TEXAS BOOKSHELF

State of Disobience - Tom Kratman

2010-05-11T08:33:00.001-05:00

A State of Disobedience

Review by Arnold Vintner on May 5, 2010 at 1:21 am in the Fort Liberty Blog

I recently read Tom Kratman's speculative fiction novel A State of Disobedience and I think it's worth recommending. The book was published in 2003 and is set in the near future.

John Ringo describes A State of Disobedience as "Probably the most realistic depiction of the second American revolution ever written" and I find it difficult to disagree with his assessment. In a way the book reminds me of Robert Heinlein's masterpiece political novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Both of these tomes are almost as much manuals for revolution as they are entertainment, but neither fails to entertain.

Kratman's work starts off slow but picks up nicely due to extremely well-made characters. Tom pours heart and soul into building a large number of realistic three dimensional characters to move the plot of the novel forward.

The author borrows heavily from the dark events that led to the murders of the children of Waco, Texas during the Clinton administration. The main antagonist is an obvious caricature of Hillary Clinton, no one having been able to foresee that George Soros would be able to push Hillary out of the Democratic nomination in 2008." Read more ....

http://www.fortliberty.org/a-state-of-disobedience.html

Spoken from the Heart - Laura Bush

2010-05-11T08:22:00.001-05:00

Vermont Public Radio carries NPR's "All Things Considered" gesture toward Laura Bush's biography. It begins "In her eight years at the White House, former first lady Laura Bush had a Mona Lisa quality to her. That smile -- was it one of peace, one of joy, or was it a mask? Perhaps all three. In her new memoir, Spoken from the Heart, Laura Bush writes about her life, from her early years -- her childhood in Midland, Texas, and the night she was at the wheel when a car accident left a classmate dead -- to her experiences in the White House during her husband's two terms.

Bush begins the book with an early memory that reflects part of "a pervasive loss for my family." When she was 2 years old, her mother, Jenna Welch, gave birth to a baby boy who did not survive long enough to leave the Western Clinic in the family's hometown, deep in west Texas. He was not the only baby lost to the Welch family." Read more at

http://www.vpr.net/npr/126555926/

Enron and Horton Foote's Orphans on Broadway

2010-05-11T08:17:00.001-05:00

The New York Times reports for your information two plays there, that may come to a stage near you.

ENRON';This flashy but labored economics lesson, written by Lucy Prebble and directed by Rupert Goold, works overtime to make entertaining spectacle out of a certain Texas energy company's self-destruction. But the realization sets in early that this British-born exploration of smoke-and-mirrors finances isn't much more than smoke and mirrors itself (2:20). Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street , (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com. (Brantley)

'THE ORPHANS' HOME CYCLE' On the basis of the three-work production that begins this New York premiere, Horton Foote's heart-piercing nine-play family album about growing up lonely in early-20th-century Texas should be the great adventure of the theater season. Directed with cinematic fluidity by Michael Wilson (2:50). Signature Theater at Peter Norton Space, 555 West 42nd Street, Clinton , (212) 244-7529, signaturetheatre.org. (Brantley)

Deidre Kelly (Hall) Interview by Cindy Bauer

2010-05-11T08:02:00.001-05:00

Cindy Bauer interviews Houston Christian author Deidre Kelly (Hall)

It begins: "Q: Tell us what makes you proud to be a writer from Houston, Texas?

A: There are so many wonderful writers from Texas, I am very proud to be among them. There is so much diversity in Texas; this helps lay a foundation for a great variety of experiences and interesting points of view that allows for truly unique storylines" Read more at:

http://interviewsbycindy.blogspot.com/2010/04/books-in-sync-author-spotlight.html

Texas Mystery Novels

2010-05-11T07:20:00.001-05:00

Misterreereader revives our interest in Texas mystery writers with a posting of over 20 titles and 12 authors. The authors include Susan Wittig Albert; . – Jay Brandon – Bill Crider. – Ben Rehder – Chris Rogers – Barbara Burnett Smith – Karen MacInerney - Leann Sweeney – Rick Riordan - Cindy Daniel - DR Meredith- Livia J. Washburn . Check the full list with primary sleuths and settings at

http://misterreereeder.blogspot.com/2010/05/monday-mystery-theme-texas-revisited.html

From Abercrombie to the Violet Crown - Burneson

2010-05-04T17:25:00.001-05:00

Mike Cox at the Lone Star Book blog has perked up and informs us of a new volume on neighborhood history in Austin.

"From Abercrombie to the Violet Crown, A History-in-Progress: Brentwood and Crestview, Austin, Texas" by Susan Burneson. (Available from the author at nimbus@austin.rr.com, $20.)

Mike titles his article and begins: "

Book on Crestview brings back a lot of memories

"My home life didn't quite stack up to "Leave It To Beaver" level in 1958, but all these decades later, it's easy to understand why so many of us who were there tend to look back at the 1950s as an idyllic time.
You know. Safe streets. No TAKS tests or whatever they're called now. Homemade Halloween candy. Life in the suburbs, at least in Austin, Texas, USA was generally good.
A year after Russia shocked the world by launching the first man-made satellite, I lived in the Crestview neighborhood in Austin. Just a block from our duplex was the Crestview Shopping Center that in one small area provided for most of our day-to-day needs. We could shop at a small grocery store (still in business all these years later), a drug store (yep, still here), a dry cleaners, and a hardware-variety store." Read more of Mike's essay:

http://lonestarbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-on-crestview-brings-back-lot-of.html

This is Mike, still ranging after all these years!

General and Monaville, Texas - Joe Bax

2010-05-04T10:57:00.001-05:00

JOE BAX, rancher, lawyer, author

A few months ago I was browsing a B&N bookstore and saw an interesting book. It was short so I picked it up and began reading its 168 pages. Finished it before I left the store. Reconstruction period Texas with the old man and his family patching things together until racial strife emerges. The story reveals a portion of Texas not often revealed - many in Texas besides the previous slaves really didn't like the degradation of the institution and the lingering virulence. The story is tight and moves well. It's good for the young reader as well as adults. Get a copy.

http://www.emeraldbookcompany.com/authors/bax/

Other reviews:

http://texas-history-page.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-of-general-and-monaville-texas.html

http://irenewatson.typepad.com/readerviews/2009/08/the-general-and-monaville-texas.html

http://detweilermom.blogspot.com/2010/04/general-and-monaville-texas-by-joa-g.html

Kirkus is Dead ! Kirkus Is Alive !

2010-05-04T10:14:00.001-05:00

Kirkus Reviews ( http://www.kirkusreviews.com ) , established in 1933 was declared dead a few months ago until the Indiana Pacers' owner bought it and kept it alive. Their reviews appear early in the publishing stream and known for their saucy commentary. Kirkus is a mainstay for libraries and bookstores and the subscription is hefty. A search for "Texas" at the main page brings up a variety of titles (see below) with initial nubbets of the books' reviews; to see the full review, you'll need to subscribe. For example,

Search Results

1 2 Next Last

Search Criteria:
Keyword(s): texas
Total Records: 20
Date Range: 02/03/2010 to 05/04/2010
Publication(s): Kirkus Reviews
Sorted By: Date in Descending order.

KEEPER
On a day when everything goes wrong, a little girl relies on the magic of the blue moon to turn things around. Since her mother swam away seven years ago, ten-year-old Keeper has lived happily with Signe on a remote slice of Texas coast, convinced
May 01, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Appelt, Kathi

THE FACULTY CLUB
Jeremy Davis thinks he has it made: Mere days after starting school, a high-ranking professor asks him to be his research assistant; a beautiful and brilliant classmate expresses interest in him; and he is courted by an exclusive club that
May 01, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Tobey, Danny

ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF NORMAL
Novelist and short-story writer Monroe (English/Texas State Univ.; Shambles, 2004, etc.) adopted Marie, an African-American baby, and raised her in the West Texas countryside where single female professors were an oddity and single white women with
Apr 15, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Monroe, Debra

BELLY UP
Twelve-year-old Teddy is a world traveler with a wildlife-photojournalist father and a mother who does gorilla research. Stateside, the family lives at FunJungle, the world's biggest and newest state-of-the-art zoo and theme park, the pet project of
Apr 15, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Gibbs, Stuart

RICHARD WRIGHT
This book, part of the publisher's series of short biographies of prominent African-Americans, isn't intended to deliver new information or surprising insights into the life and work of Richard Wright (1908–60). But given that the two major
Apr 01, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Wallach, Jennifer Jensen

LYNDON B. JOHNSON
Washington Monthly founder Peters (Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing "We Want Willkie!" Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World, 2005, etc.) paints a mostly unpleasant portrait of a fiercely ambitious climber who
Apr 01, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Peters, Charles

WELCOME TO UTOPIA
The author starts slowly, but once she gets rid of the early-on clichs ("Roots are rare these days"), she emerges as a sensitive, candid and balanced observer of life in a town that is both everywhere and nowhere. Valby first tries to establish
Mar 15, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Valby, Karen

GALVESTON
Violence shadowed Roy Cady's childhood in East Texas. His alcoholic father fell to his death; his mother killed herself. She had worked for a bar owner and racketeer, and at 17 Roy started working for him too. Eventually he moved to New Orleans and
Mar 15, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Pizzolatto, Nic

HOLLY BLUES
Although traffic has been slow at her shops, China and her family—her husband Mike McQuaid, private eye and part-time college professor, his son Brian, and China's niece Caitlin—are making do. When Mike's former wife, Brian's mom Sally Strahorn,
Mar 15, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Albert, Susan Wittig

AT THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE
Although Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas actually pressed for the passing of the separate bills that effectively became the Compromise of 1850, it was Kentucky Senator Henry Clay who hammered the various proposals by Northerners and Southerners
Mar 01, 2010 - Kirkus Reviews - Remini, Robert V.

Kirkus Is Dead ! Kirkus Is Alive !

2010-05-04T10:12:00.000-05:00

Search Results

1 2 Next Last

Search Criteria:
Keyword(s): texas
Total Records: 20
Date Range: 02/03/2010 to 05/04/2010
Publication(s): Kirkus Reviews
Sorted By: Date in Descending order.

Texas Insitute of Letters Awards for 2009

2010-05-04T09:44:00.001-05:00

The Texas Institute of Letters

Lon Tinkle Award for excellence during a career, Larry L. King
The Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction of 2009 to Scott Blackwood for We Agreed to Meet Just Here.

Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction to Bryan Burrough for The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes,

Most Significant Scholarly Book Award to Emilio Zamora for Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs: Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II..
Steven Turner Award for Best First Novel to John Pipkin for Woods Burner.
Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Best Book of Poetry to William Virgil Davis for Landscape and Journey.
The Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story to the late Marjorie Kemper, "Discovered America," in Southwest Review, Fall 2009.
The O. Henry Award for Magazine Journalism to John Spong for "Holding Garmsir," in the Texas Monthly, issue January 2009.
The Fred Whitehead Award for Best Design of a Trade Book to Lindsay Starr for I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter: The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940-1965,
The Austin Public Library Friends Foundation Award for Best Children's Book ($500) to Gwendolyn Zepeda for her Sunflowers/Girasoles.

Promised Lands - Elizabeth Crook

2010-05-03T08:27:00.001-05:00

The "Random Book Review" begins its review with:

"So, I got the genre right this week. Honestly, though, I think I bit off a little more than I wanted to chew. Promised Lands is a novel written by Elizabeth Crook, and the darn thing took all week long to read because it's 509 pages in length. When I picked it out at the library, my husband gave me one of those wary looks and said, "You're not really going to read that, are you?" Oh, ye of little faith! Of course, I couldn't back down from the challenge in his tone, and needless to say, I made it through. And I'm glad, because it's actually a rather good read.

Promised Lands is a Western/Historical novel about the Texas Rebellion which started in 1835 and lasted until the spring of 1836. It was published in 1994 by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. This novel has since been reissued by SMU Press as part of the Southwest Life and Letters series. Elizabeth Crook is the author of two other Western/Historical novels, one published before Promised Lands, and one published since, entitled The Night Journal, which won the 2007 Spur Award. She is a member of the Western Writers of America and The Texas Philosophical Society."

Lone Star Lit 101

2010-05-02T12:22:00.001-05:00

Cindy Hughes , Executive Director of the Writers League of Texas and founding director of the Texas Book Festival, provides an interesting list of Texas authors from the previous two decades in the "Dog Canyon." She calls it "Lone Star Lit 101." Includes literature, history, a wide variety of literary forms: Bestsellers, Prize winners, Westerns, Children's books, Poets, Journalists, Texas Monthly, Dang Good Books, Mysteries, Inspirational, Grand Dames, Romances, Science Fiction, and Historians. About 70 authors in all.

She says "Unlike so-called Southern literature, which tends to focus on family, the history of the south, and even race and Gothic mystique, Texas lit doesn't have a distinctive Texas voice or typical subject matter. That is quite okay with me. Why should Texas writers echo one another and all be forced to write about Texas? I would argue that the fact that Texas writers crank out such an amazing variety of books makes our literary scene the most vibrant in the whole United States. Take that, Big Apple!"

Folks at the Parlor and Bookshelf suggest that the lack of a distinctive voice simply marks Texas as a large and diverse community where the wide open spaces also reflect the wide open minds of Texans.

Houston Romance Writers review column - Thacker

2010-04-06T10:59:00.001-05:00

Teri Thacker, a romance writer herself, writes for the Examiner - book reviews of Houston area romance novelists whose settings often, but not always, are in Texas and Houston. See more revealed at http://www.examiner.com/x-3098-Houston-Romance-Novels-Examiner

2010 WesternWriters Spur Awards

2010-04-06T10:01:00.001-05:00

The Western Writers Association has announced its current winners. Some are Texana, including:

Robert Flynn's Echoes of Glory (published by Texas Christian University Press) won for Best Western Long Novel

Nonfiction-Biography: David C. Humphrey, Peg Leg (Texas State Historical Association).
Nonfiction-Contemporary: Charles H. Harris III and Louis R. Sadler, The Secret War in El Paso: Mexican Revolutionary Intrigue, 1906-1920 (University of New Mexico Press).
Check the list for others at http://www.westernwriters.org/spur_award_history.htm where the lists go back to 1959.

The convention's in Knoxville in June.

