Search results for ""Trinity University Press,U.S.""

The six stories in Outside showcase Barry Lopez's majestic talent as a fiction writer. Lopez writes in spare prose, but his narratives resonate with an uncanny power. With a reverence for our exterior and interior landscapes, these stories offer profound insight into the relationships between humans and animals, creativity and beauty, and, ultimately, life and death. Again and again, whether describing a Navajo rug possessing the essence of its maker, a boy who can change places with his half-coyote dog (named Leaves), or a teacher whose presence brings into question the meaning of friendship, Lopez portrays elemental and sacred places. His prose transcends its simplicity to enter spaces of wonder and mystery. As James Perrin Warren says in his compelling introduction, "Lopez's narrators bear witness to extraordinary patterns and purposes ...The storyteller is vital to the community and to a healthy landscape, but the vital relationship is also reciprocal...We participate, along with Lopez, in the long history of storytelling. We become part of the atmosphere in which wisdom shows itself."

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"This soulful collection is perfect for fans of The Moth or Humans of New York." — Publishers WeeklyPeople in San Antonio love to tell stories. Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories is a collection of forty true tales, epic adventures, and intimate revelations from the heart of one of America’s fastest growing and most culturally diverse cities.There is the hilarious chronicle of being crowned Turkey Queen of Cuero, as well as stories of finding one’s place as an immigrant or refugee, the heartbreak of being on the AIDS epidemic’s front lines, and the redemption in writing My Little Pony fan fiction. From the birth of a Freedom Rider to the origins of a literary legend, from the search for a murdered mother’s memories to passing our abilities and disabilities along to our children, the pieces here are as varied and nuanced as the city its authors have called home at one time or another.They might not all take place in Texas, but every story has roots in its streets, suburbs, and history. Whether it’s an account of being stranded in Uganda, growing up in a Mexican border barrio, catching swine flu in Thailand, being among Harvard University’s first Black architecture students, growing up in Iran, or leaving India for a new life in Texas, each story has a soul that is puro San Antonio. From last chances to first tries, all of these personal narratives were originally performed in front of an audience at Worth Repeating, Texas Public Radio’s live storytelling series.Writers include Heather Armstrong, Tanveer Arora, Jennie Badger, Kiran Kaur Bains, Marion Barth, Sheila Black, Barbara Bowie, Norma Elia Cantú, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Cary Clack, Jess Elizarraras, Georgia Erck, Tiffany Farias-Sokoloski, Elizabeth Fauerso, Everett L. Fly, Larry Garza, Lorenzo Gomez III, Mike Knoop, David W. Lesch, Rey Lopez, Vanessa Martinez, Collin McGrath, Joaquin Muerte, Sanford Nowlin, Tori Pool, Wendy Rigby, Alex Rubio, Jonathan Ryan, Yara Samman, John Phillip Santos, Burgin Streetman, Whitley Strieber, Barbara S. Taylor, Michael Taylor, Kirsten Thompson, Clay Utley, Cristina Van Dusen, Eddie Vega, Ayon Wen-Waldron, and Bria Woods.

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It’s said that the history of Mexico is, in great measure, the history of its culture, and the history of its culture is, in great measure, the history of its cooking. Restaurant menus and store aisles north of the Mexican border are packed with commonly known dishes that many have come to simplistically think of as Mexican cuisine. But the history of Mexican food is complex—a cornucopia of foodways ranging from indigenous, pre-Hispanic times to centuries of colonial-era influences and contemporary fusion variations. New Cooking from Old Mexico, Mexican food connoisseur Jim Peyton introduces a contemporary and diverse style of cooking practiced in Mexico—called nueva cocina mexicana—combining the elegant Mexican classics and techniques spanning centuries. Following an extensive introduction to the roots of Mexican cuisine complete with an overview of its foodways and new world ingredients, Peyton presents more than 130 recipes. Many of them are brought to life with colorful illustrations accompanied by a glossary of ingredients and culinary terms unique to these food cultures. In all, this collection is a tribute to the rich complexity of historic and contemporary Mexican cooking.

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The spaces we inhabit– from homes and workspaces to city streets—mediate community, creativity, and our very identity. Using insights from environmental psychology, design, and architecture, The Shaping of Us shows how the built and natural worlds subtly influence our behavior, health, and personality. Exploring ideas such as “ruin porn” and “ninja-proof seating,” mysteries of how we interact with the physical spaces around us are revealed. From caves and cathedrals to our current housing crisis and the dreaded open-plan office, Lily Bernheimer demonstrates that, for our well-being, we must reconnect with the power to shape our spaces.Have you ever wondered why we adorn our doorframes with moldings? What does Wikipedia’s open-source technology have to teach us about the history and future of urban housing? What does your desk say about your personality?From savannahs and skyscrapers to co-working spaces, The Shaping of Us shows that the built environment supports our well-being best when it echoes our natural habitats in some way. In attempting to restore this natural quality to human environments, we often look to other species for inspiration. The real secret to building for well-being, Bernheimer argues, is to reconnect humans with the power to shape our surroundings. When people are involved in forming and nurturing their environments, they feel a greater sense of agency, community, and pride, or “collective efficacy.” And when communities have high rates of collective efficacy, they tend to have less litter, vandalism, and violent crime.Playful and accessible, The Shaping of Us is a delightful read for designers, professionals, and anyone wanting to understand how spaces make us tick and how to fix the broken bits of our world.

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The first coloring book celebrating more than five hundred years of Latina trailblazers from Texas and Mexico. Inspired by the book by the same title and by popular demand from its readers, this playful yet historically on point collection features twenty-four portraits of some of history’s most inspirational women. Pictures are accompanied by brief biographies. Portraits by Kathy and Lionel Sosa to color include Alice Dickerson Montemayor, Chavela Vargas, Emma Tenayuca, Frida Kahlo, Genoveva Morales, Gloria Anzaldúa, Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza, Las Soladeras, Las Valientas, María Concepción Acevedo de la Llata, La Malinche, Nahui Olin, Adina De Zavala, Rena Maverick Green, Emily Edwards, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Teresa Urrea, the Virgin of Guadalupe, the women of Guerrero, Dolores Huerta, Laura Esquivel, Astrid Hadad, Sandra Cisneros, Ellen Riojas Clark, and the Zapatistas. Coloring fun for all ages!

