Texas Books

Great book, I read it for a Chicano Studies class but I enjoyed every moment of it. A good memoir for anyone interested in the daily life experiences of Chicanas in the U.S.

Beautifully told story of a young Mexican-American girl growing up in El Paso in the 1940s. Ms. Lopez-Stafford shares her recollections of her barrio and all it's colorful characters.

The author titles her story "A Place in El Paso." Nevertheless, any of the following titles, "A Place in My Heart," "A Place in the Sun," "A Place in my Life," would had been appropriate as well. To the careful reader the story will bloom like a flower in his or her heart and soul.

Even though the characters, the places, and the events are necessary to complete the gestalt of the story, the characters, and the events are not restricted to any particular place or to anyone in particular. It can happen anywhere to anyone.

The careful reader will examine the story "A Place in El Paso" by looking below the surface, below the gestalt of the story in order to reach the nuances of Gloria's coming of age and survival. Moreover, the grammatical structure of the story is, symbolically speaking, a ticket for the reader to shadow, follow, and observe her life, and in doing so experience her innocence and get involved in the vicissitudes in Gloria's existence. The reader will witness and feel not only the tragic sad and heartbreaking moments in her existence, but the events that made her strong to endure the various disappointments and disillusionments while trying to find the right place in her life.

I highly recommend this book whether you are Anglo, Black, Hispanic, and so forth; this story can very well be your story as well.

Wesley's brief treatise on the important yet overlooked Christian doctrine of perfection is a "must read" for all Christians interested in growing in Christ. The fact that this book is not mandatory reading in every seminary and Bible school is a travesty, making a mockery contemporary Christian education. This book is excellent for anyone serious about their spiritual journey.

John Wesley (1703-1791) firmly believed that God continued to work in the life of the believer subsequent to justification. In A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Wesley provides an account of the development of his understanding of the doctrine of Christian Perfection. This short work contains a lucid explanation of the doctrine with special attention not only to the Biblical promises and commands that are the basis of the doctrine but also the practical way that "perfect love" works in the life of the believer. While this work was certainly intended to instruct those who were seeking "perfect love," it also attempts to answer those who would deny the doctrine.

The essence of Christian Perfection, for Wesley, was clearly defined by Christ when an expert in the law asked him, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 23.36-40 NRSV)

Here one sees that, for Wesley, the main point of Christian Perfection is "perfect love." "Perfect love" thus defines our relationship to God and others.

This book is essential for those in the Wesleyan tradition and a worthwhile read for those from other Christian perspectives that wish to understand what Wesley thinks Christian Perfection is and is not.

Since Wesley wrote in a different era, his style requires some adjustment but once one gets past that there is a lot of edifying content in this book. The key point of this book is the issue of "perfection." He sees it as living what Jesus said was the greatest commandment and its accompanying commandment, i.e., to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Wesley's life demonstrates that he reached the goal. He traveled extensively, read widely, wrote inspiringly, and influenced many people to believe in Jesus as their Savior. Thank God for his legacy in words and deeds. He truly practiced and preached.

Having spent seven years living just outside Denver where I fell in love with prairie dogs, I was excited to discover this book. Truly, Russell Graves presents the good, bad, and adorable about these captivating little animals. The book provides plenty of facts, but is easily readable, and thankfully, not encumbered with vague scientist's jargon (though, apparently Mr. Graves has the credentials to do that). The photos are really good, and made me miss being able to watch the prairie dogs' hilarious antics up close. Good book for almost all ages, and good for the coffee table, too!

Vividly illustrated with more than 100 color photographs, The Prairie Dog: Sentinel Of The Plains also contains highly informative text about the nature of these gregarious rodents, and how they function in the prairie ecology, from aerating the soil with their burrows to controlling invasive types of vegetation with their grazing. The delightful illustrations show the prairie dog's natural exuberance and social life, but the text warns that human poisoning and extermination has vastly reduced the prairie dog's numbers to the point where the species could be at risk. The Prairie Dog is very highly recommended for anyone with an interest in prairie ecology.

The author talks about the life of the prairie dog, and how it interacts with humans in the modern West. The book is illustrated with gorgeous photographs. This book is an excellent purchase for a readable overview about these animals. If you want to know the full details on how prairie dogs get along with each other, check out the Hoogland book on social behavior of prairie dogs. It is great, but not as easy to read as this one!

I normally don't care for historic perspectives, but this book really came alive for me. I grew up in Hunt County and now live in Dallas County, so essentially he's describing my back yard. It's a great combination of science, naturalist perspective, and personal emotional input. It's definately a great book for anyone's library.