Fehrenbach and Conan the Barbarian

2010-04-06T09:27:00.001-05:00

Jim Cornelius at "The Cimmerian" writes about "T.R. Fehrenbach — Howardian historian." The essay makes clear the relationship between Robert E. Howard's (i.e., Conan the Barbarian, etc) historical sweep and that of Howard's Texas homeland. Folks at the Parlor would go so far as to say Conan was a Texan.

Behold the People: R.C. Hickman's Photographs

2010-04-06T08:39:00.001-05:00

Carla in the "81 Press" revives interrest in Behold the People: R.C. Hickman's Photographs of Black Dallas 1949-1961

She begins:

"This remarkable book reproduces over one hundred photographs taken by R.C. Hickman, a professional photographer whose exceptional work provides a fascinating visual record of life in Dallas's black community during the three decades following World War II.

Born in Mineola, Texas, in 1922, Hickman moved with his family to Dallas, where his father worked at the Baker Hotel as a cook. While in the army during World War II, Hickman acquired his knowledge of photography by watching a fellow soldier develop official pictures of military combat. He learned quickly and soon became an official army photographer." Read more from Carla at

http://81press.net/2010/03/21/behold-the-people-r-c-hickmans-photographs-of-black-dallas-1949-1961-texas-historican-association-1995/

Texas Institute of Letters Literary Awards Finalists for 2009

2010-04-04T09:51:00.001-05:00

Darwin Payne sends this news relase from TIL http://www.texasinstituteofletters.org/TIL_2009_Finalists.pdf

Texas Institute of Letters Finalists

Named for 2009 Literary Awards

Finalists for the Texas Institute of letters awards for 2009 have been announced by William V. Davis, the organization's president.

Winners will be named at the Saturday evening, May 1, annual banquet at the Radisson Hotel in Austin. Judges made decisions in nine categories including fiction, first fiction, non-fiction, scholarly books, short stories, poetry, book design, magazine journalism, and children's books published during the year.

The institute was founded in 1936 to recognize literary achievement and to promote interest in Texas literature. Authors must have lived in Texas for at least two years or their works must relate to the state.

Jesse Jones Award for Fiction ($6,000): Scott Blackwood, We Agreed to Meet Just Here (New Issues Press); Oscar Casares, Amigoland (Little, Brown); and Cristina Henriquez, The World in Half (Penguin Group).

Carr P. Collins Award for Nonfiction ($5,000): Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (Penguin Press); Tracy Daugherty, Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme (St. Martin's Press); Steve Davis, J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind (University of Texas Press); and Bill Sloan, The Darkest Summer: Pusan and Inchon 1950, The Battles That Saved South Korea—and the Marines—From Extinction (Simon & Schuster).

Steven Turner Award for First Fiction ($1,000): John Pipkin, Woodsburner (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday); Barbara Renaud Gonzalez, Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me? (University of Texas Press); and Lowell Mick White, Long Time Ago Good (Slough Press).

TIL Award for Scholarly Book ($2,500): Mary Jo O'Rear, Storm Over the Bay: The People of Corpus Christi and Their Port (Gulf Coast Books); Gene B. Preuss, To Get a Better School System: One Hundred Years of Education Reform in Texas (Texas A&M Press); Emilio Zamora, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas: Mexican Workers and Job Politics During World War II (Texas A&M Press).

Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry ($1,200): Wendy Barker, Nothing Between Us (De Sol Press); William Virgil Davis, Landscape and Journey (Ivan R. Dee); James Hoggard, Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems (Wings Press); and John Poch, Dolls (Orchises Press).

O. Henry Award for Magazine Journalism ($1,000): Pamela Colloff, "Flesh and Blood," June 2009, Texas Monthly; Michael Hall, "The Judgment of Sharon Keller," August 2009, Texas Monthly; and John Spong, "Holding Garmsir," January 2009, Texas Monthly.

Austin Public Library Friends Foundation Award for Children's Book ($500): Benjamin Alire Saenz, The Dog Who Loved Tortillas (Cinco Puntos Press); Gwendolyn Zepeda, Sunflowers/ Girasoles (Pinada Books).

Kay Cattarulla Award for Short Story ($1,000): John Henry Irsfeld, "Drifting Too Far," New South, Spring/Summer 2009; Marjorie Kempner, "Discovering America," Southwest Review, Fall 2009; and Jaina Sanga, "The Good Price." Asia Literary Review, Autumn 2009.

Fred Whitehead Award for Design of a Trade Book ($750): Lindsay Starr, "I Do Not Apologize for the Length of This Letter": The Mari Sandoz Letters on Native American Rights, 1940-1965, (Texas Tech University Press); Lindsay Starr, Sex, Murder, and the Unwritten Law Courting Judicial Mayhem, Texas Style, (Texas Tech University Press); and Thomas Fink, The Man's Book (Little, Brown).

No awards were given in the Stanley Walker Award for Best Work of Newspaper Journalism Appearing in Newspaper or Sunday Supplement; the Friends of Austin Public Library Award for Best Young Adult Book, or the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation of a Book. The Fraser Award is given every two years, and it will be awarded in 2011 for books published in 2009 or 2010."

Adelsverein: The Gathering. By Celia Hayes

2010-03-27T22:37:00.001-05:00

Adelsverein: The Gathering. By Celia Hayes, Strider Nolan Media, Inc., 2008, 365 pages, http://www.celiahayes.com/ available at Amazon

Review by Dick Stanley, author of Leaving The Alamo: Texas Stories After Vietnam, The Texas Scribbler at http://texasscribbler.com/

"This is a dandy historical novel of the German settlement of the Hill Country which I recommend with caveats. I was familiar with the basic facts but learned a few things, such as the details of Baron Meuesbach's peace treaty with the Comanches. It was unique in Texas and more or less held until the last adult male of the murderous tribe was exterminated by the U.S. Army. I also didn't know how inept the pre-Meusebach Verein leaders were or that they employed their own uniformed soldiers to protect the settler families.

As a two-time indie author, I finally realized that I had yet to read someone else's indie book. I figured author Celia Hayes (the blogosphere and Milblogging's "Sgt. Mom") and her Adelsverein Texana trilogy was the best place to start. It was a good decision. This first book of the trilogy paints an epic in satisfying old-fashioned style that effectively lures a lover of such reads on and on.

Now the caveats: Hayes leaves almost nothing to the reader's imagination. That can grate on folks raised on movies and television. Unlike readers of the 19th century, we don't need exhaustive description of major and minor actors. I also could have done without all the adverbs. Seemingly every speech is characterized, rather than trusting to the context to convey the meaning. Nevertheless, the main characters are real and lovable and their tragedies and joys won my empathy and spurred my curiosity to find out what would happen to them next.

I was appalled at the typos and misspellings, by my count on 46 of the book's 365 pages. Surely, most of them could have been avoided, and a second edition to fix them is warranted. Still, Hayes is sufficiently talented and her story so well crafted that I will buy the second installment, "The Sowing." It concerns the Civil War years, during which the real German settlers had the ill-luck to be Unionists in a predominantly Confederate state. I want to find out how the Beckers and the Steinmetzs fare. Tragedy ahead, I expect. I'll be hoping, though, to find that the proofreading has improved."

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire - Perkinson

2010-03-24T10:29:00.001-05:00

Texas Tough: The Rise of America's Prison Empire by Robert Perkinson is reviewed by Mary Foster in the Rochester, MN Post Bulletin. It begins:

"As Robert Perkinson points out in "Texas Tough," his very readable history of U.S. prisons, locking up people is big business. America sends more people to prison per capita than any other country in the world, locking up about one out of every 100 people.
Perkinson, a professor of American studies at the University of Hawaii, presents a compelling history of the prison system and its growth in the United States. He also shows that when it comes to prisons, no state does it better — or worse, depending on your outlook — than Texas.
Surprisingly, prisons in which criminals are confined for long periods and are sometimes offered the opportunity to reform, are a relatively new invention. Although locking up people for crimes may be as old as civilization, Perkinson writes that prisons as we know them — "an institution that houses convicted lawbreakers for protracted, precisely measured periods of time — is a product only of the modern age," having begun toward the end of the 18th century." Read more about Texas "leadership" at

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=31&a=443123

Exploring the Edges of Texas - Davis

2010-03-24T09:59:00.001-05:00

Si Dunn in the Dallas News reviews Exploring the Edges of Texas By Walt and Isabel Davis.

The review begins: "

In 1955, Dallas Morning News columnist Frank X. Tolbert set off on an expedition that would span a greater distance than the length of the Amazon River. Many readers were enthralled by the tales that emerged each week as the writer and his 9-year-old son, Frank Tolbert Jr., circumnavigated the Texas border in a dusty Willis Jeep.

Tolbert's tales struck an especially deep chord with Walt Davis, who was then 13 and living in Oak Cliff. Young Walt vowed he would someday make his own trek through the counties that outline his home state.

A half-century later, Walt Davis and his wife, Isabel, finally had the time and resources to undertake "a four thousand mile-long, three-century-deep exploration of the edge of Texas." Family responsibilities and other realities, however, kept them from duplicating the late columnist's arduous excursion. Instead, they broke their journey into sections. They made multiple trips to different border areas, with Isabel keeping travel journals and research notes, Walt serving as "the expedition artist," and both writing about their adventures and observations." Read more at

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_edgesoftexas_0314gd.ART.State.Bulldog.49da97a.html

Bob Wills Visits Rolling Stone

2010-03-24T08:39:00.001-05:00

Well, not exactly. But the once radical Rolling Stone rock music magazine has certainly grownup while I stepped away, and apparently have tracked Bob for a while.. There's a recent review of Tiffany Transcriptions from Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. The Transcriptions are actually a 10 disk set. Stoners see their roots in Junior Barnard's guitar. Yep, blame it on Junior (it's always the young ones).

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/25463418/review/25523960/tiffanytranscriptions

And to top it all off, the RS website has page on Bob and the Boys, with a directory of performers and a very long discography of RS notices and links and, reviews etc. back to the 1950's

http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/bobwillshistexasplayboys

There's an option to audio

Key Tracks / Most Popular Songs on Rhapsody.com / Play All

plus a link to Bob's website at http://www.texasplayboys.net/

Just Visitin' Old Texas Jails - Hall

2010-03-22T09:58:00.001-05:00

Just Visitin' Old Texas Jails. By Joan Upton Hall. Abilene: State House Press, dist. by TAMU Consortium, 2007. 200 pages, 102 b&w photos, 1 map, glossary, 6x9 paperback, ISBN 978-1-933337-14-2 $16.95

http://www.tamu.edu/upress/ http://www.joanuptonhall.com

Ed Blackburn, the late, retired, newspaperman, would be enjoying Just Visitin, by Joan Upton Hall, the retired English teacher. I know I do. They've both been captivated, if not incarcerated, by our jails.

Her volume is chock-full of about 50 jails across the state which can be visited by tourists especially because they've been converted to modern use by local historical societies, art galleries, jail history fans, bed and breakfast conversions, commercial use, office use, and yes, friends and neighbors, even a residence. Some figure a one among several structures at the same site. Arranged alphabetically by town from Albany to Wharton, Hall focuses on about 50 small town calabooses, mostly county sponsored. One or more photo introduces each entry with a short narrative of colorful stories and technical notes that can continue for up to a fifth page. Many have been tagged by the National Register and Texas state historical markers.

A Texas state outline map carries symbols and makes your plans for visiting easier.

The oldest jail included is the 1854 Karnes County first jail in Helena. Hellions in the area included a two-man duel in which the "men, tied together by one arm each, battled with short-bladed knives too short to strike to strike a vital organ, until one or both of them bled to death." Hall's English teacher background must have included graphic descriptive skills.

Before you escape through the book's back door, you'll find several other categories: "Just Waiting" for the structures not open to the public, "Just Pretending" for Selma's Hooter's Bar & Grill, "Jail Residence" for the Benjamin hoosegow, and "Just Abandoned" for, well, derelicts. The following short glossary is technical about construction, locking systems and mechanisms such as the "squint box."

Pick up a pass, and squint at the book. The chapterlettes are alluring.

Lunar Braceros - Sanchez and Pita

2010-03-10T13:36:00.001-06:00

Lunar Braceros, 2125-2148. A novella by Rosaura Sanchez and Beatrice Pita. National City, Califas: Calaca Press, 2009. 120 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-9843359-0-9, $15

http://www.calacapress.com http://myspace.com/calacalanda

Calaca provides this description: "A futuristic sci-fi novella from the perspective of the underdog by Rosaura Sánchez and Beatrice Pita. Featuring cover art and illustrations by San Diego, Califas artist Mario A. Chacon. Twenty-second century Cholos living on Cali-Texas Reservations have few options. One of them is signing up as Moon Tecos, technicians disposing of Earth's waste on Lunar sites. After discovering that their Teco contracts are one-way tickets, the Lunar Braceros are forced to take matters into their own hands."

Authors Sanchez and Pita are both college professors; Sanchez having gotten her Ph.D. from UT, thereby accounting for some of the very light Texas connection in the plot which prefers the West Coast.

The writing follows in the fragmentary tradition with changing type font to accent the changing persons' perspective. Largely the pieces are "letters" to Pedro, a young son, still on earth and subject to the capitalist hegemony that rules the Earth through the New Imperial Order. Shifting eco-political boundaries have created Cali-Texas which also includes Northern Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii. To some readers, the novella may evoke some post-modernist forms.

It's a rather creative, if difficult to follow, plot which shifts from California to the Moon to sites in Mexico and South American locales. Earth and the Moon are controlled by giant conglomerates which have corralled the poor into Reservations to serve as a quasi-slave labor force for the vast human population. The Moon serves as a gigantic waste dump for radioactive material and for mining. At the volume's conclusion, Pedro is grown and beset with the same problems as his forebearers – how to overthrow the capitalists and set up a cooperative, utopian society. Towards the end, things get so bad that the revenge emerges as an acceptable option to motivate readers. Much of the narrative is sci-fi technical narrative of life on the Moon where a revolt ignites.

Texas figures very little in frequency and content. Texas serves as a birthplace for one principal. Texas and the Southwest are admired for their spaciousness and openness to mobility. Central Texas is admired because Central Texas is admirable. Houston seems to be a hated center of control, especially the space program, and is to be avoided at all costs, even to preferring Tierra del Fuego.