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Brackenridge Park began its life as a heavily wooded, bucolic driving park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the next 120 years it evolved into the sprawling, multifaceted jewel San Antonians enjoy today, home to the San Antonio Zoo, the state’s first public golf course, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Sunken Garden Theater, and the Witte Museum.The land that Brackenridge Park occupies, near the San Antonio River headwaters, has been reinvented many times over. People have gathered there since prehistoric times. Following the city’s founding in 1718, the land was used to channel river water into town via a system of acequias; its limestone cliffs were quarried for building materials; and it was the site of a Civil War tannery, headquarters for two military camps, a plant nursery, and a racetrack.The park continues to be a site of national acclaim even while major sections have fallen into disrepair. The more than 400 acres that constitute San Antonio’s flagship urban park are made up of half a dozen parcels stitched together over time to create an uncommon varied landscape. Uniquely San Antonian, Brackenridge is full of romantic wooded walks and whimsical public spaces drawing tourists, locals, wildlife, and waterfowl.Extensively researched and illustrated with some two hundred archival photographs and vintage postcards, Brackenridge: San Antonio’s Acclaimed Urban Park is the first comprehensive look at the fascinating story of this unique park and how its diverse layers evolved to create one of the city’s foremost gathering places.

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Aureliano Urrutia, a prominent physician in Mexico City, built Miraflores garden after immigrating to Texas during the Mexican Revolution. A man of science, he valued nature, art, literature, history, and community. The garden, whose name roughly translates to “behold the flowers,” was built primarily from 1921 to 1945. Its plants, architecture, sculpture, and artisanship formed a cultural landscape reflecting Urrutia’s love for and memory of his homeland. Though recent decades have rendered much of the garden decayed and barely recognizable, it is now part of San Antonio’s historic Brackenridge Park. Miraflores: San Antonio’s Mexican Garden of Memory recounts the garden’s history and celebrates the importance of the cultural, historical, and artistic meaning of a place.

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Elephants have captivated the human imagination for as long as they have roamed the earth, appearing in writings and cultures from thousands of years ago and still much discussed today. In Thirty-Three Ways of Looking at an Elephant, veteran scientific writer Dale Peterson has collected thirty-three essential writings about elephants from across history, with geographical perspectives ranging from Africa and Southeast Asia to Europe and the United States. An introductory headnote for each selection provides additional context and insights from Peterson’s substantial knowledge of elephants and natural history. The first section of the anthology, “Cultural and Classical Elephants,” explores the earliest mentions of elephants in African mythology, Hindu theology, and Aristotle and other ancient Greek texts. “Colonial and Industrial Elephants” finds elephants in the crosshairs of colonial exploitation in accounts pulled from memoirs commodifying African elephants as a source of ivory, novel targets for bloodsport, and occasional export for circuses and zoos. “Working and Performing Elephants” gives firsthand accounts of the often cruel training methods and treatment inflicted on elephants to achieve submission and obedience.As elephants became an object of scientific curiosity in the mid-twentieth century, wildlife biologists explored elephant families and kinship, behaviors around sex and love, language and self-awareness, and enhanced communications with sound and smell. The pieces featured in “Scientific and Social Elephants” give readers a glimpse into major discoveries in elephant behaviors. “Endangered Elephants” points to the future of the elephant, whose numbers continue to be ravaged by ivory poachers. Peterson concludes with a section on literary elephants and ends on a hopeful note with the 1967 essay “Dear Elephant, Sir,” which argues for the moral imperative to save elephants as an act of redemption for their systematic abuse and mistreatment at human hands. Essential to our understanding of this beloved creature, Thirty-Three Ways of Looking at an Elephant is a must for any elephant lover or armchair environmentalist.

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An island is a world out of time and place, separated by literal and figurative oceans, where the confines of reality are tenuous and magic may be possible. Iceland—with its relative isolation, enchanting mythologies, creative people, and the otherworldly wild beauty of its glaciers, geysers, volcanos, and fjords—encompases this special magic in the minds of many, including writer Kurt Caswell.Vividly illustrated by Julia Oldham, Iceland Summer recounts Caswell’s journey traversing the country by foot and bus accompanied by his lifelong friend Scott. The pair set out from Reykjavík and travel clockwise along the Ring Road, stopping along the way for backcountry walking trips. Caswell immerses himself in the natural beauty and charming eccentricities of the tiny island nation. With his drinking and hiking buddy by his side, and fueled by a steady diet of Brennivín (fermented grain mash) and pylsur (Icelandic hot dogs), he explores the Hornstrandir peninsula, walks to the famed Dettifoss waterfall, waits for a glimpse of the lake monster Lagarfljótsormurinn at Egilsstaðir, visits the world’s only penis museum, and pays homage to centuries of Icelandic literary tradition at the Árni Magnússon Institute.Writing in the tradition of other pairs who have traveled in Iceland, like W. G. Collingwood and Jón Stefánsson, and W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice, Caswell meditates on the value of wild places in the modern world, travel as both pastime and occupation, the nature of friendship, and walking, food, and literature. Scott is the Sancho Panza to Caswell’s Don Quixote, offering a ribald humor that grounds Caswell’s flights into the romantic. The two travel well together and together arrive at the understanding that what anchors them both is their lifelong friendship.

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Thirty-five classic stories fill this book about San Antonio’s seamier side, from the days of the Old West when Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson came by, Rowdy Joe Lowe ran a saloon on Main Plaza and Butch Cassidy got away from Madame Fanny Porter’s in time to escape the fate of fellow train robber Deaf Charley, who found himself at the business end of a lawman’s six-shooter. A map of the 22-block red-light district west of San Pedro Creek shows more than 100 houses of ill repute, inhabitants listed.

