rio Grande into Mexico for shipment to markets across the Atlantic. It was here that the Union blockade was felt perhaps most keenly. And it was here where longstanding cross-border rivalries and shifting political fortunes on both sides of the river made for a constant undercurrent of intrigue. And yet, most accounts of this long and bloody conflict give short shrift to the complexities of the ethnic tensions, political maneuvering, and international diplomacy that vividly colored the Civil War in this region.Now, Christopher L. Miller, Russell K. Skowronek, and Roseann Bacha-Garza have woven together the history and archaeology of the Lower Rio Grande Valley into a densely illustrated travel guide featuring important historical and military sites of the Civil War period. Blue and Gray on the Border integrates the sites, colorful personalities, cross-border conflicts, and intriguing historical vignettes that outline the story of the Civil War along the Texas-Mexico border. This resource-packed book will aid heritage travelers, students, and history buffs in their discovery of the rich history of the Civil War in the Rio Grande Valley.

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When people think of legendary Texas cattle ranches the images that first come to mind are iconic, open-range operations like King Ranch of South Texas. In Henry C. 'Hank' Smith and the Cross B Ranch, historian M. Scott Sosebee tells the story of one pioneer settler's small but significant ranch in West Texas. The Cross B Ranch of Blanco Canyon struggled but endured to become quite successful, even while surrounded by big ranching empires. Founder Hank Smith went on to become one of the region's most prominent, civic-minded citizens.Born in Bavaria, Smith left Germany in 1851 at the age of fourteen and traveled to Ohio to live with a sister. Less than two years later, he left Ohio to seek better opportunities in the American West. In the course of his westering life he worked as a teamster on the Santa Fe Trail, searched for gold in Arizona and New Mexico, served in both the Confederate and Union armies during the Civil War, operated a freighting business, owned a hotel, and eventually moved to Blanco Canyon and became a stock raiser. Although he did raise cattle, for most of his life as a stockman he raised twice as many sheep as he did cows, yet was one of the first in West Texas to upgrade his cattle stock with purebred bloodlines.In Henry C. 'Hank' Smith and the Cross B Ranch, M. Scott Sosebee enriches our understanding of western heritage and ranching in America through a compelling and lively biography set on the small stage of an unassuming but important ranch.

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At 102 years of age, Louise Tobin is one of the last surviving musicians of the Swing Era. Born in Aubrey, Texas, in 1918, she grew up in a large family that played music together. She once said that she fell out of the cradle singing and all she ever wanted to do was to sing. And sing she did. She sang with Benny Goodman and also performed vocals for such notables as Will Bradley, Bobby Hackett, Harry James (her first husband), Johnny Mercer, Lionel Hampton, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Peanuts Hucko (her second husband), and Fletcher Henderson.Based on extensive oral history interviews and archival research, Texas Jazz Singer recalls both the glamour and the challenges of life on the road and onstage during the golden age of swing and beyond. As it traces American music through the twentieth century, Louise Tobin's story provides insight into the challenges musicians faced to sustain their careers during the cultural revolution and ever-changing styles and tastes in music.In this absorbing biography, music historian Kevin Edward Mooney offers readers a view of a remarkable life in music, told from the vantage point of the woman who lived it. Rather than simply making Tobin an emblem for women in jazz of the big band era, Mooney concentrates instead on Tobin's life, her struggles and successes, and in doing so captures the particular sense of grace that resonates throughout each phase of Tobin's notable career.

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From the defeat of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam at Ap Bac to the battles of the Ia Drang Valley, Khe Sanh, and more, Storms over the Mekong offers a reassessment of key turning points in the Vietnam War. Award-winning historian William P. Head not only reexamines these pivotal battles but also provides a new interpretation on the course of the war in Southeast Asia. In considering Operation Rolling Thunder, for example-which Head dubs as "too much rolling and not enough thunder"-readers will grasp the full scope of the campaign, from specifically targeted bridges in North Vietnam to the challenges of measuring success or failure, the domestic political situation, and how over time, Head argues, "slowly, but surely, Rolling Thunder dug itself into a hole." Likewise, Head shows how the battles for Saigon and Hue during the Tet Offensive of 1968 were tactical defeats for the Communist forces with as many as 40,000 killed and no real gains. At the same time, however, Tet made it clear to many in Washington that victory in Vietnam would require a still greater commitment of men and resources, far more than the American people were willing to invest.Storms over the Mekong is a blow-by-blow account of the key military events, to be sure. But beyond that, it is also a measured reconsideration of the battles and moments that Americans thought they already knew, adding up to a new history of the Vietnam War.