Even so, Lunar Braceros is refreshing for its sweep of terrain and politics and philosophy.

The Shimmer - David Morrell

2010-03-09T07:15:00.001-06:00

The Cuckleburr brings a review of The Shimmer by David Morrell. The comments begin:

"The Shimmer is an engrossing and suspense packed thriller from the pen of Rambo creator, David Morrell. Set in and around the fictional Rostov, Texas, The Shimmer's about mysterious lights in the sky near the small town. Are they so much more than they appear to be or just some geological anomaly as some think? An out of town policeman's search to discover their source unveils centuries old sightings, hidden government projects and that his marriage is suddenly in turmoil. Read more at

http://www.cuckleburr.com/book-review-the-shimmer-by-david-morrell

A Fantasic Fiction review begins: "When a high-speed chase goes terribly wrong, Santa Fe police officer Dan Page watches in horror as a car and gas tanker explode into flames. Torn with guilt that he may be responsible, Page returns home to discover that his wife, Tori, has disappeared. // Frantic, Page follows her trail to Rostov, a remote town in Texas ...." Read more at

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/m/david-morrell/shimmer.htm

Tell your friends in Marfa about this one.

Beyond the Alamo - Raul Ramos

2010-03-08T19:21:00.001-06:00

Raul Ramos makes a guest posting on the University of North Carolina Press blog regarding his Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821-1861.

Ramos begins: "This Saturday marks the anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836, the battle that ended the 13-day siege on the fort by the Mexican Army. The date carries added meaning this year as the Texas State Board of Education decides on the social studies standards affecting the education of the state's public school children. Debates over the standards have garnered national attention especially since they impact how textbooks will be written for the nation's largest market. It was the subject of a recent New York Times Magazine cover story. When it comes to Texas history, few if any events carry the emotional weight of the Alamo. The governor even invokes the memory of Texas Independence to score political points with the anti-Washington crowd." Read more at
http://uncpressblog.com/2010/03/05/politics-of-texas-history/

Falling in a Circle - a Collaborative Texas Novella

2010-03-05T11:36:00.001-06:00

Mike Kearby is a skilled Texas author with a record of writing good books for the YA market. He also coordinates The Collaborative Novel project involving Texas high school students from ten schools. The project eventually produces a novel year year. This year they offer a free e-book version of the work to any junior high, middle school, or high school librarian who requests one.

The student writers also visually designed the book as well as contributed the plot and writing. Real-life issues come into focus. "This year's project speaks of students with disabilities. One of this year's writer, Marcus Parks, is disabled and he wrote the afterword for the book."

If your junior, middle school, or high school library would like to receive a complimentary copy of the 50 page book, Falling in a Circle, e-mail Mike at - kearb@hughes.net and he will e-mail a PDF. version back to you. The file size is 278 kb

Kearby summarizes the volume as "A collaborative effort by ten Texas high schools, Falling in a Circle explores the cruelty often passed along to those among us with physical disabilities. The novella provides its audience with a fascinating glimpse into one character's emotional pain, and internal conflict. Will Kat learn from her past and cope with her future? Or will she continue Falling in a Circle?"

The back cover blurb for the book is below:

"Kat Morelli, a student at Cedar Lake High School , gains attention from her peers by making fun of other students …especially those who are handicapped or disabled. Before her senior year, Kat receives a devastating diagnosis from her doctor. She has bone cancer. The cancer is so widespread that doctors must to remove part of her lower leg, leaving Kat to endure the same cruel jokes she once delivered thoughtlessly on her classmates."

This is not the same 2006 Noah's Ride: A Collaborative Novel, by Phyllis Allen, Judy Alter, Mike Blackman, Mike Cochran, Jeff Guinn, Mary Dittoe Kelly, Elmer Kelton, James Ward Lee, James Reasoner and Mary Rogers.

See Mike at http://www.mikekearby.com

Rails Around Houston - Douglas Weiskopf

2010-03-02T09:20:00.001-06:00

Rails Around Houston. By Douglas L. Weiskopf. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. paperback, many photos, 128 pages, ISBN 9780738558844, the ticket's only $21.99, round trip, front to back. All aboard!

While I was the librarian in the Texas Room of the Houston Public Library, we'd get questions about railroads. My first response was "Where's Doug?" He'd be nearby as one of the senior reference staff, and the patron's question would go to Doug because he KNEW railroads. I'd tell him, "You oughta write a book." Well, yes, now you have Doug's Rails Around Houston,a wonderfully annotated pictorial issue, part of Arcadia's series "Images of Rail."

Weiskopf also serves as the chapter historian of the Gulf Coast Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society. Last week he roped me into visiting one of the local conventions of railroad modellings, and I have seen the light - the light coming around the bend of those marvelous set-ups.

But Doug's focus is on the real stuff. He can be caught browsing and mulling over local train yards. He's even inserted an 1888 drawing (Courtesy Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum) of Houston's Southern Pacific train yard in the Rails Around Houston. Houston's train yards are fundamental to the area's history. In fact as the frontispiece pictorial poster shows Houston's slogan was once "Houston: Where Seventeen Railroads Meet the Sea."

The photos come from several sources, Doug, Houston's HMRC, George Werner's private Collection (George was our local tutor on railroading), Tom Marsh's Collection, the Temple Museum, and elsewhere.

Weiskopf's introductions and annotations genuinely boost the readers' grasp of the images; he begins with charterings during the Republic of Texas and then the

The strong point of the images is certainly the engines and cars, Weiskopf includes a good diversity of passenger interiors, portraits of potentates, bridges, stations and sheds, alluring travel graphics of the early period, and even the old Sunset Hospital. And, oh my goodness, he's included photos of the North Shore Interurban AND Houston's 1955 prototype, overhead, monorail.

What's my favorite? Well, on page 43 you'll find the aerial shot of Edgewood Yard in its glorious splay of maybe 50 tracks. This capillary action on the ground recalls the old Marshall, Texas yard over and through which I walked countless times in my youth. Doug, thanks for Rails Around Houston and the memories. Oh, and give me a call; a friend has asked me a question that's right down your tracks?

No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed - Orozco

2010-02-27T13:08:00.001-06:00

The Feminist Review comments on Cynthia Orozco's new volume:

The review begins: "So often, when studying the history of civil rights in the United States in school, the curriculum concentrates on the struggles faced by African Americans and white women. The plights of other minority groups though, such as Asian Americans or Hispanic Americans, are often omitted from the textbooks. In those rare instances when these other groups are mentioned, their histories are condensed into a paragraph or side note. Cynthia E. Orozco attempts to shed some light on one of these ignored civil rights movements in her book, No Mexicans, Women, or Dogs Allowed. Her chronicle is a fascinating exploration at an overlooked chapter of American history."

Now, everyone's allowed to read more about it at

http://feministreview.blogspot.com/2010/02/no-mexicans-women-or-dogs-allowed-rise.html

Valleysong - Texas Rio Writers

2010-02-23T09:49:00.001-06:00

A Book Hunter's Journal provides a review of VALLEYSONG: An Anthology Echoing the Rhythm and Cadence of Life in the Rio Grande Valley by the Texas Rio Writers. The review begins with a colorful title:

Of Pollitos, Life, Swimming Holes & H.E.B.: The Echos of the Rio Grande Valley

"The most important thing in any culture is stories, a history. Folklore that is passed from father to son across generations are essential. I don't know where I would be had it not been for the "camp fire" stories from my grandfather, or those moralistic tales told by my grandmother. Valleysong is a collection of such stories, essays that remember the past of looking toward the future.

And that is where my crux begins. How can both appreciate and frown upon a book?" Read more of the review at

http://ihuntbooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/of-pollitos-life-swimming-holes-heb.html

Derby Girl - Shauna Cross

2010-02-17T19:37:00.001-06:00

Ambrosia Salad reviews Derby Girl (the movie's Juno) by Shauna Cross. For YA and adult. An extract from the review reads:

Bliss' "only friend is the beautiful Pash Amini who moved into town and shares the same indie rock spirit as Bliss. They spend most of their free time slaving away at the "Oink Joint," a gross barbecue restaurant that all the local hicks frequent. The only thing that gets them through the hell of small town Texas life is each other. That, and imagining finding the perfect rocker boyfriends whilest getting the hell out of Bodeen.// But everything seems to change when Bliss picks up a flier for Roller Derby while shopping in downtown Austin with her mother and sister one day."

Cibolero - Kermit Lopez

2010-02-17T19:24:00.001-06:00

La Bloga and Charlie Vázquez: Latino Musings on Literature review the Kermit Lopez novel, Ciboleros.

La Bloga begins

"I'll start by going out on one of my habitual limbs to say I'd nominate this one for the Premio Aztlán Literary Prize. No, I don't think it's as passionately written as last year's winner, Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande, but hell, she raised the bar so high, authors are going to be scrambling for some time to catch up with her." Read more at

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2007/11/cibolero-by-kermit-lopez-review.html

Charlie Vazquez begins

"Kermit Lopez's Cibolero is the story of Antonio Baca, a retired cibolero (buffalo hunter) born and raised in 19^th-century New Mexico via several generations of what were, at the time, Mexican citizens. But once the American Civil War is over, American expansion takes a turbulent turn, and what had once been New Spain and indigenous lands before that are violently incorporated into the United States of America. Antonio's family is ambushed by Texas Rangers while he's away. They try to kill his son and kidnap his daughter Elena. Determined to return her to his family, he sets out on a "hunt," tracking her vicious captors through the dramatic landscapes of the southwest territories, before it's too late." Read more at

http://charlievazquez.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/latino-book-tour-%C2%A1cibolero/

Jerry Bywaters, Lone Star Printmaker - Niewyk

2010-02-13T10:13:00.001-06:00

Jerry Bywaters, Lone Star Printmaker: A Study of His Print Notebook, with a Catalogue of His Prints and a Checklist of His Illustrations and Ephemeral Works. By Ellen Buie Niewyk, Foreword by Ron Tyler, With personal reminiscences by Mary Vernon and Frances Bearden. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, dist by TAMU Consortium, 2007. 12x9. 208 pp. 5 color, 34 b&w reproductions. 22 b&w photos. 111 illus. Bib. Index. ISBN 978-0-87074-519-5, cloth $35.00 http://www.tamu.edu/upress/

The collaborative team for this remarkable retrospective survey of Jerry Bywaters' work includes Ellen Niewyk, curator of the Bywaters Special Collections housed in the Hamon Arts Library at SMU, Ron Tyler, director of Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum of Art, Mary Vernon, SMU art teacher, and Frances Bearden, Bywaters's secretary at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Most artists do not combine the tasks of original artwork and the subsequent printing of copies, but Bywaters did just that. Most artist's quixotic lives resist their self-documentation. For over 10 years, 1935-1948 Bywaters kept a journal of his progress and techniques, and Niewyk deciphers that work to further illuminate his art, printmaking, art criticism via the Dallas Morning News, contributions as a principal originator of and Director of the DMA in Fair Park, and teaching at SMU. His influence was enormous. Needless to say, the coffee-table size volume is delightful.

Bywaters (1906-1989) was born to a Paris, Texas couple, began drawing early, came to Dallas with the family, and earned a B.A. from SMU in 1926. After a period in Europe and the American Northeast, he returned to Big D and drew architectural images. Dallas' State Fair became a recurring scene of activity and inspiration. At the time Dallas was big on Texas, and Diego Rivera's interpretation of Mexico added to his natural inclination to interpret the American Southwest. His early style reflected influences including Matisse and Braque. Some rather engagingly playful.

Printmaking seriously engaged his life in lithographic printmaking after a visit of Thomas Hart Benton as Bywaters helped organize the Dallas Print and Drawing Collectors Society in 1935 and the circuit of Lone Star Printmakers in 1938. By Mutual adoption Bywaters fit right into Texas's writing circles including Tinkle, Dobie, Webb, and the rest of the gang, but art was his life.

The book's photos are engrossing. You see his printing press and stones, tools, facsimiles of the journal, plus a casual photo of him outside at a gas station in the Big Bend. But the bulk of the tome is a gallery of his prints, each with detailed annotations.

Gargantua, the Lomax Victorian home in its shambled condition, is dated 1935 evokes a feeling of Halloween grotesque. Old Clown (1936) immediately projects the hard life of a Carnie. Mexican Mother (1936) and Mexican Lily Vendor draw heavily from Rivera. The Surgeons (1940) is executed in sharp black and white planes. On the Ranch (1941) is about as Daliesque as a Southwestern scene can be.

The back section on "Ephemeral Works" demonstrates Bywaters' skilled book imagery. He illustrated the first book of the SMU Press, Geiser's Naturalists of the Frontier (1937). Private printings included Dobie's Juan Oso Christmas card. The once very vigorous Tardy Publishing concern used him often as in Ehrenberg's With Milam and Fannin. Of course Stanley Marcus sought him for the Book Club of Texas as in Dobie's Tales of the Mustang, and again under the Somesuch imprint with Frontier Tales of the White Mustang. SMU's Southwest Review thirstily drew from the Bywaters well, even for their letterhead! But his work was sought out by outlanders; the Saturday Review of Literature's May 16, 1942 used him for their cover of the special issue on "The Southwest: Inventory and Sampling. My favorite? Maybe the enigmatic portrait of John Lomax.

If your library is lucky enough to have Bywaters' 12 from Texas large portfolio, ask them to make an exhibit of it with this new tribute to a fine Texas artist and printmaker. Book review by Will Howard.

David Crockett in Congress - Boylston and Wiener

2010-02-12T13:35:00.001-06:00

David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man's Friend: With Collected Correspondence, Selected Speeches and Circulars. By James R. Boylston and Allen J. Wiener. Houston: Bright Sky Press, 2009. Hardback with colorful pictorial jacket, 8.25" x 10", 340 pages, some holographic document reproductions, 16 4-color photos, most of which are a wonderful gallery of Crockett portraits, ISBN 978-1-933979-51-9, $29.95

http://www.brightskypress,com

Not since Peña's Diary and Kilgore's How Did Davy Die has such an interesting and revealing volume come forth for the passionate friends and foes on the perennial Crockett. The authors scoured sources to find Crockett's writings while a U.S. Congressman from Tennessee. From these Boylston and Wiener draw a credible biography of an intelligent man with sharp beliefs and remarkable public relations skills.