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The incomparable Rebecca Solnit, author of more than a dozen acclaimed, prizewinning books of nonfiction including Men Explain Things To Me, brings the same dazzling writing to the essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness; hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "globally wide-ranging and topically urgent and the Boston Globe as "luminous and precise.". As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit's concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in, from the jungles of the Zapatistas in Mexico to the splendors of the Arctic. This rich collection tours places as diverse as Haiti and Iceland; movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring; an original take on the question of who did Henry David Thoreau's laundry; and a searching look at what the hatred of country music really means. Solnit moves nimbly from Orwell to Elvis, to contemporary urban gardening to 1970s California macrame and punk rock, and on to searing questions about the environment, freedom, family, class, work, and friendship. It's no wonder she's been compared in Bookforum to Susan Sontag and Annie Dillard and in the San Francisco Chronicle to Joan Didion. The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness proves Rebecca Solnit worthy of the accolades and honors she's received. Rarely can a reader find such penetrating critiques of our time and its failures leavened with such generous heapings of hope. Solnit looks back to history and the progress of political movements to find an antidote to despair in what many feel as lost causes. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit's collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Her essays are a beacon for readers looking for alternative ideas in these imperiled times.

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Mary Parrish was reading in her home when the Tulsa race massacre began on the evening of May 31, 1921. Parrish’s daughter, Florence Mary, called the young journalist and teacher to the window. “Mother,” she said, “I see men with guns.” The two eventually fled into the night under a hail of bullets and unwittingly became eyewitnesses to one of the greatest race tragedies in American history. Spurred by word that a young Black man was about to be lynched for stepping on a white woman’s foot, a three-day riot erupted that saw the death of hundreds of Black Oklahomans and the destruction of the Greenwood district, a prosperous, primarily Black area known nationally as Black Wall Street. The murdered were buried in mass graves, thousands were left homeless, and millions of dollars worth of Black-owned property was burned to the ground. The incident, which was hidden from history for decades, is now recognized as one of the worst episodes of racial violence in the United States. The Nation Must Awake, published for a wide audience for the first time, is Parrish’s first-person account, along with the recollections of dozens of others, compiled immediately following the tragedy under the name Events of the Tulsa Race Disaster. With meticulous attention to detail that transports readers to those fateful days, Parrish documents the magnitude of the loss of human life and property at the hands of white vigilantes. The testimonies shine light on Black residents’ bravery and the horror of seeing their neighbors gunned down and their community lost to flames. Parrish hoped that her book would “open the eyes of the thinking people to the impending danger of letting such conditions exist and in the ‘Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.’ ” Although the story is a hundred years old, elements of its racial injustices are still being replayed in the streets of America today. Includes an afterword by Anneliese M. Bruner, Parrish’s great-granddaughter, and an introduction by the late historian John Hope Franklin and Scott Ellsworth, author of The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice.

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In Navigating Rocky Terrain, a nature memoir in essays, Laurie Roath Frazier explores the subterranean in search of footholds to move forward in an ever-changing landscape. The journey begins soon after her mother’s diagnosis of dementia. As Frazier hikes through Canyon Lake Gorge, an enormous scar left behind by a megaflood, questions emerge. What is life like in cracked and disturbed places? How do people and places—plants, animals, and the land—heal following a disturbance? How does life flourish in the shadow of an uncertain future? These questions continue to guide Frazier through the limestone terrain of the Texas Hill Country. Each essay delves into the geology and ecology of a special place: a gorge, a cave, a sinkhole, a disappearing river—key features in the crumbling spaces, the holes and cracks, of karst terrai

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In her nearly 60-year career as a groundbreaking primatologist and a passionate conservationist, Jane Goodall has touched the hearts of millions of people. The Jane Effect: Celebrating Jane Goodall is a collection of testimonies by her friends and colleagues honoring her as a scientific pioneer, an inspiring teacher, a devoted friend, and an engaging spirit whose complex personality tends to break down usual categories. Jane Goodall is the celebrity who transcends celebrity. The distinguished scientist who's open to nonscientific ways of seeing and thinking. The human who has lived among non-humans. She is a thoughtful adult with depth and sobriety who also possesses a child's psychological immediacy and sense of wonder. She is a great scientific pioneer, and yet her pioneering work goes far beyond producing advances in scientific knowledge. The more than 100 original pieces included in this inspirational collection give us a sense of her amazing reach and the power of the "Jane effect."

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From Here to the Horizon presents the work of fifty of America’s leading contemporary landscape photographers in honor of the life and influence of Barry Lopez (1945–2020), one of our most revered writers about the landscape and our place within it. Work by each photographer was selected in relation to, and accompanied by, an excerpt from the best-selling book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape, a reader’s A-to-Z guide to American landscape terms, edited by Lopez and Debra Gwartney. With images reflecting landforms or locations and others that are more evocative, the collection creates a portrait of the beauty, diversity, and abundance found in our shared North American topography.For Lopez, the land was never simply a background for human activity but reflected our aspirations and desires, both as individuals and communities. He had a particular affinity with photographers, and some have compared his precise, crystalline language to the artistry found in photography. As Virginia Beahan noted, “What impressed me so much about Barry’s writing was the slow-moving attention to detail . . . as he tried to make sense of the world.The collection includes leading photographers such as Virginia Beahan, Barbara Bosworth, Frank Gohlke, Lois Conner, Emmet Gowin, Mark Klett, David Maisel, Laura McPhee, Andrew Moore, Mark Ruwedel, and essays by Debra Gwartney, Robert Macfarlane, and Toby Jurovics. From Here to the Horizon serves as a marker of the admiration of and affection for Lopez and will spark the imagination of places we already know, or hope to one day visit, or may never see but carry with us because of the life-affirming work of writers like Lopez.Photographers: Robert Adams, Virginia Beahan, Marion Belanger, Michael Berman, Andrew Borowiec, Barbara Bosworth, Joann Brennan, Gregory Conniff, Linda Connor, Lois Conner , Thomas Joshua Cooper, Robert Dawson, Peter de Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Rick Dingus, Terry Evans, Lukas Felzmann, Steve Fitch, Frank Gohlke, Peter Goin, Emmet Gowin, Wayne Gudmundson, Owen Gump, David T. Hanson, Alex Harris, Allen Hess, Ron Jude, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Mark Klett, Stuart Klipper, Peter Latner, David Maisel, Laura McPhee, Andrew Moore, Eric Paddock, Mary Peck, Edward Ranney, Jeff Rich, Meghann Riepenhoff, Mark Ruwedel, Mike Smith, Joel Sternfeld, Martin Stupich, Willy Sutton, Bob Thall , Terry Toedtemeier, Geoff Winningham, Dennis Witmer, and William WylieWriters: Jeffery Renard Allen, Kim Barnes, Conger Beasley Jr., Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Collier, Elizabeth Cox, William deBuys, Pamela Frierson, Robert Hass, Patricia Hampl, Emily Hiestand, Linda Hogan, Barbara Kingsolver, William Kittredge, Gretchen Legler, Ellen Meloy, Robert Morgan, Antonya Nelson, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Eva Saulitis, Donna Seaman, Carolyn Servid, Kim Stafford, Arthur Sze, D. J. Waldie, Joy Williams, Terry Tempest Williams, and Larry Woiwod

