Texas Books

I have read this novel many years ago, and still the story continues to haunt me. It comes in vivid images : A quiet little town in Texas. A plane crash. Survivors pouring out of the wreck, disoriented, shocked, changed for the rest of their lives. This town, it will never be the same again. The people, they will come together. Milan Kundera once said that the success of a so-called 'Best-Sellers' is that it urges you to find a key, a solution. It is exciting, but once you've found it, the magic is over. You can throw away the book, the mystery is unveiled, the excitement is gone. Read this book, be different. It belongs to another category.

Returning to her themes of separatist movements and cultural divisions, A. G. Mojtabai begins her sixth novel with the crash of a passenger jet. The gigantic plane plummets to earth by the small town of Bounds, Texas, a place where the inhabitants had never anticipated such a climatic disaster.

One of the first to observe the crash is a Roman Catholic priest, Father Mark, who sees the plane falling as he drives home. He had been thinking of various parish problems and reconsidering his vocation. Now, he is called to minister to the accident victims.

Other witnesses include the town's grumpy postmistress in whose field lies the twisted debris, and a newspaper reporter from Fort Worth who was headed for a yard sale but ran into the country's top story.

"Called Out" is aptly named for it is a story of how individuals are summoned forth from lives of isolation to interact with their fellow men. There are no pat answers here. What does such a disaster mean? The author leaves us to wonder.

This is a spare, sober tale yet a rich one causing readers to ponder their places among their fellow human beings.

- Gail Cooke

This is a great book! If you are from Texas you have to read this book it was great.

The Captured: A True Story Of Abduction By Indians On The Texas Frontier is an unabridged examination of what it was like to be kidnapped and raised by Indians, written with a historian's exactitude rather than a novelist's fancy panache. When author Scott Zesch stumbled across the grave of his great-great-great-uncle Adolph Korn, Zesch wondered about Korn's life story. Abducted by Comanche Indians at ten, Korn was raised as a Comanche and became one of the tribe's fiercest warriors. Returned to his family by force at age thirteen, Korn never adjusted to white society life and spent his final years living in a cave. How could an ordinary boy have become Indianized so completely? Zesch searched for the answer throughout the West, in archives, in dialogues with Comanche elders, and in the history recorded of eight other child captives from the region, each with similar experiences. The Captured is a most welcome addition to Native American studies for its serious nonfiction treatment of true stories that have been all too frequently fictionalized for public entertainment.

A vey complete account of the life and work of this craftsman whose work stands today scattered over the southwest. Excellent research and good photography--well done!

Like author Patsy Light, I was intrigued when I moved to San Antonio, Texas by the strange concrete false-wood constructions that dot the city: a jungle hut bus stop on Broadway, an arbor footbridge in Brackenridge Park, a 125-foot long rail fence at the Alamo Cement Company's headquarters. Who, I thought, would do something like this? Architectual historian Light has now provided the answer in this well-researched book illustrated with beautiful color pgotographs. They are the work of Dionicio Rodriguez, a master craftsman trained in Mexico who came to San Antonio in 1924 and went on to create visionary environments all over the United States until his death in 1955. Rodriguez left no papers or plans, and Light spent 10 years tracking down men and women who worked with him to gather material for this book. The person who emerges from her interviews is a dapper and secretive man who worked in overalls pulled on over a three-piece suit and mixed his colors in the trunk of his car so that his helpers could not learn his secrets. He was prosperous enough to buy a new car every year during the Depression, and he and his crew travelled from San Antonio all over the country to create such wonders as a grotto lined with conch shells in Port Arthur, Texas, a 19th-century mill with a 10,000-pound concrete waterwheel in North Little Rock, Arkanas, and a cemetery ornamented with Biblical landmarks in Memphis, Tennessee.

Rodriguez's skill with concrete and color enabled him to create unique environments in the 19th-century rustic tradition that rank with Sam Rodia's Watts Towers and Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain. This wonderful book will appeal to anyone interested in rustic architecture, folk art, visionary environments, or just plain whackiness.

Having seen the retrospective at the McNay art institute in San Antonio, The book does an incredible job of recreating the actual works. The paintings are very inspiring and transport you to a more peacful time and place

Extremely well-written retrospective of the artist's work. Embrey's work (especially his work with window images) is nicley captured through the full-color plates. The writer of this book took extreme care in developing a clear picture of the artist and his artistic vision.