The recent painting of Crockett merely as a weak captive of his public persona has gained the status of a songster's refrain. But here you'll find David Crockett as a truly brave individual who was committed to upholding his constituents' rights (including native American) by vigorous efforts despite the threats to is political life. His physical life he would expend in the similar cause in the Alamo.

Crockett began his public career as a justice of the peace and as a Jacksonian supporter as any reasonable fellow ought do in Tennessee, but when Mr. Crockett went to Washington, the President's denial of land rights and odd inveigling over the Bank of American turned Crockett into a outright opponent – a task requiring more courage than "fighting a bear when he was only three." That strident and articulate stance eventually met the Jacksonian immoveable object, and he lost his Congressional seat, and then he came to Texas while leaving the rest to reside in hell.

Boylston and Wiener volume is half interpretive narrative (heavily footnoted) and half transcriptions of Crockett's and others' writings mined from sources across the nation. The latter is a treasure trove of often annotated primary source reading, much previously unpublished. Letters, requests for newspaper articles, Congressional material, circulars, speeches, etc. number to well over a hundred. There are calm reasonings, vitriolic accusations, personal concerns, a bit of parody, and other diverse forms. He had a national stage and genuine ability to switch from a backwoodsman profile to careful manager of news releases to demonstrate his sophistication.

If you think you know David Crockett, get the volume, and read aloud his own words. - WH

Amigoland - Oscar Casares

2010-02-12T11:29:00.001-06:00

Amigoland by Oscar Casares is reviewed by Virginia Alanis in Somos en escrito under the title "Rebel With a Cause." The review begins:

"Amigoland is the debut novel of Oscar Casares. It opens with a-day-in-the-life of a recent arrival in a nursing home after suffering a minor heart attack. Ninety-one-year-old Fidencio Rosales, a retired mail carrier, wants to escape from the nursing home and live anywhere but there. But his daughter/guardian will not agree to take him home to live with her, nor will she let him live alone.
The nursing home called Amigoland is replete with rules and regulations against which the protagonist is on the verge of rebelling. Set in contemporary Brownsville .... " Read more at

http://somosenescrito.blogspot.com/2010/02/rebel-with-cause-amigoland.html

America Libre

2010-02-11T16:34:00.001-06:00

America Libre. By Raul Ramos y Sanchez. NY: Grand Central Publishing (formerly Warner Books), 2009, paperback, 373 pages, ISBN: 978-0446507752. $13.99. http://www.HatchetteBookGroup.com Winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Novel. Previously issued by the author in slightly different version. http://raulramos.com/ Represented by the Castiglia Literary Agency.

Novelist and polemicist Ramos y Sanchez, Cuban-born and a founding partner of BRC Marketing ad agency established in 1992, adds a volume of alternative history near the line of Harry Turtledove's treatment of the American Civil War or an alternative future. His public relations skills are skillfully employed here. The book is sectioned into two parts, the first being "The Rio Grande Incident," but it quickly shifts away from Texas and the greater part of the three-year plot continues in Los Angeles, California and elsewhere long before the second part begins as "The Quarantine and Relocation Act."

The first novel that comes to this reader's mind is Imperium in Imperio by Sutton Griggs published in 1899 wherein African Texans successfully establish a large chunk of Texas as an independent republic for Africans. The other book is Fritz Leiber's 1964 A Specter is Haunting Texas which, though interesting, usually rings shallow also. Some may allude to McCarthy's apocalyptic The Road whose inspiration came in El Paso. But Ramos intends a regional setting, the American Southwest, and rings more deeply than Griggs and Leiber, although Texas as a literary piece of furntiture is by definition virtually all things evil.

Beyond that, Ramos' characters, though still intended as issue bearers, are more believable than those of Griggs and Leiber. Ramos begins this work of Hispanic suppression and self-assertion by placing the volatile spark in San Antonio, Texas. The plot opens with a nasty incident that balloons out of proportion as a faction of the Texas National Guard goes out of medodramatic control at, yes, the Alamo. From there, vigilante groups form and the Texas setting is thereafter a bed of racism to occasionally drive the more simple adrenaline resource.

As the plot shifts to LA, the principal character Manolo Suarez,has a wife Rosa and children who serve to deepen his domestic qualities and offer moderation. Manolo is carefully lured into La Defensa del Pueblo organization by the rich, attractive, Uruguay-born Jo Herrera whose strident feminine character adds a sharper texture as she slides Mano into accepting violence as a necessary tactic.

Barrio Latinos respond with self-defense groups and rioting and the tit-for-tat violence scatters across the US. "Anglo" US is figured as demanding segregation "camps" ala the Japanese camps of WW II and Congress accedes to the pressure. And that's not the bottom of the pit. However, Manolo emerges as a leader in the peoples' movement while beset with family challenges and counter-pointed by Jo.

Ramos' PR skills are asserted. On one occasion he uses a loud jackhammer as a necessary "device" to justify the characters almost screaming a conversation. He also deftly uses a fictional author to insert the old mythology of Spanish and Mexican control and ownership of the Southwest (much as it was a myth that the Republic of Texas and the US controlled it until the combined 400-year European/Colonial genocidal wars and thefts against the natives succeeded widely about 1880). The struggle between stereotypes moves fast-pacedly along, and Ramos inserts occasional bits of surrealism as when an Aryan fanatic named O'Connor denies awareness that Anglos once suppressed the Irish and the German. That one may have been humor, as if two incongruent objects occupied the same space successfully, prompting a laugh.

In realism, Manolo confronts the plain task of keeping his job and his integrity as he transforms from patriotic American to protector of his newly rediscovered pueblo. And there's a critical choice. Is his family safer with him or in a "Relocation Camp" in North Dakota? - a matter Ramos treats gravely.

To no surprise, TV, radio, newspapers, the blog jocks, and other media fan the flames. The confrontation erupts into violence in Washington DC. Before long, international connections come into play. Eventually, as the weight of the Federal forces appear to bring temporary calm to the scene, the tense novel ends.

Despite the necessary bi-polar racism and sexism, readers will be pulled along with the characters' challenges and well dialogued lines. El Nuevo Alamo and Pancho Land form the final two volumes of the trilogy. Will there emerge a Hispanic Republic? Texas historians may wish to invoke comparative commentary with the Las Casas Revolt, Republic of the Rio Grande, the Plan of San Diego, and Crystal City. Younger readers may be directed to Lunar Braceros by Sanchez and Pita with its Cali-Tex base. Raul Ramos y Sanchez's America Libre is recommended for avid and new fans of the growing Tejano consciousness and those willing to look in a cracked mirror of the future. - WH

Conversations with Texas Writers - Leonard and Cearley

2010-02-11T13:30:00.000-06:00

A 2006 reveiw by Don Graham of Conversations with Texas Writers, edited by Frances Leonard and Ramona Cearley, is available in the Great Plains Quarterly online as part of the University of Nebraska's Digital Commons project. The review begins:

"This book contains fifty interviews with "Texas" writers, including one "interview" with a dead writer, the pulp hero Robert E. Howard (author of the Conan books, etc.). It's actually Howard's biographer whu's interviewed, which is odd and conveys a significance that's unwarranted. The book is also a bit Austin-centric, as twenty of the authors I ive in the capital city.

There are many odd things about this book. One of the oddest is that the term "Texas writer" is newr meaningfully defined."

Adventures With a Texas Humanist - James Ward Lee

2010-02-11T13:21:00.001-06:00

A 2005 reveiw by Steve Davis of James Ward Lee's Adventures with a Texas Humanist is available in the Great Plains Quarterly online as part of the University of Nebraska's Digital Commons project. The review begins

"An Alabaman by birth, James Ward Lee is well positioned to understand a basic fallacy about Texas's image as a "western" state. Despite popular notions of cowboys, cactus, and wideopen spaces, Lee reminds us that Texas was essentially "southern" for much of its history. Up until the 1950s, cotton far exceeded cattle as a measure of the Texas economy. The literary arts followed in those economic footsteps. While "western" writers such as Larry McMurtry and J. Frank Dobie are now seen as emblematic of the state, Lee argues that "the literary heart and soul of Texas used to be located [in the cotton belt] east of the Brazos.""

Texas Literary Outlaws - Steven L. Davis

2010-02-11T13:07:00.001-06:00

A 2005 reveiw by Tom Pilkington of Steven Davis' Texas Literary Outlaws: Six Writers in the Sixties and Beyond is available in the Great Plains Quarterly online as part of the University of Nebraska's Digital Commons project. The round of the usual suspects include, as extracted from the review, are:

"Writers who followed Brammer include Dan Jenkins, well-known sportswriter and author of comic novels such as Semi-Tough (1972); Edwin "Bud" Shrake, like Jenkins a regular at Sports Illustrated for many years as well as a novelist; Gary Cartwright, sportswriter and still a contributor to Texas Monthly; Larry L. King, best known for his popular play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; and Peter Gent, author of the novel North Dallas Forty (1973)." Check out their crimes, demeanors, and misdemeanors at:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1175&context=greatplainsquarterly

Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas - Emilio Zamora

2010-02-11T12:16:00.001-06:00

Dos Centavos brings the news that begins:

"Emilio Zamora will receive the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for 2009 on March 5 from the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA) during its 2010 meeting in Dallas.

The award for "the best book on Texas" recognizes Zamora's publication, Claiming Rights and Righting Wrongs in Texas; Mexican Workers and Job Politics during World War II (Texas A&M University Press, 2009). It is the first book-length study that joins diplomatic, Mexican American, and Texas history to examine home-front experiences in the United States." Read more at

http://doscentavos.net/2010/02/03/uts-zamora-wins-tullis-prize/

Texas and the Civil War

2010-02-11T12:07:00.001-06:00

For Texas and the Civil War books a good place to hunt is the "Civil War Books and Authors" blog. A search using the "Texas" keyword bringa a number of titles.

http://cwba.blogspot.com/search?q=texas

Box of Texas Chocolates - The Twisters Interview

2010-02-11T11:16:00.001-06:00

Susan Whitfield takes on a flock of authors in this interview of Houston, Texas scribes. Whitfield begins writing: "As Valentine's Day approaches, I thought I'd do my first interview with multiple anthology authors. Today's interview is with A Box of Texas Chocolates authors, Betty Gordon, Laura Elvebak, Cash Anthony, and the team of Charlotte and Mark Phillips. A Box of Texas Chocolates is the third short story collection from the Houston-based writing group, The Final Twist. Since the group is composed of writers of many genres, they decided to try a multi-genre anthology. Each story features chocolate and Texas. The award-winning A Box of Texas Chocolates is published by L&L Dreamspell."

http://susanwhitfield.blogspot.com/2010/02/box-of-texas-chocolates.html

Kid Wolf of Texas - Powers and Stevens

2010-02-11T10:59:00.001-06:00

Evan Lewis in his "Davy Crockett's Almanac" revives interest in the pulpy 1930's Kid Wolf of Texas and its author prolific Paul Powers, aka Ward Stevens.

http://davycrockettsalmanack.blogspot.com/2009/12/forgotten-books-kid-wolf-of-texas-by.html

Great Texas Novel

2010-02-11T10:40:00.001-06:00

Back in 2006 the folks at the "Campaign for the American Reader" includes commentary on various state's "Great Novels". Two posts have been offered on Texas, in particular comments on Billy Lee Brammer's The Gay Place, see Bryan Curtis and Don Graham in their respective places.

http://americareads.blogspot.com/2006/03/bryan-curtis-on-great-texas-novel.html

and

http://americareads.blogspot.com/2006/03/great-texas-novel-part-2.html

Lisa Wingate Interview

2010-02-11T10:26:00.001-06:00

Lisa Wingate, author of the novel Never Say Never, offers an interviewed "Mocha With Linda." The novel is partially described as "Hurricane season was mild last year, but there's a hurricane a-brewin' in this fun Texas novel. Come sit a spell and take a peek into the lives of Kai Miller, Donetta Bradford and the other folks in Daily, Texas. This novel depicts the "adventures" of hurricane evacuation and housing the evacuees, the meshing of disparate cultures and generations, the lure of young love, and the heartache of a marriage that seems to be drowning." Read more at

http://mochawithlinda.blogspot.com/2010/02/never-say-never-you-might-win-these.html

Houston Heights - Anne Sloan

2010-02-09T10:02:00.001-06:00

Houston Heights. By Anne Sloan and the Houston Heights Association. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009. Many photos. Paperback. 128 pages, Images of America Series, $21.99 ISBN 9780738571188 http://www.arcadiapublishing.com

Anne Sloan has done a wonderful job taking this turn-of-the-century independent town on the edge of Houston onto the photo-filled pages. Sloan knows her material first hand – she's written history and even a novel set in the Heights. The photos are well captioned. The Heights is knows for its desire and accomplished ability to maintain its historical heritage. Sloan used a creative method of collecting vintage photos; she and the Association put the word out to folks to bring their old photos to the old Firehouse for scanning and story-telling. It was so successful they had to repeat the affair.

The contents proceeds as: Community, Schools, Churches, Homes, Businesses, People and Clubs, Diversions, and Around Town. The town was started by O.M. Carter and D.D. Cooley, father of famed Houston heart surgeon. The main street photos display the upper-class homes of large, ornate Victorian and Queen Anne styles of the day. But the citizens beyond Heights Boulevard were mostly middle-class and their old photos show it, and picket fences were de riguer. The town had a full life on its own despite the 15 minute trolley ride to Houston.

All sorts of trades and stores and offices sprinkled through the neighborhood. Many backyards had chickens, cows, and fruit trees. Many backyards had chickens, cows, and fruit trees.

One of the most interesting photos is of young Elma Pielop on Yale Street holding the bridle of a 1930's horse named Tex. Apparently Tex was the "City Horse" kept for the use of residents. Other folks may want to follow the story of Hortense Ward because SHE served as chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court in 1925; see her behind the bench on page 101.