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In Mossback, David Pritchett traverses geography, history, and genealogy to explore landscapes and mythologies at the intersection of environmental, indigenous, and social justice. This collection of a dozen essays searches terrain—from the heart of a swamp to the modern grid lines remaking our watersheds, to the tracks of the animals who share this earth, to the inner landscapes of the soul—to find glimpses of light in dark places and hope in painful legacies.Pritchett recounts a trip to Dismal Swamp, where he takes inspiration from the many enslaved people who found refuge there. Another piece offers two ways of seeing the landscape: the watershed as an ecological unit, and the grid as a colonial construct. Still another weaves personal narrative with the story of the Trail of Tears to describe how settler colonialism became an apocalypse for indigenous nations and ecologies. Pritchett explores an early apocalyptic story from the book of Daniel and considers new ways of relating to the land and its inhabitants. He focuses on the relationship between technology and trees to argue that humans have largely discarded ecological interrelationship in favor of extractive ways of living, and he travels the Ventura River, reflecting on waterways as being endangered but still operating as places of refuge for people and wildlife.The word “mossback” has been used to describe rural southerners who lived in swampy areas during colonial times and moved so slowly that moss grew on their clothing. It is also used to describe fish and turtles who show similar growth on their shells, Confederate deserters who refused to fight and, after the war, southerners who fought against the Ku Klux Klan. Pritchett reclaims the word to celebrate those who move deliberately through the natural world, protecting the land and the relations they depend on.

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Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness.Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change. In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change.Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

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In spring 2014 Peggy Kokernot Kaplan, a former Trinity University athlete and cofounder of the women’s track team, emailed her alma mater’s athletic department asking the school to post statistics from the team’s 1975 season. It’s no surprise that they couldn’t fulfill her request, for Trinity had sparse records from the 1970s—not just for track and field but for most performances by female athletes before 1991, when the school joined a NCAA Division III conference. What started as a humble email request nearly a decade ago has culminated in From the Sidelines to the Headlines: The Legacy of Women's Sports at Trinity University, an expansive book aimed at filling in the gaps in coverage of half a century of women’s intercollegiate sports. Former Trinity athlete Betsy Gerhardt Pasley and historian Doug Brackenridge, along with other members of the Trinity community, have collected hundreds of long-forgotten documents and conducted dozens of interviews with former students, coaches, and administrators to tell the fascinating, multifaceted story of women’s sports at this liberal arts school in San Antonio, Texas.While the book focuses primarily on the post–Title IX years between 1972 and 1999, its scope extends to Trinity’s founding in 1869, illuminating the century-long evolution of women in competitive sports, at Trinity and elsewhere, before Title IX. The story, told alongside the cultural shifts that formed the social and athletic context for female athletes of the day, also documents the decision Trinity and other institutions of higher learning faced after Title IX: Should they adhere to a commercial model, in which a focus on athletics often overshadowed academics, or strive for a more balanced student-athlete, nonscholarship model? Trinity chose the latter and has decades of national championships and academic accolades to show for it.

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Witness to War presents a compelling visual record of a young American man’s venture in Mexico as the country veered into revolution in the early 1900s. Walter Elias Hadsell, a skilled photographer who had recently graduated as a mining engineer, documented a critical period of foreign investment in Mexico’s mining industry and, in the process, captured scenes of Mexican life in other cities.Susan Toomey Frost draws from an extensive collection of Hadsell’s original photographic prints to narrate his ten years in Mexico. The images in Witness to War follow him from his time as a mining engineer in Mexico to his 1917 return to mining in Arizona, his home state.Planning for a future career in photography, Hadsell soon acquired the Kodak franchise for Veracruz, Mexico’s most important port since colonial times. He documented the damage done in Mexico City during a ten-day uprising in 1913 that led to the assassination of

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In (Don’t) Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before, Peter Turchi combines personal narrative and close reading of a wide range of stories and novels to reveal how writers create the fiction that matters to us. Building on his much-loved Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, Turchi leads readers and writers to an understanding of how the intricate mechanics of storytelling—including shifts in characters’ authority, the subtle manipulation of images, careful attention to point of view, the strategic release of information, and even digressing from the (apparent) story—can create powerful effects.Using examples from Dickens, Chekhov, and Salinger, and Twain to more contemporary writers including Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, E. L. Doctorow, Jenny Erpenbeck, Adam Johnson, Mohsin Hamid, Jai Chakrabarti, Yoko Ogawa, Richard Powers, Deborah Eisenberg, Olga Tokarczuk, Rachel Cusk, and Colson Whitehead, Turchi offers illuminating insights into the inner workings of fiction as well as practical advice for writers looking to explore their craft from a fresh angle beyond the fundamentals of character and setting, plot, and scene.While these essays draw from decades of teaching undergraduate and graduate students, they also speak to writers working on their own. In “Out of the Workshop, into the Laboratory,” Turchi discusses how anyone can make the most of discussions of stories or novels in progress, and in “Reading Like a Writer” he provides guidelines for learning from writing you admire. Perhaps best of all, these essays by a writer the Houston Chronicle has called “one of the country’s foremost thinkers on the art of writing” are as entertaining as they are edifying, always reminding us of the power and pleasure of storytelling.

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There’s no such thing as the middle of nowhere. Everywhere is the middle of somewhere for some living being. That was Suzanne Stryk’s mantra as she journeyed through her home state on a mission inspired by the reflective, encyclopedic sensibility of Thomas Jefferson’s book Notes on the State of Virginia. While acknowledging the moral contradictions in the founding father’s work and life, Stryk offers a contemporary interpretation of Virginia’s ecology from a visual artist’s point of view. The Middle of Somewhere is an assemblage of essays, sketches, and ephemera from her travels. In a challenge that is universal, Stryk invites us to travel slowly, tread lightly, and look closely at each somewhere that defines a place.