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“The Lonesome Plains is never flashy, but it’s a powerful book that quietly and slowly penetrates deeply into the reader’s soul and brings vividly to life a bit of American history that isn’t so long gone.” —Washington Times“This volume constitutes a landmark study, the reading of which is essential for any historical understanding of panhandle Texas.”—Choice“In allowing these early pioneers to tell their own story, Fairchild places them at the center of the settlement drama, and portrays them as people engaged in a desperate, lonely struggle who ultimately endured.”—Southwestern Historical Quarterly

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In my year in Vietnam, I walked the booby-trapped rice paddies of the Delta, searching for the elusive Viet Cong, and later macheted my way through the triple-canopy jungle, fighting the North Vietnamese Regulars...I sweated, thirsted, hunted, killed. Somewhere in all my experiences, I overlapped the situations of nearly every infantryman and many others who served. Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field - the blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his ""Vietnam Trilogy"" will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his postwar investigation into the mind of the enemy. Through his eyes, readers see the reality of a war that did not always receive glory but was, in his words, ""the only war we had.

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Veteran gardener and author Judy Barrett’s book dispels the idea that growing plants we can eat is harder than growing plants we can’t eat and introduces readers to the idea of placing plants that can produce in an ordinary landscape, a harvest of herbs, vegetables, fruits, and nuts.Whether buying a few tomato plants for a patio container or exploring the idea of a frontyard or kitchen plot, incorporating plants that “bear food” into the landscape has real appeal, even to weekend gardeners.For the more ambitious, Barrett offers a primer on the various kinds of garden beds that are easy to create and maintain. For those without the space to garden themselves, she describes where and how one can buy the bounty produced by others in farmers markets, farm stands, and pick-your-own operations.Finally, Barrett invites readers to enjoy the camaraderie and learning opportunities available at community, neighborhood, and schoolyard gardens.

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More than the lifeblood of our natural world, Texas rivers have nourished the human spirit for as long as people have gathered on their banks. A living bond has flowed between Texas writers and rivers ever since the 1960 publication of John Graves’s classic journey along the Brazos, Goodbye to a River.Many of Texas’ leading writers have had their hearts captured by a river, and they have created sparkling accounts of the waterways they love. Now, editors Steven L. Davis and Sam L. Pfiester have assembled the best of those works into a revelatory collection of diverse literary voices.Ranging from the desert canyonlands of the Rio Grande to the swampy Big Thicket, from crystal clear Hill Country streams to the Red River’s treacherous quicksand, Viva Texas Rivers! showcases many classic writings along with brand new essays written for this volume. The literary nonfiction is complemented by flashes of poetry that brilliantly reflect these curving ribbons of light.Authoritative and expertly edited, Viva Texas Rivers! offers shimmering accounts of hidden paradises, as well as searing exposÉs of abuse and despoliation. Yet even in the bleakest times, as these writers have found, Texas rivers can bestow a sacred grace —and unexpected redemption.Viva Texas Rivers! brings you as close to the living nirvana of a Texas River as you can get without launching yourself into a canoe and following a great blue heron as it glides just above the breaking rapids, leading you around the bend as the river flows onward toward the best places in our hearts.

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The first openly transgender judge to be appointed in the United States, the first attorney to obtain corrected birth certificates for transgender people who had not undergone gender confirmation surgery, a survivor of conversion therapy, and author of a law review article that helped thousands of employers adopt supportive policies for their workers, Phyllis Frye is truly a pioneer in the fight for transgender rights.Among her many accomplishments, Frye founded the first national organization devoted to shaping transgender law—the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy, which has since created a body of work that includes the International Bill of Gender Rights—trained a cadre of future trans activists, and built the first national movement for transgender legal and political rights.Based on interviews with Frye, Phyllis Frye and the Fight for Transgender Rights covers her early life, the discrimination she faced while struggling with her identity—including being discharged from the army and fired from a subsequent job at her alma mater, Texas A&M—her transition in 1976, her many years of activism, and her current position as an associate judge for the municipal courts of Houston.This gripping account of Frye’s efforts to establish and protect the constitutional rights of transgender individuals not only fills a gap in existing histories of LGBTQ+ activism but will also inform and instruct contemporary trans activists.