Justice Perverted - Dee Wilbur

2010-02-05T10:05:00.001-06:00

BC Book Critics carries a review of DeeWilbur (the wife and husband team of Dee Pipes and Charles Wilbur Yates) novel Justice Perverted. The review begins:

"In Justice Perverted a young woman is finally able to marry her betrothed after her aging father dies. Sandy had been caring for the ailing gentleman in New Orleans while Jon, the man she loves, works as an attorney in Texas. No longer responsible for the daily care of her beloved father, Sandy quits her teaching job and relocates to a small Texas town: Richmond." Read more at http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-justice-perverted-by-dee/

French Letters: Virginia's War: Tierra, Texas 1944

2010-02-02T13:15:00.001-06:00

French Letters Book One: Virginia's War, a novel by Jack Woodville London. Austin: Vire Press, 2009. paperback, 234 pages. ISBN-13: 9780981597508. $13.99. Also available as a e-book.

She's pregnant as the book opens, but you wouldn't know it. Jack Woodville London embarks successfully on his projected trilogy exploring some delicate domestic affairs. He weaves narrative with correspondence with news flashes - revealing the difficult times of Virginia, the young woman who finds herself with child and unmarried amidst World War II in a small Texas town, Tierra, nearer Lubbock than Austin, where such things are denied, lied, covered-up, and gossiped. Will, the young army doctor and father, is off to war in England and ignorant of his actions and responsibilities.

The emotional action in the novel builds through a series of deceptions. Obviously the pretend marriage is there. Virginia dawdles over telling Will. A local "official" story (a surprise to the pregnant Virginia) to save community integrity is that they had eloped earlier. Such a protective story is partially animated by another level of deception, her father's high status and a key in the local black market and war rationing. Of course, Virginia's brother can a jerk.

As a work, poignant without the syrup, patriotic yet glancing under the table, the novel is less a romance, more historical and social commentary. If you've been advantaged to have lived in a small town, you'll the little hallmarks, the kindnesses, the grudges, and the lack of a good place to hide your private French letters. London has hidden his under Vire's covers, but I'll tell you where to look for them. He'll likely leave bread crumbs to the next installments.

French Letters was a finalist for 2 awards: Best Historical Fiction of the Year, By The Military Writer's Society of America & The William C. Morris Award, for Best Southern Fiction in 2009.

A blog provides some occasional background on the author and the volume at http://frenchlettersthenovel.blogspot.com/

A video interview of author London is at

http://www.virepress.com/vire_press_epk.html

Also check Danielle Hartman's Youtube Channel for London readings at

http://www.youtube.com/user/daniellehartman80

Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy Video and Calendar

2010-01-07T13:34:00.001-06:00

The Cattlemen'sTexas Longhorn Conservancy, headquartered over in Gonzales, a place where Spanish cattle have roamed for a couple of centuries or better, is pretty serious about their self-assigned task:

"Founded in 2005 as a not-for-profit corporation and bestowed the tax exempt status of a 501(c)3 public charity, the mission of the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy is to engage in scientific and historical research, education and other charitable purposes associated with Texas Longhorn cattle.

Imported to the Western Hemisphere more than five hundred years ago by the earliest Spanish explorers, the Texas Longhorn played a significant role in the history of the Americas and became recognized as North America's original bovine. Nearly cross-bred into extinction following the great Western trail drives, the Texas Longhorn was acknowledged as a national treasure by the U.S. Congress, which in 1927 established a protected herd on the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

The Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Conservancy recognizes the value of this national treasure in its original phenotype (appearance) and genotype (genetics) and is intended to provide ongoing resources toward research and education pertaining to this naturally evolved, historic breed."

The calendar hangs on the wall with its pre-punched hole. When opened it's 11 x 17. squarely. Of course, each month has a special color photograph of and quotation about the breed - and by that the CTLC means the unique breed that emerged from the early Spanish stock and formed the basis of millions of cattle first run up the great cattle trails after the Civil War. They weed out the cross-breeds. Only $15.

The downloadable educational video is about 15 minutes long and is professionally done. History, modern challenges, and efforts by themselves and others are spotlighted. It's available online or in a disk form. The website describes it as: "This 15-minute educational video was designed for use in public schools as introduction into Texas History, Social Studies and Science curricula as well as for use in Museums, Historic Sites, Libraries, State Parks and other public learning centers. A Longhorn Educational DVD will be mailed to anyone making a donation to the Conservancy or joining as a member."

Enrique Guerra, current president and one of the CTLC founders, Maudeen Marks, part of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, Fayette Yates, longtime rancher, and others are interviewed and they speak well for those who wish to raise, perpetuate, and care for our official state large mammal, the true TEXAS LONGHORN.

Jodi Thomas Interview by Melinda

2010-01-07T09:56:00.001-06:00

Jodi Thomas (penname) is interviewed by Melinda at Essential Writers. Thomas' preference is for historical and romance novels, and Texas is the setting for a number of titles. She has won three RITA's and is in RWA's Hall of Fame and has three National Readers Choice awards. Here she gives writing secrets and comments on her novel The Lone Texan.
http://melinda.essentialwriters.com/2009/12/04/interview-with-award-winning-author-jodi-thomas/

Q.V., www.Jodithomas.com Where you'll find an excellent video trailer and several interviews.

Bill Minutaglio Interviews

2010-01-07T09:28:00.001-06:00

Bill Minutaglio is an an occasional interviewee by Michael Geffner at Mike's Writing Workshop. Bill Minutaglio is a Texas Pulitzer Prize nominee, National Book Award nominee, journalist, professor, and recent author of a Molly Ivins biography and another on Alberto Gonzales. See
http://mikeswritingworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/12/spotlight-interview-bill-minutaglio.html

and

http://mikeswritingworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/09/future-of-journalism-bill-minutaglio.html

and

http://mikeswritingworkshop.blogspot.com/2009/01/spotlight-interview-bill-minutaglio.html

and

http://mikeswritingworkshop.blogspot.com/2008/05/spotlight-interview-bill-minutaglio.html

q.v. http://www.billminutaglio.com

Wallpaper City Guide: Houston

2010-01-06T21:01:00.001-06:00

Offcite, an architectural blog of Houston branched from the Rice Design Alliance folks, has jumped right into 2010 with a review of a volume which pays attention to Houston architecture and hotspots. It's a Wallpaper City Guide about Houston. It begins: "Rather than plainly document a bounty of recreational attractions, the recently-released Wallpaper City Guide: Houston (published jointly by the Wallpaper magazine and Phaidon) postures itself as the "fast-track" guide for the discerning traveler, offering a "tightly edited," "ruthlessly researched," "rigorously selected," and "discreetly packaged" list of the city's design-conscious locales. Instead of the design-minded denizen, the target audience is the weekend tourist or business traveler — so it's tempting for a local to scrutinize the 100-page volume."
Read some more straight talk from reviewer Steven Thomson at
http://offcite.org/2010/01/04/wallpaper-city-guide-houston

Literary El Paso - Daudistel

2010-01-06T18:34:00.001-06:00

Literary El Paso. Edited by Marcia Hatfield Daudistel. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2009. Hardback and jacket, rust red cloth, black endpapers, 572 pages, permissions bibliography, title and author index, ISBN-10: 0875653871, 9780875653877, $29.50 http://www.prs.tcu.edu

El Paso is more than dusty plazas and gunslingers set in a Spanish themed town in West Texas. In the 1970's I went to El Paso bibliographically because folks were pointing to the visual beauty of the books – you know the trio, the master printer Hertzog and the artists Tom Lea and José Cisneros. I stayed there for the stories, some sort of true, and others deeply so as in Bode's "eternal familiar." I puzzled over Amado Muro, and then I came to "love the August rains" with Benjamin Alire Saenz. I noticed how the Anglos came and stayed as academicians, and Tejanos left or passed through on their ways north and west.

Editor Marcia Daudistel knows from whence she comes; in fact she comes from being associate director of Texas Western Press in El Paso for years, and it's paid off. She not only has selected 62 El Paso natives, adoptees, and passers-by, modern authors of the 20^th century whose publications about life, culture, and literature have previously graced pages out where the Rio cuts through the Franklin Mountains and waters the Chihuahua Desert, but she also adds some unpublished works as well and includes a trace of bilingualism in the volume's series (El Paso is TCU's 4^th installment) so well produced by Judy Alter's fine crew at TCU Press.

History, fiction, journalism, self-reflective essay, and to a lesser degree poetry describe and interpret Texas western-most piece of the borderlands.

The pages begin with Tom Lea's Wonderful Country as many such bibliographical hymns do, followed by Carl Hertzog, Owen White, Dale Walker, C.L. Sonnichsen, and others of the traditional choir, some being born before 1900. Then a bit of variation enters with Nancy Hamilton, Bernice Love Wiggins, and Reuben Salazar. In Part II the Other El Paso emerges through Tomas Rivera, Abelardo "Lalo" Delgado, John Rechy, Ana Castillo, Estela Portillo Trambley, Sheryl Luna, Elroy Bode, and others. And there's the tourists photographing body parts in Juarez.

You'll find recurring figures – folks from Little Chihuahua, brides, Pancho Villa, job hunters, retail shoppers, students, and people wobbling on the threshold between two worlds. Buy the book, take a literary vacation. Meet old friends and make new ones.

Michael Barnes and Building a Texas Social Library

2010-01-05T09:33:00.001-06:00

In Austin much reverence is misted upon the socio-political correctness (replacing the old concept of social correctness of Victorian propriety) of understanding our state's developing cultural memes, and Michael Barnes begins his Austin 360 column in Out and About with the ever proper soft inquiry and soliticitation, "The eternal question: What came before? // Reporting on Austin's social scene, one wants to know about people, places and parties in ancestral, modern and contemporary Texas society. // Thus, my once and future reading list, posted below. Additions welcome."

I'll mention the authors Barnes intones, but let you wonder or click to learn what are the actual titles he suggests: Frantz, Brammer, Bebichek, Burrough, Bird, Thompson, Webb, Shrake, Dalleck, and Caro. If you don't know 5 of the names, take the cure at Barton Springs. If you do know 5 or more, take a swim at Barton Springs. If you know 7 or more, bask in the company of Philosopher's Rock's company.
http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/outandabout/entries/2009/12/28/building_a_texa.html?cxntfid=blogs_out_about

Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life - Minutaglio & Smith

2010-01-05T09:08:00.001-06:00

Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith is reviewed in several locations around the nation. See

Everyday Citizen: News, Opinion, & Things that Matter : review by Darrel Hamlin begins: "Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life (PublicAffairs Books, 2009) is the story of an exceptionally privileged daughter of corporate power who somehow stretched beyond the constraints of journalism to become a beloved icon of progressive ideals. Armed with a devastatingly precise wit, Ivins embraced her passionate subjectivity and fought like hell – for civil liberties, for all those who suffer the consequences of a corrupt and oligarchic public life, for liberals who needed laughter with their morning outrage." Read more at http://www.everydaycitizen.com/2010/01/molly_ivins_a_rebel_life.html

The Washington Post: Review by Dennis Drabble begins: "The turning point in Molly Ivins's life, suggest the authors of this biography, may have been the motorcycle accident that killed her college boyfriend, Hank Holland. At first blush, that seems an odd claim to make about the outspoken feminist and wittily acerbic political columnist from Texas whose fearless remarks -- and the reactions to them -- led to the title of one of her books: "Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?" " Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301384.html

Los Angeles Times, review by Claudia Feldman begins: "My editor flipped through the new book about iconic Texas journalist Molly Ivins that I'd carried to him like a dog with a bone. / Before her death in 2007, I was a huge Ivins fan. / "Does anybody still care?" he asked. "And what could possibly be new?" / Pretty soon I was posing those same questions to Austin author Bill Minutaglio, who along with W. Michael Smith wrote "Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life." / "Of course I'm heavily biased," Minutaglio said, "but Molly's millions of fans do still care. She opened the door for women in journalism. She made it OK for them to be front and center on opinion pages in a provocative and funny way. Also, she made it OK for liberals to identify themselves, to come forward." "
Read more at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-ivinsbook18-2009nov18,0,5675367.story

New York Times Sunday Book Review, review by Lloyd Grove begins: "What fearful fun Molly Ivins would have had with Glenn Beck, the birthers, Sarah Palin, Representative Joe ("You lie!") Wilson and, of course, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas — he of the secessionist aspirations and wonderful hair. And how pained she would be, while never losing hope, as she showered President Obama with tough love over his policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his difference-splitting diffidence on health care reform." Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Grove-t.html

SA Current, Review by Steven G. Kellman begins: " Though she dubbed him Shrub and persistently ridiculed him as "just another upper-class white boy trying to prove he's tough," Molly Ivins and George W. Bush grew up in the same 'hood. River Oaks was Houston's toniest address, and their families mingled with other members of the petroleum plutocracy at the nearby country club. Both attended posh local prep schools — St. John's for Ivins, Kinkaid for Bush — and prestigious institutions in the Northeast — Smith and Columbia for Ivins, Yale and Harvard for Bush." Read more at http://www.sacurrent.com/arts/story.asp?id=70608

Dallas News, review by Elizabeth Bennett begins: "When she was a child growing up in upper-crust Houston, Molly Ivins dreamed of being famous. If she didn't make it by age 25, she wrote on a note tucked in her wallet, she would commit suicide. // That early promise to herself is a key to the intensity and drive of one of the most provocative and influential figures in modern journalism. Before Ivins died of cancer at age 62, her column was appearing in more than 300 newspapers, three of her books had become national best-sellers, and she was being offered $15,000 for speaking appearances. // An icon of liberalism in Texas, Ivins was a wisecracking social commentator who inspired readers to both laughter and action, write authors Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith in Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life." Read more about it at http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-bk_ivins_1108gd.ART.State.Edition1.4b4eed4.html

... y no se lo trago la tierra - Tomás Rivera

2010-01-01T22:33:00.001-06:00

2010 marks the 40th anniversary of Tomás Rivera's, "... y no se lo trago la tierra / ... And the Earth Did Not Devour Him" receipt of the Quinto Sol Literary Prize in 1970. La Bloga's Jesse Tijerina offers a retrorspective entitled "Un tragito para Tomas" on this now classic identity search of a young Tejano. Tijerina's review begins: "Prior to Tomas Rivera's groundbreaking novel, searching for a literary work with the ability to portray the life of migrant farmworkers with such precision and haunting reality would have been time and energy hard spent. While the experience's of Rivera's characters survive between 1945 and 1955, their stories of heartbreak and joy along the migrant stream differ only in decade as familiar situations and circumstances continue to cultivate in the fields of fruits and vegetables toiled by today's migrant farworker."