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A Rock between Two Rivers is the story of a man coming to terms with the environmental legacy of his family’s ranch in Dimmitt County, Texas, and reckoning with the birthright he’ll leave for the generations who follow. What began for Hugh Fitzsimons as a mission to expose local ecological hazards from hydraulic fracking has turned into a lifelong ache to understand the more complicated story of how his family changed the land inherited from his grandfather, and deeper still, how the land irrevocably changed the family.Water is the lens through which this fifth-generation rancher tells his story. While the discovery of oil in this part of Texas fueled the region's growth, water has the upper hand, determining where people live and how they make their living. Agriculture, ranching, drilling for oil, and now fracking all require water, with each pursuit requiring more and more but giving back less and less to the communities they’ve helped enrich. In A Rock between Two Rivers, Fitzsimons struggles with the inheritance he wants for his own children, one that considers the future consequences of our actions toward the land we are born to and owns the broader threats to our natural resources that loom in the near distance.Interweaving a family narrative of a life built on the U.S.-Mexico border and the history of European colonization with its brutal consequences on the land and indigenous peoples, Fitzsimons explores how our attitudes toward this precious resource have changed alongside our relationship to the places we call home.

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"Defiant Gardens" examines gardens of war in the twentieth century, including gardens built behind the trenches in World War I, in the ghettos during World War II, and in Japanese-American internment camps in the US, as well as gardens created by soldiers at their bases and encampments during the Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea and the Second World Wars.

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A Kite in the Wind is an anthology of essays by 20 veteran writers and master teachers. While the contributors offer specific, practical advice on such fundamental aspects of craft as characterization, character names, the first person point of view, and unreliable narrators, they also give extended, thoughtful consideration to more sophisticated topics, including "imminence," or the power of a sense of beginning; creating and maintaining tension; "lushness"; and the deliberate manipulation of information to create particular effects. The essays in A Kite in the Wind begin as personal investigations -- attempts to understand why a decision in a particular story or novel seemed unsuccessful; to define a quality or problem that seemed either unrecognized or unsatisfactorily defined; to understand what, despite years of experience as a fiction writer, resisted comprehension; and to pursue haunting, even unanswerable questions. Unlike a how-to book, the anthology is less an instruction manual than it is an intimate visit with twenty very different writers as they explore topics that excite, intrigue, and even puzzle them. Each discussion uses specific examples and illustrations, including both canonical stories and novels and writing less frequently discussed, from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, by both American and international authors. The contributors share their hard-earned insights for beginning and advanced writers with humility, wit, and compassion. The first section of the book focuses on narration, with particular attention paid to various kinds of narrators; the second, on strategic creation and presentation of character; the third, on some of the roles of the visual, beginning with establishing setting; and the fourth, on structural and organizational issues, from movement through time to the manipulation of information to create mystery and suspense.

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The Last Speaker of Bear is the patchwork story of a life spent traveling in the north from Alaska to Siberia. Lawrence Millman first visited northern Canada as a child and has spent four decades since on some thirty-five expeditions in search of undeveloped landscapes and traditional cultures, not to mention untamed wildlife. While much of his experience is centered in Canada—including territories from Yukon to Quebec and Newfoundland/Labrador—he includes stories from villages in Greenland, Iceland, and Norway as well.Early on, Millman developed a reverence for the wisdom of indigenous and native communities with histories spanning centuries: Inuit, Inuk, Innu, Alutiiq, Cree, and others. Whether dining on mushrooms, fungus, tobacco leaves, or unusual foods that would have made even Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain turn up their noses, or exploring northern tundras, rugged mountains, or remote islands, he paints a picture of people often living in tenuous conditions but rooted in a faith that their worlds will provide for them. Relationships with bears, caribou, reindeer, walruses, seals, whales, and abundant avian life serve spiritual, companionship, and sustenance purposes. Traditions grounded in family and community rituals thrive, as do lost languages, natural medicine, and time-honored ways to survive difficult circumstances.. In this collection of vignettes, Millman reminds us of the potency of endangered knowledge as well as the importance of paying close attention to the natural world. He opens our eyes to a life in remote places thousands of miles from the fast-paced, urban world so many of us inhabit.

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On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city’s Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city’s North Side, wreaking considerable damage. The city’s response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation. Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America’s poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS’s emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city’s diverse population. West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio’s enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio’s long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.

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What might the lives of contemporary monastics teach us about putting down roots? Whereas many of us are constantly on the go, stressed out, and focused on productivity, the life of a monk prioritizes staying put and paying attention. Many monks take a vow of stability that commits them to their home monastery, leading them to develop a deep connection with and knowledge of the land they inhabit. The monastic life teaches those who practice it to move more slowly through the world, and the monastic sense of place may even hold a key to responding to the growing ecological crisis threatening our environment. Dwelling in the Wilderness examines how contemporary Benedictine Roman Catholic monks in the American West fall in love with their landscapes and how, in troubled times, we might do the same. Jason Brown travels to four monasteries—the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California; the Abbey of Our Lady of New Clairvaux in

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In Putting on the Dog, Melissa Kwasny explores the age-old relationship between humans and the animals that have provided us with our clothing: leather, wool, silk, feathers, pearls, and fur. From silkworms grown on plantations in Japan and mink farms off Denmark’s western coast to pearl beds in the Sea of Cortés, Kwasny offers firsthand accounts of traditions and manufacturing methods—aboriginal to modern—and descriptions of the marvel and miracle of the clothing itself. What emerges is a fresh look at the cultural history of fashion. Kwasny travels the globe to visit both large-scale industrial manufacturers and community-based, often subsistence production by people who have spent their lives working with animals—farmers, ranchers, tanners, weavers, shepherds, and artisans. She examines historical rates of consumption and efforts to move toward sustainability, all while considering animal welfare, worker safety, environmental health, product accountability, and respect for indigenous knowledge and practice. At its heart, Putting on the Dog demonstrates how what we choose to wear represents one of our most profound engagements with the natural world.