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From pine forest to desert scrub, from alpine meadow to riparian wetland, Albuquerque and its surrounding area in New Mexico offer an appealing variety of wildlife habitat. Birders are likely to see more than two hundred speciesduring a typical year of bird-watching. Now, two experienced birders, Judith Liddell and Barbara Hussey, share their intimate knowledge of the best places to find birds in and around this important region. Covering the Rio Grande corridor, the Sandia and Manzano Mountains, Petroglyph National Monument, and the preserved areas and wetlands south of Albuquerque (including crane and waterfowl haven Bosque del Apache), Birding Hotspots of Central New Mexico offers twenty-nine geographically organized site descriptions, including maps and photographs, trail diagrams, and images of some of the birds and scenery birders will enjoy. Along with a general description of each area, the authors list target birds; explain where and when to look for them; give driving directions; provide information about public transportation, parking, fees, restrooms, food, and lodging; and give tips on availability of water and picnic facilities and on the presence of hazards such as rattlesnakes, bears, and poison ivy. The book includes a 'helpful information' section that discusses weather, altitude, safety, transportation, and other local birding resources. The American Birding Association's code of birding ethics appears in the back of the book, along with an annotated checklist of 222 bird species seen with some regularity in and around Albuquerque.

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After World War II, the discovery and production of onshore oil in the United States faced decline. As a result, offshore prospects in the Gulf of Mexico took on new strategic value. Shell Oil Company pioneered many of the early moves offshore and continues to lead the way into “deepwater.”Tyler Priest’s study is the first time the modern history of Shell Oil has been told in any detail. Drawing on interviews with Shell retirees and many other sources, Priest relates how the imagination, talent, and hard work of personnel at all levels shaped the evolution of the company. The narrative also covers important aspects of Shell Oil’s corporate evolution, but the company’s pioneering steps into the deepwater fields of the Gulf of Mexico are its signature achievement. Priest’s study demonstrates that engineers did not suddenly create methods for finding and producing oil and gas from astounding water depths. Rather, they built on a half-century of accumulated knowledge and improvements to technical systems.Shell Oil’s story is unique, but it also illuminates the modern history of the petroleum industry. As Priest demonstrates, this company’s experiences offer a starting point for examining the understudied topics of strategic decision-making, scientific research, management of technology, and corporate organization and culture within modern oil companies, as well as how these activities applied to offshore development.

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There has never been a greater need for raising the funds necessary to promote the causes that will help build a sustainable future. In Money for the Cause: A Complete Guide to Event Fundraising, veteran nonprofit executive director Rudolph A. Rosen lays out field-tested approaches that have been among those that helped him and the teams of volunteers and professionals he has worked with raise more than $3 billion for environmental conservation. As Rosen explains, fundraising events can range from elite, black-tie affairs in large cities to basement banquets and backyard barbeques in small-town America. Money for the Cause runs the gamut, demonstrating methods adaptable to most situations and illustrating both basic and advanced techniques that can be duplicated by everyone from novice volunteers to experienced event planners.Each chapter begins with a pertinent, real-life anecdote and focuses on major areas of event fundraising: business plans and budgets, raffles and auctions, tax and liability matters, contract negotiation, games and prizes, site selection, food service, entertainment, publicity, mission promotion, food and drink service, and effective team building and use of volunteers. The author applies each topic to the widest possible range of events, providing practical detail and giving multiple examples to cover the differences in types of organizations and their fundraising activities. Whatever the funding objective may be, Money for the Cause: A Complete Guide to Event Fundraising is both a textbook and a practical reference that will be indispensable to anyone involved in mission-driven organizations, whether as a volunteer, a professional, a student, or an educator.

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As with his first book on the historic homes of Waco, architectural historian Kenneth Hafertepe brings to life the colourful and varied pasts of an entirely new set of notable residences in this city. Hafertepe extends coverage to include homes of saloon keepers, horse traders, saddlers, ministers, bookkeepers, candy store owners, and labourers.

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Austin artist David Everett was born and raised in Texas, and his work reflects an organic and wholly original Lone Star State ethos. His stunning vision and exquisite craftsmanship evoke nature’s essential grace and harmony in beautiful sculptures, bas-relief carvings, woodcuts, and drawings. Steve Davis, former president of the Texas Institute of Letters, writes of Everett, “David has never been one of those artists-as-marketers who relentlessly hype themselves. Instead, he has let the quality of his work speak for itself. And it does more than speak—it sings.” Everett’s creations inspire a passionate devotion among his many fans and collectors. He appears in high-profile exhibitions across Texas and the Southwest and his work is found in many public, corporate, and private collections.An introduction by prominent novelist Stephen Harrigan sets the perfect tone for an absorbing consideration of Everett’s oeuvre in The Art of David Everett: Another World. Author and editor Becky Duval Reese, respected art curator, writer, and retired director of the El Paso Museum of Art, contributes an insightful essay on Everett and his place in Texas art, followed by an absorbing interview with curator, author, and teacher Richard Holland, both offering revealing and satisfying insights into the shaping and development of the artist’s unique viewpoint and methods.The heart of the book is the abundant collection of breathtaking, full-color reproductions of Everett’s work. Here, the reader gains a vivid view of how Everett’s artistic instincts have been nurtured by life experiences and a maturing aesthetic rooted in tradition.