Do continue reading the commmentary at

http://labloga.blogspot.com/2009/12/un-tragito-para-tomas.html

House Slave Next Door

2010-01-01T22:08:00.001-06:00

The Houston City Hall Examiner comments in an articleew entitled "Houston's controversial true news story on slavery is out in a book" on the volume House Slave Next Door about child trafficking and slavery in the Houston and Sugarland areas, particularly the case of Celestina Ifeacho.

One of the review's paragraph's clearly understates the volume's contents

"This book is not a biography, but simply, a compilation of investigations and story pieces published in the International Guardian on a controversial alleged child-trafficking victim who eventually ended up in immigration jail somewhere in the North side of town, awaiting deportation amidst sloppy bureaucracy over official classification of her status as a victim of slavery."

Who is Mother Neff and Why is She a State Park? by Allan C. Kimball

2009-12-31T17:22:00.001-06:00

Kameron Searle on his Texas History Page reviews Who is Mother Neff and Why is She a State Park? by Allan C. Kimball. It begins

"In this book, Allan C. Kimball will tell you who Mother Neff was and how a Texas state park came to be named after her. I will tell you what this book with the unusual title is all about. It is an excellent guide to all the Texas State Parks. Kimball has researched the history for the source of the name of each of the Texas State Parks and consolidated all of them into this handy 266 page paperback book."

Larry McMurtry & Literary Life Interview - NPR

2009-12-31T09:29:00.001-06:00

Larry McMurtry is interviewed for National Public Radio for almost 8 minutes about his installment of his Literary Life. The interview is available in print and audio. It begins:

"Since the very start, Larry McMurtry's writing career has been staged — almost simultaneously — in two oddly paired worlds: his hometown of Archer, Texas, and Hollywood. He published his first novel, Horseman, Pass By, in 1961. The rights to that book were optioned for the movie that would become Hud, starring Paul Newman, before the book was published. "Almost before the last period [was] put on the book," according to McMurtry."

Listen in or read more at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121780230

Twisting in the Wind: Springtown Hangings - Jean Bennett

2009-12-31T09:21:00.001-06:00

Crystal Brown's Weatherford Democrat book review entitled "Area hangings focus of new book" reveals that they hang 'em in Weatherford and Parker County according to Jean Bennett, the book's author. The review begins:
Jean Bennett, the genealogy librarian for the Weatherford Public Library, has recently published a book highlighting hangings in and around Parker County dating back to the mid 1800s.
The book, Twisting in the Wind: Springtown Hangings of the Hill Women and Other North Texas Hangings, features 15 stories of hangings in Parker County and surrounding areas.
"When I started working here I had all these people coming in and asking about the Hill Hangings," Bennett said. "I didn't know anything about the Hill Hangings. They kept asking, so I thought I'd better find out.""

Not reading more is a hanging offense pardner: http://www.weatherforddemocrat.com/local/local_story_356161955.html

Ms. Bennett was unavailable at press time to comment on whether the book was published to underscore the possible severe penalties for overdue books at the Library where is book can be purchased. Communications of a proper nature can be established through http://www.parkercohistoryandheritage.com

Growing Good Things to Eat - Pamela Walker

2009-12-31T08:39:00.001-06:00

KIM PIERCE, Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News, sprouts a book review entitled "Author Profiles Texas' Organic Farmers," and begins

"With the surge of interest in organic and locally produced food, Pamela Walker's Growing Good Things to Eat in Texas (TAMU Press, $23) couldn't be timelier. She profiles 11 organic producers across the state, including two from North Texas, who take their commitment to food and sustainability seriously. They don't just talk about it; they live it.".

Remember, you don't have to commit to a healthy lifestyle just because you're eating healthy; it tastes better too!

Your friendly Texas Department of Agriculture has a listing of 60 cities and town with farmers markets at http://www.picktexas.com/farm_market/farmers_market2.htm

Find another list at the Texas Farmers Market Association http://www.texascertifiedfarmersmarkets.com/members.html

And another at the Texas Farmers Market Directory http://www.farmersmarketonline.com/fm/Texas.htm

Texas Observer - Back issues of Summer and Winter Books Issues online

2009-12-30T16:34:00.001-06:00

The Texas Observer, Texas' own guardian of the left bank of the Colorado River. has a book blog "Texas Bound" which occasionally addresses a Texas volume (they prefer the broader view of the nation). No posting has been made in "Texas Bound" since last October. But now of note is the TO's online availability of the Summer and Winter Books issues. The archives go back for ten years. On the Texas Bound blog's page in the upper right are clicks to those back issues. For the illiterate with no interest in books, but just their causes of the day, under TO's homepage is the complete list of issues, back for the same ten years.

Texas Cookbook Reviews

2009-12-24T10:38:00.001-06:00

Texas Cooking offers a couple of dozen book reviews at

http://texana.texascooking.com/cookbooks.htm

Steven Davis & Frank Dobie book - Interview by Steve Bennett

2009-12-24T09:58:00.001-06:00

In The Fine Print Steve Bennett interviews Steven Davis on his new book J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind. It begins:

"There were two J. Frank Dobies: the bigoted, boorish creator of the "everything-is-bigger-in-Texas" myth, and the man who later re-examined his own prejudices and embraced a form of spiritual humanism.

Steven L. Davis follows the trail of the iconic Texas folklorist in an illuminating new biography "J. Frank Dobie: A Liberated Mind."

Will Davis' book spark a Dobie renaissance? "I think we were long overdue for a major reassessment of Dobie," says Davis, author of "Texas Literary Outlaws." "None of us had a clear vision of who he really was." Read the interview at

http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/fine_print/2009/11/-j-frank-dobie-who.html

Dave Oliphant & Harbingers - Interview by Ed Conroy

2009-12-24T09:48:00.001-06:00

The Fine Print by Steve Bennett brings you the interview:

"Here's the full text of Ed Conroy's interview with Texas poet, professor and publisher Dave Oliphant, whose new book is "Harbingers of Books to Come," a must "for anyone seeking to understand the development of literature and jazz in Texas during the postwar era." See a photo of Dave and his wife and inspiration Maria and read more at http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblogs/fine_print/2009/11/heres-the-full-text-of.html

Humanities Texas offers a biographial sketch of Oliphant (after his retirement from 30 years from UT) in its Speakers' Bureau

http://www.humanitiestexas.org/programs/speakers/list/oliphant.php

Dagoberto Gilb Interview on Online Publishing

2009-12-19T09:53:00.001-06:00

Photo: http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/2002/gilb.html

In the American Short Fiction Blog Texan editor of Hecho en Texas, Dagoberto Gilb, who doesn't publish online, offers his view "Dagoberto Gilb: What does online publishing mean to you?"

With a few responding comments at http://www.americanshortfiction.org/blog/?p=2239

Online readers should bear in mind that you're reading this online.

Other interviews at

http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/an_interview_with_dagoberto_gilb/C39/L39/
http://www.pitt.edu/~nidus/archives/fall2002/gilb.html
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/conversation/jan-june01/gilb_03-28.html
http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2002/borders/talk/dialogue001_dg.html
http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum147.php

http://www.dagobertogilb.com/

http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/archives/writers/gilb.html

New West Selections

2009-12-18T17:07:00.001-06:00

The New West collects it favorite books for 2009 with some Texana in "Other States" section
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/new_west_best_books_in_the_west_2009_part_2/C39/L39/

Antonya Nelson short stories collected in Nothing Right (Bloomsbury USA)

Best of the West 2009: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri (University of Texas Press)

Jeannette Walls' Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel.

Lovin' That Lone Star Flag - E. Joe Deering

2009-12-18T10:43:00.001-06:00

Maggie Galehouse, book editor at the Houston Chronicle, begins her review thusly:

Looking at Texas' flag through a unique lens Nov. 27, 2009, 1:41PM

Book By E. Joe Deering.

Texas A&M University Press, 120 pp., $29.95.

"For five years, E. Joe Deering made it his business to photograph the Lone Star flag — anywhere he found it.

Between 2002 and 2007, the former Houston Chronicle photographer captured images of the iconic Texas state flag on barns, brick walls, police cars, homes, mailboxes, belt buckles, surfboards, cowboy boots, almost anywhere you can imagine."

Literary Life: A Second Memoir - Larry McMurtry

2009-12-18T09:38:00.001-06:00

The New York Times reviews McMurtry's literary biography which augments his earlier literary biograpy Books: A Memoir. The review begins

Bookish Cowboy Heads Off to the Corral

By DWIGHT GARNER Published: December 10, 2009

"Larry McMurtry has won a Pulitzer Prize, for his novel "Lonesome Dove," published in 1985. His criticism appears regularly in The New York Review of Books, this country's leading journal of mandarin literary opinion. He won an Academy Award for writing, with Diana Ossana, the screenplay for the film "Brokeback Mountain." For two years in the early 1990s he was the American president of PEN, the august literary and human-rights organization.

Yet Mr. McMurtry, who is 73 and has written some 40 books of fiction, essays and memoir, nonetheless feels like a man who gets no — or at least not much — respect."

Read more of the review at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/books/11book.html

See comments on the earlier volume at

'Books: A Memoir,' by Larry McMurtry: Wrote 28; Accumulated Many More (July 11, 2008)

Elmer Kelton, Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail lof a Texas Writer - Elmer Kelton

2009-12-11T10:13:00.001-06:00

Elmer Kelton, Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer. By Elmer Kelton.. NY: Macmillan / Forge Books / Tom Doherty, 2007. Handback, sand and brown pictorial jacket, olive green cloth, b & w photos. ISBN: 978-0-7653-1521-2, ISBN10: 0-7653-1521-1, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 256 pages. $23.95.

http://us.macmillan.com/sandhillsboy http://www.elmerkelton.net/ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/books/01kelton.html

Elmer Kelton, (1926-2009) lately of San Angelo, Texas, was a native West Texan who wrote about fifty Western novels, won a bunkhouse-load of writing awards for his work, and achieved the status of being the Greatest Western Writer of all time according to the Western Writers of America, the folks who know of such things.

Kelton provided his memoir before his death on September 1, 2009. Buck Kelton, his cowboy and ranch foreman father, eventually reconciled to his son's failure to become a career cowboy. You see his son broke loose from the dusty corral and instead took to the trials and trails of Western authorship, a trade Buck skeptively considered "not working" for his pay. Being reared on the Western plains was no easy life, but for Elmer that was his homeland, in and around Crane and Upton counties on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, particularly the McElroy Ranch, out around Midland way. Later more than once he mused in the mirror, "What would Dad think?"

Early home places were named Horse Camp, Sand Camp, and the Mayfield Place. Young Elmer memorized the poem "Make Me a Cowboy Again for a Day" and listened to the windup Victrola with his father to "Ramona." His mother wistfully mentioned how she had noticed a oowboy weep upon hearing "When the Works All Done This Fall." When the author wrote of leathered faces, calloused hands, scars, and lonesome times he knew of such things.

http://www.cowboypoetry.com/strays.htm#Make

http://www.1songlyrics.com/j/jim-reeves/ramona.html

http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiWORKDONE;ttWORKDONE.html

Kelton grew up, learning to read the labels on the canned goods, abetted by his mother's home-schooling. Maybe his mother was to blame for his scribbling. He remembers she once wrote a story intended for Ranch Romances magazine. The son took up writing before age 10 at his second-grade teacher's instruction.

He survived ranch life, studied journalism at UT, joined WW II where he met his future-wife Anni in Austria, returned home and wrote for the San Angelo Standard Times, range journals, observed oil field life, began writing short stories, and upon hearing the cautionary comments about how the new fangled media was replacing short stories added novels to his remuda.

The volume is straight forward, poignant, with drops of dry humor. It begins as if he were at a kitchen table sharing a cup of coffee with the reader – scattered with talk about family life and ventures, the land, the lack of rain, the mountains, cattle, and the people he knew, not a few of which were real characters. The pace steps-up with the war, and again with the courtship of Anni, and settles down again as they take up home life on the Texas plains. You'll not be distracted his many references to his novels; this is his life as he lived it.

Purchase a copy his memoirs; it's a good investment in good reading. If you're not yet a Kelton reader, start with one of these: The Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, The Man Who Rode Midnight, Buffalo Wagons, The Day the Cowboys Quit, Eyes of the Hawk, Slaughter, The Far Canyon, and The Way of the Coyote.

Savage Wisdom - German

2009-11-30T11:01:00.001-06:00

A Savage Wisdom. By Norman German. Thibodaux, LA: Thunder Rain Publishing Corp., 2009, second prtg. 265 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-0-9654569-6-8, $14.00 http://www.asavagewisdom.com

http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/ngerman/index.html 4

The interview from Hel:

http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com/2009/11/savage-wisdom-by- norman-german.html

Professor Norman German of Southeastern Louisiana University edits fiction for the journal Louisiana Literature and has won the Deep South Writers' Contest for No Other World.

How could a young, sweet, Shreveport girl in the Depression become homeless, a cocaine addict, a prostitute, a mother, and finally a cold-blooded killer on Valentine's Day 1940?

There is a co-dependent relationship between Texas and Louisiana, and German's novelization of the life, crimes, and legends of Toni Jo Henry (born: Annie Beatrice McQuiston), the only woman executed in Louisiana's electric chair, is on the Bookshelf because the man she murdered was a Texan. Well, there's another connection, Toni Jo (her prostitute name) fell in love and married in 1939 Claude "Cowboy" Henry who had already murdered a guy in San Antonio. He was subsequently captured and imprisoned in Texas, and Toni Jo wanted to get him out. She might have robbed an Arkansas bank to get "Cowboy" out, except in the process she murdered Houston tire salesman Joseph Calloway on Valentine's Day. She had been picked up as a hitchhiker outside Orange, but she murdered him in Lake Charles, hence a Louisiana murder. She's hunted and captured and tried and executed in 1942.

If you care to hold hands, for a small price, with a love-starved, addict-prostitute during her murder trial, you'll be rewarded by German's coverage. It's stark and rich in that New Orleans decadent detail style that Texans like to mention as a party gets a little rowdy.

