Texas Books

I prefer reading history books to novels and my favorite history books are often written in America. Michael Johns' "City of Mexico" is a fine example why American history often makes for such compelling reading. The book is a mix of excellent research, a engaging vision on the timeframe, and prose that offers a kaleidoscopical view on the city. Johns really achieves bringing back to life the Mexico City of 100 years ago, it's as if by reading this book, we walk through the streets of late 19th century Mexico city.

One of the superior qualities of the book, is that Johns has been able to present Mexico City in the Age of Diaz as a mirror of Mexico's history since the conquest by Cortes. The legacy of Mexico's repressive colonial and traumatic post-colonial history shines through every page of this book, and is illustrated by many fascinating, painful and sometimes hilarious anecdotes.

This book reminds me of another excellent book I read a couple of years ago, Jeffrey Pilcher's "Que vivan los tamales. Food and the making of Mexican identity", which is also a must-read.

I define a great book as one that changes and clarifies the way that I view the world. This one changed the way I viewed part of the world, and that's good enough for me to highly recommend it. I scarcely knew the history of the country on our southern border, and Diaz was simply a name with no context. This book is an eloquent geographical study of Mexico City during the turn of the 19th-20th century. Johns unravels cause and effect, patterns and trends, politics and society in what would seem to a visitor to be mere chaos. This academic book not only lays out the context and causes of the Revolucion, but provides some lessons in politics and power that play out even today. The only drawback is that the book brings us to the edge of the Mexican Revolution and then the book ends, like the first movie in a trilogy, teasing the reader for a sequel. But then I suppose the book would have lost its focus, so I am satisfied that is a self-contained and tight (and well-referenced) exploration of an intriguing place and time.

Amazingly, this is the first comprehensive work written on a key event in American labor history -- an event that was headline news in the mid 1940's, and that among many other things set the stage for the passage of Taft-Hartley and propelled Ronald Reagan into politics. While countless historians have left no stone unturned in examining the Hollywood Blacklist, the story of the Hollywood studio strikes has long been relegated to footnotes and chapters in more general works. With this work Gerald Horne has shined a relentless light of painstaking scholarship on what may well be the most neglected event in American labor history. The footnotes alone are worth the price of the book and will no doubt entice many readers to follow these myriad paths deeper into the hidden corners of Hollywood history.

This book belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in Hollywood history, labor history, the Hollywood Blacklist, American radical history, and the history of organized crime in America. It should especially be read by anyone who earns their living as a worker in the film and television industry or is a member of IATSE and wishes to know the true story of their union's dark history.

Reviewer Everitt's remarks capture the book's essential value. Several points however merit emphasis. First, Horne's book brings out the symbiotic relation between the studios' desire for non-independent company unions, on one hand, and organized crime's desire for corrupt unions, on the other. By taking in one another's washing during the tumultuous events of '45 - '47, these two representatives of private capital maintained an alliance that defeated efforts by the Conference of Studio Unions to emerge as an independent union of movie-making employees. Horne the historian is detailed about this sinister and under-reported alliance. Second, by using abundant primary sources, the author debunks the nurtured image of CSU as a communist-led movement, a scare tactic still in its infancy following the anti-fascist WWII and, as the book shows, a tactic used to increasing effect by the corporate-owned press of the day. Belated communist support for CSU strikers was willfully twisted by these flacks into communist domination. Third, the inability of the CSU to cross racial and gender lines of the day is emphasized. This had the unfortunate effect of reducing potential for attracting outside allies, especially among aggrieved African-Americans and women's groups, though it's hardly surprising that prejudices within the union would reflect those of the larger society from which it sprang. It's fascinating to follow this dark underside of the Hollywood dream factory, though I did find time shifts in the narrative confusing at times. Nonetheless, Horne has focused his word-camera on a worthy and neglected real life drama.

I grew up going to Galveston and have always loved this strange city. This book does a wonderful job of capturing the architecture that made Galveston unique. Clayton is definitly the definitave Galveston architect, he shaped the style of the city. Galveston was so lucky to have had him as their preeminant architect. I loved the historic pictures in the book and the text was facinating, I learned a great deal about a subject I thought I knew much about. I urge anyone who visits Houston to make it their mission to go take in Galveston and take this wonderful book with you.