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At the dawn of the twentieth century, just as color postcards were becoming a worldwide sensation, San Antonio bypassed Dallas as the largest city in Texas. Idyllic postcard images of San Antonio began landing in mailboxes across the country, displaying recently gained wealth and prosperity. Greetings from San Antonio: Historic Postcards of the Alamo City is a collection of more than six hundred color and black-and-white photo postcards, many of them quite rare, that yield a compelling visual narrative of the city during this pivotal period.Large buildings like Joske’s department store and the Milam Building, railroad stations, mansions on paved streets, the 343-acre Brackenridge Park, and plush hotels such as the Saint Anthony Hotel and the Gunter Hotel replaced dusty frontier streetscapes at the turn of the century. This delighted postcard publishers, who gave proud residents and curious visitors alike the opportunity to mail images of a modern city worldwide. As the midcentury approached, postcards’ peak in popularity faded, along with San Antonio’s title as the largest city in the state.Greetings from San Antonio presents a portrait essential to understanding the modern origins of this distinctive American city. Daily life is captured through seldom-seen images of downtown⁠, including the Alamo⁠, and early suburban neighborhoods, churches and schools, and entertainment venues and festivals like the annual citywide celebration Fiesta. Special attention is given to San Antonio’s emerging reputation as a military city, with images of early army and air bases—Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Camp Bullis, and Brooks, Kelly, and Randolph Fields. Highlights include postcards showing the San Antonio–based pursuit of Pancho Villa and the city’s role as a hub for military preparations for World Wars I and II. Taken as a whole, Greetings from San Antonio is a captivating and unique portrayal of the city during the early years of its transformation into the multicultural mecca it is today.

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Once little more than party fuel, tequila has graduated to the status of fine sipping spirit. How the Gringos Stole Tequila traces the spirit's evolution in America from frat-house firewater to luxury good. But there's more to the story than tequila as upmarket drinking trend. Chantal Martineau spent several years immersing herself in the world of tequila--traveling to visit distillers and agave farmers in Mexico, meeting and tasting with leading experts and mixologists around the United States, and interviewing academics on either side of the border who have studied the spirit.The result is a book that offers readers a glimpse into the social history and ongoing impact of this one-of-a-kind drink. It addresses issues surrounding the sustainability of the limited resource that is agave, the preservation of traditional production methods, and the agave advocacy movement that has grown up alongside the spirit's swelling popularity. In addition to discussing the culture and politics of Mexico's most popular export, the book takes readers on a colorful tour of the country's Tequila Trail, as well as introducing them to the mother of tequila: mezcal.

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Few American cities enjoy the likes of San Antonio's visual links with its dramatic past. The Alamo and four other Spanish missions, recently marked as a UNESCO World Heritage site, are the most obvious but there are a host of landmarks and folkways that have survived over the course of nearly three centuries that still lend San Antonio an "odd and antiquated foreignness." Adding to the charm of the nation's seventh largest city is the San Antonio River, saved to become a winding linear park through the heart of downtown and beyond and a world model for sensitive urban development. San Antonio's heritage has not been preserved by accident. The wrecking balls and headlong development that accompanied progress in nineteenth-century San Antonio roused an indigenous historic preservation movement--the first west of the Mississippi River to become effective. Its thrust has increased since the mid-1920s with the pioneering work of the San Antonio Conservation Society. In Saving San Antonio, Texas historian Lewis Fisher peels back the myths surrounding more than a century of preservation triumphs and failures to reveal a lively mosaic that portrays the saving of San Antonio's cultural and architectural soul. The process, entertaining in the telling, has reverberated throughout the United States and provided significant lessons for the built environments and economies of cities everywhere.

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Internationally acclaimed photographer Al Rendón has been documenting the extended culture of south-central Texas for more than five decades. From his early teenage escapades weaseling his way backstage to shoot photos at shows by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, and others to having his photos grace the covers of Variety and Newsweek, he has given the world a glimpse into Tejano culture and so much more. Featured widely in international media, Al Rendón’s work has appeared in fourteen books and has been exhibited throughout the United States and Latin America and in China.Mi Cultura captures a wide array of commercial and art photography ranging from charreadas, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and rock and roll and conjunto to immigrant food culture, the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, and the impacts of COVID-19 on already challenged communities. Included is an extensive selection of retratos, or portraits, work Al Rendón is best known for—most notably his photographs of Selena (several of her are in the National Portrait Gallery). Taken as a whole, the collection reflects a timely cross section of historical and contemporary life in south-central Texas by one of the country’s most important photographers.

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In this thoughtful, affectionate collection of interviews and letters spanning three decades, beloved poet Gary Snyder talks with South African writer and scholar Julia Martin. Over this period many things changed decisively--globally, locally, and in their personal lives--and these changing conditions provide the back story for a long conversation. It begins in the early 1980s as an intellectual exchange between an earnest graduate student and a generous distinguished writer, and becomes a long-distance friendship and an exploration of spiritual practice. At the project's heart is Snyder's understanding of Buddhism. Again and again, the conversations return to an explication of the teachings. Snyder's characteristic approach is to articulate a direct experience of Buddhist practice rather than any kind of abstract philosophy. In the version he describes here, this practice finds expression not primarily as an Asian import or a monastic ideal, but in the specificities of a householder's life as lived creatively in a particular location at a particular moment in history. This means that whatever "topic" a dialogue explores, there is a sense that all of it is about practice--the spiritual-social practice of a contemporary poet.

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Barry Lopez had no illusions about the seriousness of our global crisis, yet he also felt a deep conviction about the power of hope and the sources of renewal in the living world. Syntax of the River is an extended conversation spanning three days between Lopez and Julia Martin in which he explores what this juxtaposition means for him as a writer.On the first day Lopez reflects on years watching the McKenzie River near his home in Oregon. He describes the quality of attention he learned from intimacy with the place itself: a very fine distinction between silence and stillness, the rich complexities of the present moment, and the syntax of interrelationships between living things. The second day is concerned with craft: the work of making sentences and books. Lopez shares his practical strategies for writing and revising a manuscript and goes on to speak about vulnerability. He says he often experienced a deep sense of doubt about his capacity to achieve whatever he was trying to do in a particular project. Over time, though, this characteristic experience of not-knowing became a kind of fuel for his work, and even a weapon at times.On the final day, Lopez ponders the idea of writing as a praxis, a way of life, even a prayer for the earth, while concurrently being terrified by the portents of its destruction. Here, the experience of being an attentive participant emerges as his core teaching. Over the decades he developed a practice of attention that was endlessly curious and enthralled by the living world, what he calls its pattern or syntax. Despite acclaim as a celebrated writer, throughout his career Lopez humbly tasked himself with making a combination of wonder and horror work together to effectively communicate a life journey of contemplation, exploration, and discovery.