Midian, Marshall, & Me - Davis

2009-11-30T09:41:00.001-06:00

Midian, Marshall & Me. By Jerome Davis. edited by Dee Davis and Richard J. Davis, cover design Chelsey Tatum. Trafford, 2008. Paperback, 130 pages, size: 5 ½ x 8 ½ , ISBN: 9781425136543, $14.49.

http://www.trafford.com/

If you've wondered where Martin Luther King's words "I have a dream …" came from, they came from Marshall. Jerome, a little white boy, was best friends with Midian, a little black boy, there who grew up to assert that you be judged by the "content of your character."

Jerome, a retired communications professional of print, radio, and TV, authors his personal memoirs of growing up in Marshall in the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's. Midian Johnson lived behind him on the next street. Such close living was possible because the Davises weren't hardly rich, and as such housed next to African Marshallites. The boys bonded in the usual Piney Woods minor mischief, church-going, music-sharing, but not Little League, schooling, and the like. The racial bigotry was real among many in the town, but its clout rarely extended to poor little boys. Davis' treatment of the period blends the limitations of the time with a bit of gentle avoidance - much as he was treated there.

As it turns out, both boys got good educations there (there's a whole story in that which Davis doesn't touch). Midian was identified early as a person to know and shape by Senator Lyndon Johnson. With the 1960 election, young, goodman Midian excelled and went to Washington and found himself advising the vice-president who shortly became the president. A part of official Marshall in the meantime turned fire department hoses on civil rights advocates on the brick-faced town square.

Midian went on in a successful career and, decades later, recently returned home to Marshall, hoping to retire, but finding himself president of Marshall's Wiley College.

Rarely do these small, modern memoirs carry much of broad value beyond the details of a life, but Davis captures for you things that you would not expect, especially out of Marshall. Strongly recommended.

Both Davis, now retired in Colleyville, and Johnson are recognized on Marshall's "Wall of Distinction." For good reasons.

Reviews of Texana databases

2009-11-28T19:19:00.001-06:00

As part of a Syracuse University Information Science Technology class assignment, various digital databases are reviewed at http://ist677-f2009.blogspot.com/ Some Texas content databases are considered, e.g.,

Portal to Texas History - University of North Texas Library

http://ist677-f2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/portal-to-texas-history.html

Texas Constitutions - University of Texas, Tarleton Law Library, Jamail Center for Legal Research

http://ist677-f2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/texas-constitutions-1824-1876.html

Museum of History (a virtual museum)

http://ist677-f2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/project-name-and-url-museum-of-houston.html

Journey Through Deaf Texas

2009-11-28T13:08:00.001-06:00

DOCUMENTARY FILM ON THE HISTORY OF TEXAS ASSOCIATION OF THE DEAF NOW AVAILABLE FOR THEATRICAL EXHIBITION:

The news release states in part "JOURNEY THROUGH DEAF TEXAS chronicles the history of TAD since its inception in 1886 and its historic accomplishments that have had an impact on deaf and hard of hearing Texans. The film was co-produced, directed, and edited by David H. Pierce who has worked in the television industry for 24 years.

Stephen C. Baldwin, Ph.D., past president of TAD, co-producer, writer, and researcher of the film, says that "the film is not all about politics and legislative endeavors, but it has sentimental moments about leadership, failures, triumphs, ignorance, apathy and the need to continue to work on making lives better for the Texas Deaf Community."

http://deaftexas.org/wp/blog/2009/07/25/booking-information-journey-through-deaf-texas/

Texas State Travel Guide - It's free

2009-11-27T23:59:00.001-06:00

The Travel Guide is really a grand volume to have - sites all over Texas. Get a recent edition with a telephone call.

"For a FREE packet containing the Texas State Travel Guide, Texas Accommodations Guide, and Texas Official Travel Map, call 800-8888-TEX (839) in the US and Canada,."

http://www.traveltex.com/travelguide/order.aspx

Texas Quilts and Quilters - Kaylakie

2009-11-25T15:30:00.001-06:00

Texas Quilts and Quilters: A Lone Star Legacy. By Marcia Kaylakie, with Janice Whittington, photography by Jim Lincoln, and foreword by Marian Ann J. Montgomery. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. Hardback with silver stamping on the spine and under dark blue cloth, and Mexican gold endpapers. 264 pages. 182 b&w and color photos, ports., 1 map, index, ISBN 0896726061, 978-0-89672-606-2, $39.95 (Grover E. Murray Studies in the American Southwest Series)

http://www.ttup.ttu.edu/

An excellent investment. You'll find yourself touching the 11x11 inch pages to feel the fabric and stiching. This chronological presentation begins in the 1860's and progresses through 32 named patterns with stories pulled from the towns across Texas.

A "Cattle Brand" quilt, sure, and a "Gone With the Wind" quilt, sure, but who could have imagined that the dirt and filth of the "Oil Field" could be converted into a bright quilt design; apparently Katherine Hervey did so in Fort Worth. Maybe the most beautiful to me is Etta Mae Nelson Back's "Yo-Yo Quilt." The gentle warmth, the deep cream and soft colors, and 1 ¼" squares arranged in the 30 multiply-bordered squares combine to evoke a sign and stroke a young boy could have had.

The "Rainbow Quilt" at the Gage Hotel is so striking, I'm tempted to allege they stole the one I once had, but, really, they didn't. Allie Burkett's "Blue Lone Star Quilt" is memorable first for its blue theme, without the usual red splash, and now I notice the publishers' chose it for the jacket cover. Good choice! But, oh, the 2001 "Traveling Stars Quilt" also commands my attention, nothing bright, but the maroon, black, and rosy cream tied together and bordered by the concentric diamonds.

A 3 to 4 page narrative accompanies each of the quilts and once the festival of page-turning slows, you'll the reading worthwhile.

Texas Wineries - Esco

2009-11-25T14:25:00.001-06:00

Texas Wineries. By Melinda Esco. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2009. Hardback, color photos, maps, directory, and glossary. ISBN 9780875653969 $9.95

http://www.prs.tcu.edu

As a Master Gardener and occasional fermented grape drinker, Esco found herself writing a "Small Book" for TCU Press. She lifted the topic, studied its clarity, sipped, and wrote.

We're treated with pleasant, short chapters on history, business, grape growing, wine making, and survey of many of the wineries in Texas. From the practical view, many the most useful part is the url appended to each winery in the directory of the nearly one-hundred in the list.

We've almost all heard how Texas grapes virtually, completely almost saved the entire French wine industry during their late unpleasantness, but the book's outdoors photos of valley fields and vines come to rest grapely upon the mind with a suggestion of muscadine. Salúte to Melinda.

From Birdwomen - Erisman

2009-11-25T13:46:00.001-06:00

From Birdwomen to Skygirls: American Girls' Aviation Stories. By Fred Erisman. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2009. Hardback and jacket, 261 pages, photos, facsimiles, chapter notes, endnotes, bibliography, index. ISBN 9780875653976.

Erisman's survey demonstrates TCU Press' service to the children and young adult market beyond the topic of Texana. The author, already having covered the same topic for boys, analyzes a three-threaded topic – girls series books about aviation, technological changes in aviation, and female roles in real life – especially the aviatrix group. Somebody oughta write a young reader about Texas flying women - maybe begin with Bessie Coleman.

If you've read Hardy Boy books, as I did, or Nancy Drew, you already have a handle on Erisman's adventure in flying adolescent literarture.

La Junta de los Rios - a new thesis by Folsom

2009-11-25T10:31:00.001-06:00

Readers of La Junta history may wish to consult a new thesis from UNT.

SPANISH LA JUNTA DE LOS RIOS: THE INSTITUTIONAL HISPANICIZATION OF AN INDIAN COMMUNITY ALONG NEW SPAIN'S NORTHERN FRONTIER, 1535-1821. By Bradley Folsom. A Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS August 2008.

His chapters are topical

1. INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................1

2. THE INDIANS AND THE ENVIRONMENT..............................................16

3. THE CONQUISTADOR...........................................................................32

4. THE SPANISH CIVILIAN SETTLER........................................................50

5. THE MISSIONARY..................................................................................66

6. THE PRESIDIAL SOLDIER.....................................................................82

7. CONCLUSION.......................................................................................105

Find it at http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9103:1

It should be interesting in light of Morgenthaler's two recent volumes.

La Junta de los Rios - Morgenthaler

2009-11-25T10:23:00.001-06:00

La Junta de los Rios: The life, death, and resurrection of an ancient desert community in the Big Bend region of Texas. By Jefferson Morgenthaler. Boerne, Texas: Mockingbird Books, 2007. 183 pages, notes, bibliography, index, paperback, ISBN 978-1-932801-10-1 $18.95.

http://www.mockingbirdbooks.com

La Junta is a comprehensive history of the early period, up to the 1800's, of the region along the Texas – Mexican border where the Rio Conchos confluences with the Rio Grande. As such in La Junta Morgenthaler provides and excellent prequel to his The River Has Never Divided Us that covers the 1800's onward.

La Junta is often overlooked in the history of early Spanish Texas, in favor of San Antonio, settlements in the Valley, and El Paso, but the Spanish used La Junta as a major gateway. Furthermore Morgenthaler goes into convincing detail to demonstrate the intelligence and energy of the Jumano and other natives whose culture had persisted for hundreds of years.

On New Spain's northern frontier, Nueva Vizcaya it came to be called, the wasteland and scattered fertile plots around these rivers were generally protected by the mountains and harsh living conditions. Cabeza de Vaca slipped through from the north. Random contacts occurred until the 1580's Rodriguez and Chamuscado expedition came looking for a path to Cibola. Espejo came only a couple of years later. Spanish enforcers pursued Sosa up the river. Another freebooter, Leyva y Bonilla, this way came. Onate passed through on his way to establish his settlement in New Mexico. Death and conflict ensued. Missions, presidios, about ten pueblos, and trade followed.

Morgenthaler develops the influence of Mendoza, Retana, and Sabeata. A rebellion failed in the 1680's, and the La Salle entry shook the region. But later the Apaches came raiding the region, and the Spanish stalled. Until the volume's end the Apache are a dominant theme or background noise as the Spanish presence expands northward into Texas.

Morgenthaler adds more fully clothed characters to the Texas story around La Junta.

River Has Never Divided Us - Morgenthaler

2009-11-24T09:34:00.001-06:00

The River Has Never Divided Us: A Border History of La Junta de los Rios. By Jefferson Morgenthaler. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. 355 pages, 42 photos, 8 maps, chapter notes and back notes, bibliography, index, ISBN 978-0-292-70283-7. $22.95.

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/

"No other history of the area has approached the broad interpretation of this book as it weaves this intensive study of La Junta so closely into the international trends and events taking place in Texas, Mexico, and the United States. . . . The writing is witty, bold and enticing." - —Andres Tijerina, author of Tejano Empire: Life on the South Texas Ranchos

Down on the border, near Ojinaga and Presidio, a Mexican River, the Rio Conchos, flows down from Chihuahua and joins, above the Big Bend, with the Rio Grande and there life has persisted in a harsh environment – for hundreds of years. Jefferson Morgenthaler, and lawyer, communications consultant, and publisher, has built upon his academic investigation to give us the story of the more recent times of the 1800's forward toward the end of the Mexican Revolution for the surrounding 20 to 30 miles.

He first draws your attention to the death of Esquivel Hernandez at the hands of U.S. Marines in 1997. Then Morgenthaler backgrounds readers in the Chihuahua Desert, plateaus, mountains, canyons, streams, and early native life, Cabeza de Vaca, and Spanish efforts at settlement. Then the Americans came.

You have Doniphan's Expedition, land transfers, Ben Leaton, Jay Hayes, Lt. Whiting drawing the line, the 49ers on their way to California, and the Scalp Hunters like James Kirker.

There was smuggling, then as now, and lots of silver. Railroads arrived and the spread of ranches and military posts increased. Greed and murder laced with revenge. There was Ortega's Rebellion, followed by Orozco and Huerta, and Pancho Villa, chased by Black Jack Pershing. Smuggling revived with liquor contraband, and drugs would derive from there.

Morgenthaler uses many sources, many of which are primary, and his interesting narrative of discovery is yours for the purchase.

Waco - Ames

2009-11-24T08:25:00.000-06:00

Waco. By Eric S. Ames. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2009. Paperback, many black and white photos, ISBN: 9780738571317, 128 pages, $21.99.

http://www.arcadiapublishing.com

Young Mr. Ames has done a remarkable job of collecting the names and "assistance" of noted local and state historians for this photographic compendium. And he was lucky that the Baylor University Library Texas Collection's Fred Gildersleeve Collection was made available to him. The volume is divided into simple chapters: Waco Spirit, structural landmarks, scenes, recreation and play, and news headlines.

Folks probably know Waco for historic Baylor University, Dr Pepper, the suspension bridge that preceded the Brooklyn Bridge, William Brann and his internationally successful Iconoclast newspaper, and the "Crash at Crush." But the Alico Building was one of the first Texas skyscrapers and a "red light district" are also remembered.

For a town whose existence was keenly dependent on early agricultural success, there are only a few photos of African Texans, but the Paul Quinn College is represented as well as other situations. More could have been found.

Some remarkable shots include Gildersleeve's improvised tower from which he captured photographs, the bird's-eye-view of the Masonic Grand Lodge building, the sweeping panoramas, and the 1953 tornado images.

Bulldozed: Kelo by Main - with comments by George Will

2009-11-15T12:34:00.001-06:00

Columnist George Will, in his Washington Post filing, explores the ghastly attempt to suppress a Texas book and to suppress critical approval on that book, and the stunning question of the state government's successful attempts to take by eminent domain your personal real estate and give it to other commercial interests. The city of interest is Freeport, Texas.
Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land by Carla Main
Read Will's commentary at the Washington Post August 19, 2009.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081902262.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

A related question was on the November ballot.

Or see Carla Main's homepage http://carlamain.com/

Where her site describes her book as: "Bulldozed: 'Kelo,' Eminent Domain and the American Lust for Land is a book for any American concerned about the future of property rights and the American Dream. For those interested in urban affairs and the law, Bulldozed provides an in-depth account into the way an eminent domain battle affects a family and a town.