A great book to understand the natural history of the Blackland Prairie region of North Texas! It is a must-read for rural landowners, naturalists, educators, and even yard-watering suburbanites with foundation problems. It will help you know, love, and comprehend our shifting soils and other natural elements around us. I've recommended Matt White's book to many locals as a great read, including my book club in the Dallas area. It gave me a new and insightful view of the fascinating land around us. Anyone who says North Texas and the Dallas area is flat, ugly, and treeless should read this book... and see if you look at the land around you just a bit differently.

The Blackland Prairie, part of Texas' tallgrass prairies, once occupied 12 million acres of Texas, from the Red River near the Oklahoma border, south through Dallas, Waco, Temple, and Austin down to San Antonio. The tall prairie grasses and flowers created extremely rich soils, which led to most of the Blackland Prairie being plowed for agriculture.

Perhaps only one-tenth of one percent of Texas' beautiful Blackland Prairie remains in native hay meadows or places too rocky to plow, and many of these endangered places are slowly disappearing over time to the plow and development.

There are people who care about the prairie and search for remnants of the Blackland, hoping to find a special piece of what was and experience it as those who first came to Texas did and maybe even protecting some of the ever decreasing gems that remain. Matt White is one of these people, and he tells an incredible tale of both destruction and hope in Prairie Time - A Blackland Portrait.

Matt recounts the natural and human history of the Blackland Prairie, mixing information about settlers, families, Native Americans, animals, birds, and native plants in a very readable account. He tells heartwarming stories of people appreciating and protecting their prairies with land trusts and local governments, and heartbreaking stories of prairies being plowed and destroyed.

As author of Birds of Northeast Texas, Matt also relates the plight of the grassland birds that make the prairie their home and how the destruction of most of the Blackland Prairie has affected them. The tragedy of the Prairie Chicken and the declining populations of Le Conte's Sparrow, Bell's Vireo, and other grassland birds raise the alarm of habitat loss and the affect of the prairie's destruction upon wildlife.

Matt also lets us experience the excitement of finding out about previously unknown hay meadows and, along with other prairie friends (many of whose names which you may recognize and know), meeting the owners and seeing the prairie remnant for the first time. He also describes many of the protected prairies, telling us about the special native plants, animals, and birds that live there.

Matt ends with a statement of hope, inspiring us to protect as many pieces of the Blackland Prairie that remain and that more rare gems of native prairie may be waiting for us to discover them.

Prairie Time - A Blackland Portrait by Matt White is highly recommended, especially to anyone interested in prairies, native plants, birds, wildlife, natural and Texas history, environmentalism, and conservation.

To learn more about Texas prairies, visit the Native Prairies Association of Texas at http://texasprairie.org/ or contact: Native Prairies Association of Texas, 2002 - A Guadalupe St. PMB 290, Austin, TX 78705-5609 .

The author of this fine collection of short stories devotes the last 25 pages to an argument against the writing of fiction, claiming among other things that it leads both writer and reader away from actual human experience, a condition he regards as more or less immoral. And he's apparently remained true to his resolve. These stories, written in the 1960s and published 20 years later, seem to be the end of his fiction writing.

Too bad for us. These are terrific stories, set in Texas and written with grace, humor, and a solid gift for making enjoyable characters spring to life on the page. It's a men's world they inhabit, a world of frat boys, cowboys, good ole boys, a TV news director, and a Keats-loving minister. For me, he reaches near perfection in the last of them, "Three Days in a South Texas Spring," as he follows an ageing rancher on his yearly trip to town (San Antonio), where he remembers his life and ruminates on the eventual end of it.

Apparently still in print. An essential addition to any shelf of Texas literature.

A outstanding compilation of life as it was and still is for many. Having lived in the atmosphere of that setting, I found the reading chilling and personal, as if it hit home. The lasting impression of his thoughts and recollection continue to allow me to relive that memorable time in life when we all thought everything was so simple. Like so many, I often fail to put myself in an author's position, however, in this case, I am greatful for his talents and abilities to relate real life.......I was there......part of his family during these times. So, thanks for the memories Dave.

One of the few books stolen from me by a friend (make that ex-friend). I am greatly comforted to know this book is still available as it is one of the books I cherished most and was so anxious to replace. Hickey is, I believe, a journalist, and this is the only book, a collection of short stories, he has published. Can't remember the specific title of the favorite story, something like "On the Trail of the Longhorn Cattle", but it is a classic about an old cowman, alone at home, trapped in a bathtub, with his dead nurse on the tile floor, waiting for his son to return home from a business trip.