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Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful gift book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically sparse scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Alongside photographs by Chuck Katz, the text and images form a quiet and moving meditation on The Power of Trees. Twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks were formed, what tree rings tell us about human societies, and how trees define the future of humanity. Pictures of trees threading through the landscape - dotting mountainsides, braiding along the sides of glassine rivers - bear witness to the lyrical force and clarity of Daily's observations. Recreating the authors' hike together through the landscape of the Skagit River in Washington State, the balletic movement between Daily's commentary and Katz's vision reaches out to readers, inviting them to enjoy the landscape through a scientific understanding of trees. At once emotional and intellectual, The Power of Trees is the first collection of nature photographs that invites the reader to not only delight in the gorgeous play between light and shadow, but also the fascinating natural mechanisms that create such striking natural beauty. An ecologist by training, Gretchen Daily is an internationally acclaimed conservancy advocate and scholar. Her role as a National Trustee for The Nature Conservancy will feature prominently in the national marketing campaign to bridge the gap between scientific educators and the general nature reader.

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The Osage Orange Tree, a never-before-published story by beloved poet William Stafford, is about young love complicated by misunderstanding and the insecurity of adolescence, set against the backdrop of poverty brought on by the Great Depression. The narrator recalls a girl he once knew. He and Evangeline, both shy, never find the courage to speak to each other in high school. Every evening, however, Evangeline meets him at the Osage orange tree on the edge of her property. He delivers a newspaper to her, and they talk--and as the year progresses a secret friendship blossoms. This magical coming-of-age tale is brought to life through linocut illustrations by Oregon artist Dennis Cunningham, with an afterword by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a personal friend of Stafford's. In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O'Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.

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In the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio, is the culmination of urban historian David Johnson’s extensive research into the development of Texas’s oldest city. Beginning with San Antonio’s formation more than three hundred years ago, Johnson lays out the factors that drove the largely uneven and unplanned distribution of resources and amenities and analyzes the demographics that transformed the city from a frontier settlement into a diverse and complex modern metropolis. Following the shift from military interests to more diverse industries and punctuated by evocative descriptions and historical quotations, this urban biography reveals how city mayors balanced constituents’ push for amenities with the pull of business interests such as tourism and the military. Deep dives into city archives fuel the story and round out portraits of Sam Maverick, Henry B. Gonzales, Lila Cockrell, and other political figures. Johnson reveals the interplay of business interests, economic attractiveness, and political goals that spurred San Antonio’s historic tenacity and continuing growth and highlights individual agendas that influenced its development. He focuses on the crucial link between urban development and booster coalitions, outlining how politicians and business owners everywhere work side by side, although not necessarily together, to shape the future of any metropolitan area, including geographical disparities. Three photo galleries illustrate boosterism’s impact on San Antonio’s public and private space and highlight its tangible results. In the Loop recounts each stage of San Antonio’s economic development with logic and care, building a rich story to contextualize our understanding of the current state of the city and our notions of how an American city can form.

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María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes—words, practices, and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by—and for consumption by—people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient, and often misunderstood.Sánchez interweaves family stories of three generations with reflections on science and literature. She focuses especially on the often dismissed and undervalued generations of women who have forgone education and independence to work the land and tend to family. In doing so, she asks difficult questions about gender equity and labor. Part memoir and part rural feminist manifesto, Land of Women acknowledges the sacrifices of Sánchez’s female ancestors who enabled her to become the woman she is.A bestseller in Spain, Land of Women promises to ignite conversations about the treatment and perception of rural communities everywhere.

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Rambling Prose is a collection of essays by Steven G. Kellman, culled from his lifetime of work on comparative literature, criticism, and film studies. Filled with wordplay and surprising insight, the collection demonstrates his range as an essayist and invites us to explore the human experience through refined literary analysis. Kellman explores such topics as animal rights, silence, mortality, eroticism, film, and language with his unique critical perspective and offers complex investigations of eternal human quandaries that raise more questions than they answer. Witty and insightful, Rambling Prose is a book for anyone who loves language and believes in the power, both positive and negative, of words to change the world.

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This is the definitive work on the 100-block Monte Vista National Historic District, which survives nearly intact from San Antonio’s Gilded Age. It is the finest neighborhood of the era remaining in Texas. Architects drawn to the burgeoning city from across the country designed homes both elaborate and modest in an unusual variety of styles, from Queen Anne to Prairie to Tudor to Spanish Colonial Revival, during the heady times when San Antonio was the largest city in the largest state. Landmark homes are described block by block, with numerous vintage and contemporary illustrations and a separate index of architects.

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Commissioned by the U.S. Committee on Public Information, more than 300 of America's most famous illustrators, cartoonists, designers, and fine artists donated their services to create more than 700 posters in an effort to build patriotism, raise funds for war bonds, encourage enlistment, and increase volunteerism during World War I. The Winds and Words of War is a rich collection of World War I-era posters created between 1916 and 1917 to motivate the country to abandon a position of remoteness and connect with European allies against German aggression and tyranny. These images became a great equalizing force in American culture, causing people of all backgrounds and classes, rural or urban, educated or uneducated, to rally to the cause. Some 450 of these posters are part of the San Antonio Public Library's permanent collection, bequeathed in 1940 by Harry Hertzberg, a Texas state senator and avid memorabilia collector. The posters were created by a group of early twentieth-century American artists, among them Charles Dana Gibson, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Guy Lipscombe, Charles Buckle Falls, Haskell Coffin, and Norman Rockwell. The lithographs' heroic images and patriotic slogans depicted military and civilian effort and sacrifice, aiming to inspire young men and women to enlist, pick up a flag, and support the soldiers and nurses during a trying time in American history. The posters, many of which appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, are both testaments to the people who volunteered their service and excellent examples of the period's advertising strategies and graphic design.