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From 1983 to 1987, author Mark Dunn worked as a court clerk for a justice of the peace in Travis County, Texas, where, he says, “I learned more about human nature . . . than I could have learned in any other job I might have taken up as a bushy-tailed kid from Tennessee.” Based on interviews with 200 justices of the peace from all parts of Texas, Texas People’s Court promises to take readers on a tour of what it means to be a Texas justice of the peace: an experience that is by turns hilarious, sobering, heart-wrenching, and, from one end to the other, fascinating.Here in the Texas justice court, wrongs can be righted and lives changed in profound ways. A priceless family necklace might finally be restored to the rightful owner; an occupational driver’s license fortuitously granted. A death inquest may become an opportunity for family reflection and valediction, with the attending judge as sympathetic witness.In each of its chapters, Texas People’s Court takes up a different aspect, duty, or area of thought related to the profession of justice of the peace taken from conversations with JPs throughout the state of Texas—from those who serve in its most populous municipalities to rural county JPs—putting a human face on the responsibilities, attitudes, and perspectives that motivate their judgments. The result is a thoroughly entertaining, sympathetic view of what Dunn calls “the day-to-day observation of human conflict in microcosm.”

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Over There in the Air tells the little known story of the contribution of Texas A&M University to early aviation in World War I. Over two thousand students served in the war in one capacity or another, and of those about 250 were involved in the newest martial development-military aviation. The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, as it was then known, was regarded as one of the top leading academic institutions in the country for contributions to the nation's effort in the Great War. Through painstaking research-using unit records, after-action reviews, alumni newsletters, and countless other university documents-John A. Adams Jr. paints a portrait of the Aggie aviator in the Great War. Texas A&M aviators flew in European air forces, hunted German U-boats, went on scouting missions, and served as attack pilots. Adams has identified, often for the first time, those Aggies who served and follows them through training, life on the front, and the return home. While much of the World War I story occurred "over there", just as much took place "over here." Adams explores the home front as well as the battlefront, capturing campus life in the midst of mobilization, recruitment, and a devastating influenza epidemic that claimed as many as fifty campus lives.Over There in the Air is a riveting book about an important contribution of a university to the World War I effort. It is sure to catch the attention of all Aggies and those interested in aviation history.

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Recipient of three National Endowment for the Arts grants and with works exhibited at the prestigious Biennale de Paris, New York's Whitney Museum, the de Menil Collection in Houston, and other venues, Bob 'Daddy-O' Wade has been 'keeping it weird' since 1961 when he arrived in Austin with his '51 custom Ford hot rod and his slicked-back hair. Primed to study art at the University of Texas, Wade's coif and dragster earned him his trademark moniker, and the abstract, welded sculptures he fashioned from automobile bumpers in his frat house basement laid the foundations for the distinctive, larger-than-life art pieces that would eventually make him famous.Daddy-O is the creator of the forty-foot iguana that perched atop the Lone Star CafÉ in New York City, the immense cowboy boots (entered in the Guinness Book of World Records) outside San Antonio's North Star Mall, and Dinosaur Bob, who graces the roof of the National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature in Abilene, Texas. He is widely recognized as one of the progenitors of the 'Cosmic Cowboy Culture' that emerged in Texas during the 1970s.Daddy-O's Book of Big-Ass Art features images of more than a hundred of Wade's most famous pieces, complete with the wild tales that lie behind the art, told in brief essays by both Wade and more than forty noted artists and writers familiar with Wade's work.

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Author Roman Popadiuk served in the Bush White House from 1989 to 1992 as deputy assistant to the president and deputy press secretary for foreign affairs. In that capacity, he was closely involved with many of the day-to-day decisions of the administration during a momentous period that saw the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the rise of a new global coalition, the curbing of a dictator’s expansionist policies in the Middle East, and shifting domestic, economic, and political currents. In this important volume, Popadiuk examines the ways in which the personal leadership style of George Bush influenced the formation and execution of policy. Popadiuk composes a mosaic of events, quotations, and observations that yield a broad view of the ways in which a president’s personal qualities and philosophies impinge upon leadership options. General readers and public service professionals will find The Leadership of George Bush informative and enlightening, and scholars of the presidency and public policy will discover new avenues for research on both the Bush administration and executive leadership and policy.

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