Luisa Lang Owen's recounting of her childhood and the losses she and others experienced before, during and after the war, including three years in a concentration camp is, at once, both hauntingly beautiful and horrific. Her captors, in seeking to exterminate individuals and their culture ironically distilled, in this young woman, the essence of being. Her lush and loving attention to detail, her artistic perceptions were heightened and strengthened in those years, and what we sometimes refer to as the "strength of the human spirit" is clearly defined in the telling of this woman's coming of age under life-threatening conditions. Both fascinated and saddened by the telling, I felt as if I'd entered the spirit of someone who has always lived and continues to live fully and attentively in the world.

This book should be read by all Danube Swabians and their offsprings as well as all freedom-loving, truth seeking and fair minded people of this world.

The reviewer is right, but the book does come with a study guide for the entire book, not just the solutions.

This solutions manual is my bestest friend! Don't know what I'll do without it. Anyways, to the meat of it all, the solutions manual is actually on the website the book has (pdf format), so you don't really have to buy it, but if you really want a hardcopy then go ahead. I'd rather save $40 bucks. Hope this saves you guys some $$ (=

This book is a must read for anyone working with Chicano/Chicana students in schools. Prof. Pizarro's insights come from real experience "in the field," and his analysis is one that you'll want to consider.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about Chicana/o youth in education.

If you are unfamiliar with the glass arts of Chihuly, this colorful gem will fill you with awe and wonder. Chihuly's creative daring, skills and kinetic style with team artisans is world renowned and celebrated. HIs works are jewel-like with an explosion of color and this book puts it all before you in a very intimate size.

If you are unfamiliar with the glass arts of Chihuly, this colorful gem will fill you with awe and wonder. Chihuly's creative daring, skills and kinetic style with team artisans is world renowned and celebrated. His works are an explosion of shapes and color, and this book puts it all before you in a very intimate size.

good book about Chimney swifts, their habitat loss and constructing "Chimneys" for them to raise young in. The book describes the construction of these small towers using modern methods and materials. I think this book will be the definitive Chimney Swift work of our time. Buy it and build a tower. You and these gregarious little flying insect eaters will be better for it. Watching Chimney swifts reminds me greatly of watching a Quiditch match as described in the Harry Potter books.

Kyle and Georgean have put together "the book" on how to build a chimney swift tower. What I especially love about this book is that they provide a numb er of different designs - three different types of wooden towers as well as different types of masonry/cement block towers - so you have options. There are pictures - photographs and drawings throughout to help with the building and the materials/instructions are very clear. I haven't convinced my husband to build one (yet)and we already have swifts in our chimney but I am working with a local park and some eagles scouts to put one up. Another thing I really like about this book is that it goes beyond just putting up a swift tower. It also gives guidance on monitoring the tower (to include electronic monitoring like putting a camera inside) and report forms. It also has great pictures so that at a park, for example, you can create an educational evironment as well. Another neat thing is to also host a "swift night out" in the fall, where people gather to watch the swifts (babies all fledged and practicing their flight maneuvers)as they fly around the tower, dive in and more. Its so amazing to see them flying at incredible speeds and then dive into the chimney or tower. What a sight. I've also ready that when the young are learning to fly, if one is having trouble, the adults will flying in circles below them, creating an updraft to help lift them higher. They are such amazing birds, deserving of our attention and preservation. This book really helps us not only provide a nesting site but also opportunities for our own education.....as the saying goes....we conserve what we love, we love what we understand, we understand what we are taught.

This is the story of Susan Wilkins and Sterling Churchill, two people from very different backgrounds. Susan is a librarian who decides to have a baby and goes to a sperm bank to become artificially inseminated. Sterling is a millionaire who happened to have a vial in the sperm bank when he was doing fertiltiy testing with his ex-wife. Through a mix-up, his sperm is used and Susan becomes pregnant. Sterling insists on marrying her as he wants to provide for his child, but Susan is resistant. They do get married and Susan falls in love with Sterling, but he has a problem declaring his feelings because of his past history with his ex-wife.

A welcome addition to the series.

Cross writes about people who immediatedly engage your heart. They're warm, funny, strong and human, and I was rooting for them from the first. She didn't let me down. Give yourself a real treat! A wonderful follow-up to the first Texas Cattleman's Club book.