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Dream Song is the story of John Berryman, one of the most gifted poets of a generation that included Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, and Dylan Thomas. Using Berryman's unpublished letters and poetry, as well as interviews with those who knew him intimately, Paul Mariani captures Berryman's genius and the tragedy that dogged him, while at the same time illuminating one of the most provocative periods in American letters. Here we witness Berryman's struggles with alcohol and drugs, his obsession with women and fame, and his friendships with luminary writers of the century. Mariani creates an unforgettable portrait of a poet who, by the time of his suicide at age fifty-seven, had won a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award.

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Cary Clack has captured the hearts and minds of Texans since the mid-1990s, gaining a national reputation as an incisive and sensitive journalist and developing a significant following as a columnist. Originally from San Antonio, he worked with the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta (writing CNN commentaries for Coretta Scott King) to hone his communication skills and broaden his social sensibilities. Returning to his hometown, he quickly became known as a writer who profiled everyday heroes and captured stories unique to the Texas experience, adding a critical local perspective to national news. His columns are infused with a sense of humility and a keen examination of the humanness in others.Following sixteen years as a journalist, Clack pursued interests in politics, social policy, and service, including work with the mayor of San Antonio, U.S. congressman Joaquin Castro, and others.More Finish Lines to Cross<

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Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Initially the USSR reported that Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, had survived in space for seven days, providing valuable data that would make future manned space flight possible. People believed that Laika died a painless death as her oxygen ran out. Only in recent decades has the real story become public: Laika died after only a few hours in orbit when her capsule overheated. Laika’s Window positions Laika as a long overdue hero for leading the way to human space exploration. Kurt Caswell examines Laika’s life and death and the speculation surrounding both. Profiling the scientists behind Sputnik II, he studies the political climate driven by the Cold War and the Space Race that expedited the satellite’s development. Through this intimate portrait of Laika, we begin to understand what the dog experienced in the days and hours before the launch, what she likely experienced during her last moments, and what her flight means to history and to humanity. While a few of the other space dog flights rival Laika’s in endurance and technological advancements, Caswell argues that Laika’s flight serves as a tipping point in space exploration “beyond which the dream of exploring nearby and distant planets opened into a kind of fever from which humanity has never recovered.” Examining the depth of human empathy—what we are willing to risk and sacrifice in the name of scientific achievement and our exploration of the cosmos, and how politics and marketing can influence it—Laika’s Windowis also about our search to overcome loneliness and the role animals play in our drive to look far beyond the earth for answers.

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Definitive and daring, The Ecopoetry Anthology is the authoritative collection of contemporary American poetry about nature and the environment--in all its glory and challenge. From praise to lament, the work covers the range of human response to an increasingly complex and often disturbing natural world and inquires of our human place in a vastness beyond the human.To establish the antecedents of today's writing,The Ecopoetry Anthology presents a historical section that includes poetry written from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Iconic American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are followed by more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and even more recent foundational work by poets like Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Muriel Rukeyser. With subtle discernment, the editors portray our country's rich heritage and dramatic range of writing about the natural world around us.

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The future of the world’s ice is at a critical juncture marked by international debate about climate change and almost daily reports about glaciers and ice shelves breaking, oceans rising, and temperatures spiking across the globe. These changing landscapes and the public discourse surrounding them are changing fast. It is science wrought with mystery, and for Beth Peterson it became personal. A few months after Peterson moved to a tiny village on the edge of Europe’s largest glacier, things began to disappear. The glacier was melting at breakneck pace, and people she knew vanished: her professor went missing while summiting a volcano in Japan, and a friend wandered off a mountain trail in Norway. Finally, Peterson took a harrowing forty-foot fall while ice climbing. Peterson’s effort to make sense of these losses led to travels across Scandinavia, Italy, England and back to the United States. She visited a cryonics institute, an ice core lab, a wunderkammer, Wittgenstein’s cabin, and other museums and libraries. She spoke with historians, guides, and scientists in search of answers. Her search for a noted glacier museum in Norway led to news that the renowned building had set on fire in the middle of the night before and burned to the ground. Dispatches from the End of Ice is part science, part lyric essay, and part research reportage—all structured around a series of found artifacts (a map, a museum, an inventory, a book) in an attempt to understand the idea of disappearance. It is a brilliant synthesis of science, storytelling, and research in the spirit of essayists like Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and Joni Tevis. Peterson’s work veers into numerous terrains, orbiting the idea of vanishing and the taxonomies of loss both in an unstable world and in our individual lives.

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The car bomb assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 shocked the European Union and put the world’s spotlight on an island so small that few knew it was an independent country and even fewer could find it on the map. But Caruana Galizia’s death didn’t come as a surprise to those who lived there.Ryan Murdock had visions of living a slow-paced island life on the Mediterranean while writing about his experiences, so in 2011 he moved from Canada to Malta. To the casual visitor, Malta is a sleepy place with sun-soaked shorelines and ancient fortified harbors. Murdock imagined it to be an archipelago island of warm weather, gorgeous views, busy cafes, and grilled fish dinners. On the surface, it was.The six years Murdock spent in Malta revealed an insular culture whose fundamental baseline is amoral familism, a worldview in which any action taken to benefit one’s family or oneself is justifiable, regardless of w

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In a remote corner of the Arctic in 1941, a meteor shower flashed across the sky for an unusually long time. Taking this to be a sign, one of the local Inuit proclaimed himself Jesus Christ. Another proclaimed himself God. Anyone who didn’t believe in them was Satan. Violence ensued.At the End of the World isn’t just the remarkable story of a series of murders that occurred on the Belcher Islands, a group of wind-blasted rocks in Canada’s Hudson Bay. It’s also a starting place for a deeper cultural exploration. Against the backdrop of the murders, which highlight the fact that senseless violence in the name of religion is not a contemporary phenomenon and that a even people as seemingly peaceful as the Inuit can turn to chaos at the hands of one person’s delusion, Millman addresses the burgeoning dawn of the digital era, following the murders’ trail to show how our obsession with screens is not unlike a cult and offering a warning cry against the erosion of humanity and the destruction of the environment. The story becomes a confluence of the consequences of generational trauma, outside religious evangelism, systemic racism against indigenous people, the perilous passage from the natural to the digital world, and what it means to be human in a time of technological dominance and climate disasters.At the End of the World, available for the first time in paperback, is not a straightforward tale of true crime but an examination of many of the issues that have become dominant in the global conversation. In snippets of reflection, Millman asks us to look north for answers to many of the questions we all hold, literally, in our hands.

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