Private Voices, Public Lives is one of those rare books that manages to cross the boundary between "academic" and "real world" writing with consummate ease. Each of the contributing authors has focused squarely on Nancy Nelson's subtitle, "Women Speak[ing] on the Literary Life," by demonstrating with both clarity and grace how the act of writing is not only part of life, but often *is* life when the ineffable must find expression. Beverly Conner's essay, "Search and Rescue," is wihout question the most devastatingly candid writing I have ever read, showing how writing to express can become, in our darkest moments, writing to survive---and each of Conner's co-authors rises to the same mark of excellence in contributing fresh and insightful takes on not only 'the literary life' but the ways in which women both live and write the events that define them. As a teacher, I find Private Voices, Public Lives magnificently suited for any course in Women's Studies, Narrative Theory, or Literature---but as a reader I find it an equally magnificent bedside reader in times when the overwhelming number of male voices still represented in canonical and even journalistic texts requires a set of refreshing counterparts and counter-voices to represent the other half of human experience.

I love this book. Twenty-four wonderful autobiographical essays by women writers, teachers, and literary scholars in which each one shows how her work and her personal life intersect and enrich each other. The essays are fascinating and so are the complex lives that produced them. No one should miss "Search and Rescue" in which Beverly Connor, tells how her grief over her murdered daughter found expression and a degree of release in her teaching and her reading of Anne Tyler's novel "The Accidental Tourist." Other favorites of mine are "Love, Work, and Willa Cather" by Ann Fisher-Wirth; "In Search of the Androgynous Self," by Nancy Owen Nelson; "Literary Criticism with a Human Face," By Elsie F. Mayer.

This fine collection of essays explores the effects of literature in women's lives. I was particularly delighted with essays exploring writers such as Willa Cather and Laura Ingalls Wilder. These authors have had an enormous impact on American girls for generations, but they have not yet received adequate scholarly attention. Nelson's volume continues the feminist literary project of recovering "lost" literature, as well as defining the ways in which women are affected and even changed by what they read.

Private Voices, Public Lives is exemplary of feminist literary theory in its rejection of an objective interpretive stance, frankly acknowledging the subject position of the interpreter. It is an ideal companion text for women's studies and women's literature courses.

"She closed her eyes and escaped into a Dali-like surrealistic painting, a purple and green sun, a clock melting into the steel table where she lay wearing the starving-artist painting's little Mexican girl's peasant clothes and tiara and Cinderella's glass slippers. Stems and petals from Texas bluebonnets and Indian paint brush were scattered about." ~ pg. 149

Overwhelmed by duty, Assistant District Attorney Virginia Rodriguez takes on even more than she can handle. With romantic misunderstandings at work, a son trying to get ready for the prom and her most pressing desire, a hot bath in complete silence with a bowl of chocolate ice cream, her life begins to unfold within a mystery murder and renewed expectations.

L.B. Cobb weaves a story of intrigue with Tex-Mex flavor, realistic human emotions and wry humor. Her writing style is refreshingly unique, draws on local flavor and captures the essence of what it means to be human within an ever-changing world. There are always interesting twists in the plot and she never gives the answers to questions before the time is perfectly right and is always ready to throw you another surprise.

Who murdered a federal prosecutor at a Bayou City hotel and why is his wife being charged with the murder? As the truth remains elusive, Virginia struggles through emotional complexity under the demands of a stressful work environment. Will the man she thinks betrayed her, become her comfort?

If L.B. is writing, I'll be reading! She gets into her character's minds and reveals interesting details as if she truly could hear what they were thinking. She is also the author of Old Fashioned Recipes for Modern Cooks and the memorable story Splendor Bay. Her experience with cooking infuses her books with the delicious scents of culinary favorites and things any woman can relate to, like hiding chocolate ice cream in the back of the freezer.

~The Rebecca Review

Advance Books is a traditional independent press, which produces quality books geared towards a modern world full of diversity, baby boomers, and older readers. L.B. Cobb is herself an attorney, and is a product of a Tennessee upbringing. Now a resident of Houston, LB Cobb follows up her first novel, Splendor Bay.

Talk about women who have it all until it almost kills them, and you'll find Virginia Rodriguez. As a prosecutor for the DA's office, Virginia works nonstop while she manages to bring up her son, Nick, and try to remember to let the dog, Denver, in and fill its food dish. In the meantime, there has been a murder committed of a powerful federal prosecutor, and his wife is found in the hotel room with a gun in her hand. Is she guilty?