Few people have shaped the face of Galveston and Houston as much as architect Nicholas Clayon. This book compiles the architect's works in Galveston during the boom of the Gilded Isle. This invaluable resource is filled with photographs and renderings of Clayton's projects, both commercial and residential. While many of his buildings remain, many more have been lost and this book helps recreate Galveston during Clayton's time. It also includes information on other architcts who were Clayton's contemporaries. A must for anyone interested in Galveston, architecture and how one was shaped by the other through Clayton's vision.

Lynn Woolley is a skillfully perceptive writer and talk show host. So it was with confidence that I purchased "Clear Moral Objectives." The book does not disappoint. In fact, Woolley has taught me a great deal about the psychobabble of diversity, the manipulation of ethnicity for political advantage, and the abject fear liberals have of moral judgment.

America is entering a brave new world where the Internet and talk radio are replacing the often deceitful elite media. And why not? The public will always gravitate to where the talent is.

With books like this, we are sure to hear more from Mr. Woolley, perhaps as a syndicated radio host, author, or common sense professional and honest broker of the facts. Without clear moral objectives, how will we as a people know how to teach our children the difference between right and wrong? How will we know how to honor the awesome sacrifices of brave American soldiers past and present? How will we know how to carry the legacy of the Founding Fathers into the future? How will we know how to effectively defend our faith in God?

It all comes down to integrity and character. Lynn Woolley has it and tells us how in this awesome book. A must read!

Following the example set forth in the book, I will be plain and simple in my review of Clear Moral Objectives (CMO). CMO is a refreshing reminder that there are people out there that can think about political matters with common sense. Lynn Woolley takes the political lingo out and replaces it with everyday words that the average person can read. I think every conservative should read this book. CMO does not shy away from the sensitive topics that most people are attack for, rather CMO hits them dead on with LOGIC. This book will inspire you to stand up for what is right morally.

Written by Shakespeare and early English literature teacher Philip White, The Clearing is an anthology of brief, free-verse poems gravitating upon the somber topics of the deaths of White's parents and first wife. Ranging in emotion from detached solemnity to grief-stricken, The Clearing probes the inescapable twining of love and the sadness of loss, with a haunting yet ultimately captivating melodic tone. "Why Orpheus Looked Back": Even her voice is soundless now. She moves / like the damselflies in honeysuckle leaves / along the stream, their torsos iridescing, / wings so black they seem fluttering rents / in the tangible scene: so much silence / fringing every word, so much dark around / each wavering gleam. But what else could I / have asked of absence? I had seen its world, / the blank, evacuated gaze that wants nothing / yet embraces all we do. It was the world / I saw before me, coming back. I sang then / not for it but her, fainter though she'd grown / than air. I looked back because I knew / whichever way I looked it would be there."

Philip White is an amazing poet, and "The Clearing" is masterpiece of a book. Without hesitation, I would say "The Clearing" is one of the best books of modern poetry I have ever read and reading it was one of the most emotionally involving experiences of my life. Anyone who loves words and seeks out life would benefit enormously from reading this.

"The Clearing" tells the anti-linear and true story of the suicide of White's first wife, the deaths of his parents, the death of his wife's mother, the crushing pain of losing a loved one, and the miracle of finding love again. "The Clearing" delves into the nature of death and grief as does nothing else I have ever read. Moments of it are so saturated with suffering--though never in a sappy or a maudlin or a whiny manner--that the book can almost be too painful to read, too much for a person to bear.

One such moment takes place at the funeral of his wife, in the poem "East Lawn," where he writes,

"And as the earth fell, my heart finally failed
and I cast my eye around wildly, wanting to take
each thing in, not knowing what part would be lost
that I might struggle into this life again."

"The Clearing" contains moments of grief and introspection that no human being should ever be forced to live through themselves but that many of us probably will, and in writing about them, White displays a degree of candor and honesty that most people are scarcely capable of--and does so with such astounding articulateness and with such an eye for finding beauty in even the saddest of moments that I was often left tearful and unable to speak.