Set in East Texas, Bulldozed tells the story of Pappy Gore. Born into poverty, he grows up to found a successful business, Western Seafood, and become a pillar of his community. But then things change in town. The city of Freeport decides to build a commercial marina on the river and moves to take Pappy's land in eminent domain. The city wants to turn the land over to Western Seafood's next-door neighbor -- a descendant of a great Texas oil family -- who will build the marina. Long-standing neighbors and friends take sides as the marina controversy brings to the fore deep-seated differences over values, justice and fair play, eventually splitting the town down the middle.

Against this backdrop, Bulldozed examines the history of eminent domain from the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the Bill of Rights by James Madison, through the behind-the-scenes intrigue that transpired in New London, Connecticut leading to the Kelo case. Bulldozed addresses the all-important question: How did we get here in America?"

Texas Tribune - new newspaper

2009-11-12T20:49:00.001-06:00

The Texas Tribune is described by the Texas Community College Teachers Association:

The TCCTA description begins: "A new approach to Texas journalism is getting cranked up, and you may want to have a look. It's the Texas Tribune, calling itself a "non-profit, nonpartisan public media organization," with promises to "promote civic engagement and discourse on public policy, politics, government, and other matters of statewide concern."

So far it looks like the effort will devote considerable energy to legislative and education issues."

Or go to the new Texas Tribune, headed by the former head of Texas Monthly, Evan Smith

http://www.texastribune.org/

Check its parts

Front Page

Topics

Library

Polling

Moonlight Desperado - Hamilton

2009-11-12T18:31:00.001-06:00

The Seduced by History blog carries notes about Moonlight Desperado, by Jeanmarie Hamilton

Weaving History with Shapeshifters

The author's commentary begins: "Even shape shifter stories can revolve around historical facts.
In my werewolf western historical, Moonlight Desperado, soon to be published by Siren-Bookstrand Publishing, the hero's original goal is inspired by Texas history.
The inspiration for the story came from a family story that happened after the Civil War ended. Raiders passing through Texas demanded bedding to sleep on outside my great great grandmother's home. Of course the characters have been changed in my story, Moonlight Desperado."

Read more about this erotic paranormal if you dare:

http://seducedbyhistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/weaving-history-with-shapeshifters.html

Interview at Siren Publishing

http://www.sirenpublishing.com/jeanmariehamilton/

Roswell, Texas - Smith

2009-11-12T17:55:00.001-06:00

If you know what Roswell connotes, you'll enjoy this science ficiton. A review by NM Boliek of Roswell, Texas by L.Neil Smith, Rex F May, Scott Bieser and Jen Zachis at

http://www.scificool.com/roswelltexas-saddle-up-boys/

The reviewer enjoyed the book but complains that there's too much history, not enough fiction, he thinks that the up-coming Cowboys & Aliens will solve that concern.

Lone Star / No Country

2009-11-12T17:39:00.001-06:00

Steven Thomas compares Lone Star and No Country for Old Men

http://engl243.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/lone-star-no-country-for-old-men/

Lit - Karr

2009-11-12T17:24:00.001-06:00

Mary Karr's third memoir, Lit: A Memoir is reviewed in New York Books at

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/61831/

and the Christian Science Monitor at

http://features.csmonitor.com/books/2009/11/10/mary-karr-the-buzz-about-lit-a-memoir/

and National Public Radio

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120020266

and New York Time Out

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/books/79903/mary-karr-lit-book-review

and the Los Angeles Tlimes at

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-mary-karr8-2009nov08,0,6172029.story

and her Poems at New York Times

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/mary_karr/index.html

She starts writing, wiiving, mothering, and drinking. The she sobers up, more than her mother, finds God, and settles down. You recall her first work was Liars Club about her childhood in East Texas.

Mike Cox - Interview

2009-11-12T10:44:00.001-06:00

Ed Blackburn at the Texana Review interviews Mike Cox on his new (second installment) Texas Ranger book, Time of the Rangers.

http://texanareview.typepad.com/posts/2009/11/time-of-the-rangers-by-mike-cox---an-interview.html

H.G. Bissinger Inteview

2009-11-09T11:30:00.001-06:00

Friday Night Lights author H.G. Bissinger is interviewed, partially about last year's banning of FNL in Beaumont schools, in the annual report of the Texas ACLU review of Texas schools' recently banned books. McCarthy's The Road and Sandra Cisneros' Woman Hollering Creek are on the lists.

Page 8 reports "Where were the Most Challenges?

Stephenville, Houston and Irving school districts reported the most challenges for the 2008-2009 school year. Stephenville ISD led the charge this year with 11

challenges, all of which resulted in bans. Houston ISD and Irving ISD tied for the second most this year with six challenges each. This marks quite the improvement

for HISD, as the district reported 20 challenges last year. Unfortunately, only one of HISD's six challenges resulted in the book being retained without restriction.

While Irving ISD experienced just as many challenges, five of the six books challenged were retained without restriction: a sole book was restricted to the reference library. Tying for third was Seguin ISD and Klein ISD, each with four challenges."

National Banned Books Week September 26 – October 3, 2009

Boerne - Morgenthaler

2009-10-30T08:06:00.001-05:00

Boerne: Settlement on the Cibolo. By Jefferson Morgenthaler. Boerne: Mockingbird Books, 2005. paperback, photos, maps, bibliography, photo credit list, index, 125 pages. ISBN 1-932-80108-1 $14.95 http://www.mockingbirdbooks.com

Jefferson Morgenthaler , a former attorney and now independent historian (degrees from UT- Austin) and publisher, and his family moved to a farm on the outskirts of this Central Texas community, began researching his homestead and its surroundings. Boerne is his story of the town, and the first in his Mockingbird Books publications that reveal the historical stories of Central Texas and elsewhere.

One of the earliest matter of record for the area is the squabble, over land on Cibolo Creek about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, between Ludovic Colquhoun, a Czech descendant, and Sam Maverick in 1842 based on an 1837 certificate. Settlement eventually followed. Boerne, plotted in July 1852 via John James ownership, grew slowly and wasn't surrounded by your typical collection of settlers. They were intellectual socialists, German freethinkers, independent religionists, radical political theorists, idealistic Unionists, and other such unique individualists tired of the chronic warfare of central Europe at the time. Morgenthaler focuses on the early times up to the early twentieth century, but he occasionally adds comments on the modern times to update a line of discussion, even to the 1980's.

Morgenthaler's research results in a book that is detailed in its following farmers along their property lines, artisans along the trails, the milkman Fabra on his delivery route, families to an occasional religious event, cattle along the streams, and merchants to and from San Antonio, but it is casual in the way a fellow would talk with neighbors.

After settlement the community found its first big challenge during the Civil War that was roundly opposed by the non-slave-holding freethinkers. The tight-knit nature of the folks is revealed as Morgenthaler says, "The Boerne Gesangverein became more than a singing club; it became a gene pool." And today, although anybody and swim in the public pool, the life-guard can likely to have German ancestors.

Gregg Cantrell - Interview

2009-10-29T17:53:00.001-05:00

Gregg Cantrell, author of a new biography of Stephen F. Austin (first substantive volume since Barker's tome in the 1920's) is interviewed at

http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/adp/central/books/interview/cantrell.html

It begins: "

ADP: This is the first major work covering the life of Stephen F. Austin since Eugene C. Barker published The Austin Papers and The Life of Stephen F. Austin in 1928. What inspired you to write a new biography of Austin?

Cantrell: Back in the early 1990s, I served on a committee at Sam Houston State University that was charged with planning the big celebration of Sam Houston's 200th birthday. While serving on that committee, we learned that there were no fewer than four new biographies of Houston being written. As a teacher of Texas history, I knew that Houston and Austin were both born the same year--1793--and I wondered what was being done on Austin. The answer, as it turned out, was nothing! I was hooked."

Read more about it.
Or see his TCU homepage at http://personal.tcu.edu/~gcantrell/

Notes from Texas - Jameson

2009-10-29T16:42:00.001-05:00

Notes From Texas: On Writing in the Lone Star State. Edited by W.C. Jameson. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 2008. Designed and with usual fine woodcuts of Barbara M. Whitehead. Dark maroon cloth on boards under an illustrated yellow jacket, with sun yellow endpapers, portrait photographs, indexed, 244 pages. $27.95, and a genuine bargain at that. ISBN 9780875653587

Okay. Here's what you wanted. You sit down and have a personal one-on-one with 14 successful, living, contemporary authors (and the editor as well) about their lives, childhoods, inspirations, literary influences (both native and ultrariverine), disappointments, and goals.

W.C. Jamison, a native West Texan has done it for you and I'm right glad for it.

First, let's list the authors in alphabetical order, like the chapters:

Judy Alter, Robert Flynn, Don Graham, Rolando Hinojosa, Paulette Jiles, Elmer Kelton (now passed), Larry L. King, James Ward Lee, James Reasoner, Clay Reynolds, Joyce Gibson Roach, Red Steagall, Carlton Stowers, and Frances Vick.

Whether they read Tarzan, the Texas old rocks, Shakespeare, or Vanity Fair; fought wars, avoided housework, drudged through writing classes, collected rejection slips, or scratched farmland; plied their trade in periodicals, books, theatrical joints or classrooms, Texas became home and a place of literary reference.

Judy Alter used the Amon Carter Museum substantially to write her dissertation on the Western myth. Robert Flynn, a Baptist from Chillicothe, got his writing fingers crushed in an auto door as a child. Don Graham now teaches Dobie's old course. Rolando Hinojosa-Smith has 14 novels within his "Klail City Death Trip" series, and he writes because his family read, and read aloud to each other. Paulette Jiles find that writing is not a spectator sport. Elmer Kelton, bless his typewriter, knew what it was like when it didn't rain. Not a shy child, Larry King declared he'd become a "rich Famous Arthur." James Lee, with Matthew Arnold, wanders "between two worlds, one dead, / The other powerless to be born." Clay Reynolds pursues the ironic along with Shelley. Joyce Royce recounts the West Texas wisdom, "If rain occasionally comes, will drought be far behind?" Red Steagall listened to the "Lone Ranger" on the radio. Carlton Stowers continues his hunt for untold stories. Fran Vick is frank, "Texas has defined my whole life ….", but Fran also can see beyond the river.

If a youngster wished to teach a sorta course in modern Texas letters, he could cut this volume up into a thousand little pieces, paste them on 5x8 index cards, arrange them chronologically, and start talking as inspired these authors' words.

Allen Wier Interveiws

2009-10-29T15:22:00.001-05:00

Find an interview at Allen Wier's homepage and read his Tejano novel.

http://www.allenwier.com/growupso.php

Tejano, a novel - Allen Wier

2009-10-29T15:13:00.001-05:00

Tejano. A Novel by Allen Wier. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, dist by TAMU Consortium, 2006. Dark maroon cloth on boards, tan endpapers with flecks of blue, with Acknowledgements and an Epilogue. 736 pages. ISBN 087075069. http://www.tamu.edu/press & http://www.allenwier.com/

Allen Wier, a San Antonio native, wrote three previous novels Blanco, Departing as Air, and A Place for Outlaws and other writings in his professional career as a creative writing professor now at the U of Tennessee. He's gathered awards from state, regional, and national sources. He's good. TIL to Paisano to Guggenheim etc. Richard Bausch calls it Tolstoyan in scope. Thomas McGonigle (LA Times) uses Don Quixote as a comparison. For my money Michener's epic Texas pales compared to Wier's Tejano.

So his novel Tejano is been quite admired for this authenticity and its successfully sustained story line over its 736 pages. A reader can gain some measure of the plot by scanning the table of contents that is also annotated with significant events from each of the 43 chapters. The story is written as if by a series of witnesses and the dramatis personae list of "Witnesses" precedes the prologue. The witnesses append to the life and journey of Gideon Jones, a picaresque figure, and the stories those met by Jones, with considerable other focus from Knobby Cotton, now a freedman.

Jones is an itinerate mortician from which circumstances his stories often arise, and his "journal" stands as the basis of his tales. Ultimately, the stories from Texas and elsewhere coalesce into a collage of the face of Texas – a cavalcade of Chaucerian or Boccaccioan characters en route to the land beyond the Red River. The settings of the tales stretch from ante-bellum to the push back against the Comanche territory in the latter 1800's. Their stories develop in a camp during the Comanche period.

There are vivid details, human portraits, and intriguing narratives. For local application, if you enjoyed McMurtry's Lonesome Dove or the Cormac McCarthy novel trilogy, Tejano is a novel for you. And certainly it's required for any substantial Texas collection.

Texas Dance Halls - Folkins

2009-10-29T10:14:00.001-05:00

Texas Dance Halls: A Two-Step Circuit. By Gail Folkins, Photographs by J. Marcus Weekley, and Preface by Andy Wilkinson. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007. 212 pages. 132 duotone photos, ISBNs 978-0-89672-603-1, $34.95 tan cloth, pictorial endpapers, sources, index, Series: Voice in the American West.

Yee Ha!!! Put on your jeans, boots, hats, and fancy, flairing skirts. The folks at Texas Tech Press have found the early version of Dancing with the Lone Stars.

Here, Gail Folkins, a journalist and creative writing teacher provides the patter and Marcus Weekley chimes in with the photos.

Andy Wilkinson's preface describes the volume as "A curious mixture of community center and honky-tonk ..." Boot scootinig folks will find that this cultural institution has its roots in Czech and German immigrants. The 18 chapters two-step you mostly across the center of the state in over a dozen dance halls, starting with the Twin Sisters Hall and ending at the Lukenbach Dance Hall. For the city slickers, the editors have wisely included the Broken-Spoke-on-the-Colorado. I'll not mention any other big names for fear of charges of favoritism, but you can see Little Joe y La Familia over at Indian Springs Park right in the middle of the book.

They've got Weekley's pictures of screen doors, singers, fiddlers, tamborine artists, guitarists, drummers, dancers, bartenders, ticket stalls, stools, wide wooden floors, outdoor barbeques, folding chairs at tables, old men, beautiful women, smiles, songs, a Juneteenth celebration, mechanical bulls, real to life horses, kids, pool tables, and, it seems to me, couples standing kinda close together and whispering secrets to each other. And Folkins' stories go with it all.

I'm already a bit winded just flipping through the pages and thinking about it all. Where's a fellow get a Shiner?

As Willie would say, let's dance little longer. And at home, turn the pages of Tech's new book.