This book is beautiful, in the way that great music and wild nature are beautiful, in the way that a tidal wave hanging over your city might be beautiful. This book is fearsome and sad, and yet majestically intimate, real and silencing in its near-perfection. This book is a testimony to the power of words. It shows that words, in the hands of the right person, can say nearly anything. If you are a writer, "The Clearing" will heighten your awareness of your craft and of what your medium can do. If you are alive, "The Clearing" will open your eyes to the world
and strip life's calluses from your heart.

In a way, and perhaps this book's author would resent my saying this, "The Clearing" gives meaning to all of the horribleness that White had to go through, by taking all of that, all of that pain, all of that grief, all of the worst of life's experiences, and turning it into this, into something timeless and exquisite, into a work of high literary art.

"The Clearing" is a book of poetry, but it could almost be considered a memoir. Strong and vivid images spill from every page. Its narrator, White, rises as a real and genuine person who has felt and experienced this book's every line. We believe him. We grow to trust him entirely, and we come to know him. His story, the story of a life, is in this--is everywhere in these poems. His is that rare collection of poetry that could probably even be adapted into a film, by a visionary enough filmmaker, because there's just so much to it--there is a story, there is a character arc, and there is a world of feeling behind it all.

And I do mean a world of feeling. Not just grief. Not just sorrow. Not just coping. In the end, this book is essentially a book of hope, containing more of the stuff of hope than it does anything else. The hope it offers is not the intangible stuff of a longed-for afterlife or of loved ones smiling down from an unseen spiritual realm. The hope it offers is, however, of a very real sort, of a kind you can count on--a bittersweet hope and an even more bittersweet conviction that pain will fade, although memories will too. It offers a hope and a faint knowledge that something true and worthwhile will always survive, and it evinces a startled awareness that new life and new love can grow from nearly anything--that it can grow and it can thrive.

"Tulips in the jar and the perfect rooms.
The sea in the window a haze
of darkness rustling over sandhills.
Unsteady wind, raincloud, saltrose, tarnish.
Afternoon in bed thinking about it.
The shifting possibilities.
Love like bread. Distance. The sea pounding
or silent. The sun crossing a thousand times."

This is the definitive history of the Alamogordo/Sacramento Mountain Railway. The steepest standard gauge railroad in the world. I am the chaiman of the foundation dedicated to preserving the memory of the famous historic railroad. The A/SMR was the first railroad to use switchbacks to gain altitude, the first excursion tourist railroad (1898-1947), the steepest, 4300' to 9600' in 30 miles of track.
thanks to AMAZON for helping us raise funds to continue our work.

Richard Haskell

This is an excellent source of information about a long lost piece of American History. I have personally visited many of the sights contained in the book during time stationed at nearby Holoman AFB. in the middle 1980's. The book has been a great resource in modeling the branch line with my son in HO scale. Much of the old road bed still remains in the forest near Cloudcroft, and can very easily be followed during hiking trips. There is even some remnants of old tressels deep in the woods today.

"Cloudcroft" was a great read. Enough suspense and drama to keep you entertained from cover to cover and a writing style that puts you in the character's shoes. If you've been to the area you will recognize the settings, if you've never been there the book will take you there.

Hanly's way of writing and developing characters is the best I read in a long time. When I finished the book I went back and read it the next week, still enthralled in the imagery and plain speak that makes this book stand out.
This is one of the best books out this year.

I believe the late Jack Olsen to be among the greatest true crime writers ever and that this book confirms that belief. COLD KILL is the story of David West and Cindy Ray and their dysfunctional and ultimately deadly relationship.
David, a lonely, insecure, needy, and basically inadequate young man, predictably is unsuccessful in relationships. His insecurity manifests itself in a passion for guns and an unconvincing macho façade. He is only comfortable with women to whom he considers himself intellectually superior and in whom he sees flaws that he can teach them, Pygmalion style, to correct. David also drinks heavily and smokes a lot of weed.

Enter Cindy Ray, a lazy overweight slob who is severely mentally ill. She will not or cannot - likely a combination of both - work. She lives like a pig refusing to do even the most minimal cleaning. She has never learned to drive. She will not even bathe, preferring - unsuccessfully - to attempt to mask her odor with perfume. She too drinks heavily and smokes a lot of weed. So of course David falls in love with her and begins to mentor Cindy with results that the self-deluding David finds encouraging. Meanwhile Cindy does not really even seem to like David, but she does have one major talent. She is a crafty and relentless manipulator, although her insanity is so obvious that it would only be successful with a naïve fool like David.

Cindy is an unbelievably and hatefully selfish person who for reasons that are unclear - probably an inheritance as well as just malicious evil - decides she wants her parents dead and plants a seed which germinates in David's mind. Her main means of persuasion is to convince David that her father forced her into an intimate relationship beginning at age 9 and that one of her children - or sometimes both when she forgets her story - are her father's. Her manipulative piece-de-resistance is moaning "Daddy, Daddy" while they are making love. She finally gets David to convince himself that justice for Cindy demands that the Campbells (Cindy's parents) die. The story continues from there.

Jack Olsen states that the dialog in COLD KILL, a book relying heavily on dialog, is not fabricated and is the result of many hours of interviews. I believe him. Other than the "voice" he gives to the Campbells' Hispanic maid, which to me felt awkward and was ultimately unsuccessful, the dialog contains no false notes. It is basically perfect. There is absolutely no filler, no repetition, no copying of transcripts.

Olsen's narrative barrels though the book like a runaway freight train, creating an excitement and a tension that does not let up. I predict fans of the genre will love COLD KILL and that those who are not already familiar with Olsen will, after reading this book, agree with my assessment of his talent.

(As a side note, I would like to address a statement made in the only other review, by "Avid Reader", of COLD KILL. "Avid" states that Cindy Ray was a victim of incest.
There is really nothing in this book stating or even hinting that this was anything but a lie told by Cindy to convince David to do her bidding.)

It is tragic that this book by Jack Olsen never received the acclaim that others of his have. Perhaps it is due to the lack of a trial but the stories are riveting. Yes, I said stories (not story) because COLD KILL is as much about the aftermath as it was the crime itself.

David West had an affinity for guns, women and fun. Cindy Ray was attracted to money, David and the world of glamour. She was the victim of incest, in effect, giving birth to her father's son and grandson. David and Cindy wanted money and the fastest way was through inheritance. The only problem was that her parents were still alive. One night they were murdered execution style.

Long story short: Cindy rises in the modeling world and drops David. Cindy started grabbing for all the money as things settled down with the police unsure how to procede. Along comes Kim, a shapely PI who went after David (using her feminine wiles) for a confession. The last third of the book is compelling reading although I'm not sure how many of the thoughts of the participants are surmised or reported. Kim begins to feel something for the guy (oh Lord) despite thinking he murdered two people in cold blood...COLD KILL.

At last, one night he confesses everything and surprise, Cindy was also involved. David maintains that it was a moral act, an execution, not murder. At the end, David avoided execution by confessing and implicating his former lover. He and Cindy were sentenced to life imprisonment proving, once again, that crime does not pay.

The first book in a series for young readers [ages 8-13] featuring eleven-year-old Fish Rawlings and his cousin Gid, who try to prevent a battle between the Comanches and the Anglo wagon train in 1867. An outstanding debut to new territory for Dearen, and as usual, he does a masterful job.

In the character of Fish Rawlings, Dearen seems to have combined the youthful exuberance of Samuel Clemens' Huckleberry Finn with the adventurous independence of Rowdy Yates (a young Clint Eastwood) from the old popular television series "Rawhide." . . . For today's young readers who did not grow up with those television western series that starred young men like "Wagon Train's" Barnaby West, "Rawhide's" Rowdy Yates, and "The High Chapparal's" Blue Cannon, the Lone Star Heroes Series helps fill the gap. -- REVIEW OF TEXAS BOOKS, SUMMER 2002.

Gerald Betty's work "Before the Reservation," is a testament to his skills as a comanche warrior, even today. Although he rides a Land Rover instead of a Palomino, I'm sure he could still survive on the open range. I laughed, I cried. Betty is a genius.

A highly recommended contribution to Native American Studies, Comanche Society: Before the Reservation by Gerald Betty (History Department, Texas A&M, Corpus Christi) is a meticulous and scholarly study of Comanche society from the beginning of New World Colonization by European powers through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Focusing especially on how the bonds of kinship affected the interplay within Comanche clans, and how the Comanches came to adopt horses, pastoralism, and other Iberian traits into their own culture, Comanche Society is a fascinating and analytical history of the evolution of this Native American nation.