Virginia thinks at first this will be an open-and-shut case. Enter Leo Zachmann, a defense lawyer of some repute and intelligence, who can see from the start that the case doesn't add up. He's been hired by a gruff voice calling almost immediately after the murder was committed:

"'Why, Virginia, I see blinking cop cars and rowdy reporters and I just have to see if there's paying work I can hustle up,' Leo dead panned. 'You know how testy the state bar gets when you send runners in to sign up clients, so I like to do the signing up myself.' 'Right. I was told Mrs. Fullerton hasn't said a word, but it looks like she managed to sneak a call to a lawyer.'

Leo and his wife, Miranda, also a lawyer, manage to dig up enough dirt to indicate that "some other dude did it." Indeed, the absence of evidence is in itself fishy and causes Leo to latch on to another line of inquiry...of the feds. In the meantime, Virginia's case dissolves as Leo's case widens. Virginia has yet another issue begging for attention, a budding relationship.

Promises Town is a splendid follow-up to Cobb's debut novel. Her characters are chiseled out of the Texas landscape; politics; and Virginia's sometimes bitchy, but mostly likable, character.

Shelley Glodowski
Senior Reviewer

PROMISES TOWN introduces saucy Assistant District Attorney Virginia Rodriquez in the case of a murdered federal prosecutor. When Virginia arrives at the murder scene in a posh Bayou City, Texas hotel room, the federal prosecutor's wife has been found with the gun, he and a lover have been found dead in bed together, the motive is obvious, and the wife has been arrested. It looks like a slam-dunk case to Virginia. Enter Leo Zachmann, a shrewd high-profile defense attorney who challenges Virginia to look deeper into the facts -- facts that don't seem to add up to the wife being the murderer.

As Virginia and police detective named Smitty delve into the inconsistencies, they come to realize that maybe the wife has been set up, but by then a dismissal of the charges isn't that simple. Powerful people, including a man from Virginia's past, want a quick prosecution and conviction . At the same time, Zachmann and his staff are conducting their own investigation which indicates there's a political conspiracy behind the murders.

The story is masterfully told from a point-counterpoint perspective, interweaving the prosecution and defense point of view as Cobb takes the readers through a criminal investigation, into the courtroom, and then on to the unexpected ending. As in L.B. Cobb's debut novel, SPLENDOR BAY, twists, turns, and action keep the pages of PROMISES TOWN turning. It's also filled with deliciously complex relationships, suspense, humor, and some very memorable characters. I'll eager to read more about Virginia and Leo.

Here you will find the body and mind of the post-modern world
unfolding before your eyes, with all its pleasures, its anxieties, its lost dreams, its hopes. It is the world we know, because it is already in us, part of us--it is always arriving, always arrived. But, there is more. Ashbery, through unique images and juxtapositions, brings into the open a world not quite satisfied with itself, sometimes too satisfied--in a state of suspended satisfaction, sometimes leading to nausea. It is a world looking for experiences under every log and at every corner, only to find the rates of exchange rising and the necessity for experiences increasing. It is a world placed smack dap in the impossibility of its own being. What we have in "Wakefulness" is the journey of many selves through many worlds, many doors, all leading back to a haunting singularity of space and time. One gets the uncanning feeling in each poem that one has been there before, or even that one, if only momentarily, exists only in and through the words that appear on the page. This is what poetry should be. There are echoes of all the greats here, from the English romantics, to Dickinson and Stevens and beyond. But, Ashbery knows how to tame these echoes, how to humour them, disinheret them, and reclaim them for his own purposes, making these poems fully his own. I highly recommend this book and any other Ashbery books.

If you have read "Chinese Whispers" and "Your Name Here," then "Wakefulness" is kind of the first part of that set. "Wakefulness" has its surprising slopes that only Ashbery can give us but there is also a distant cohesiveness to it that an Ashbery follower can pick up. I often try to think of a way to describe what an Ashbery poem is like as if I was explaining it to someone who might cringe at the difficulty Ashbery presents us. These poems are like a light sleep in front of the tv where commercials and sitcoms sprinkle an already watery dream: the real mixes with the dreamed real. None of these poems, and not many of Ashbery's poems, are barreling down on the reader in a straight line. Everything is smoke in a fan. Once one can step inside Ashbery's voice, then there is a comfortablity in the chaos, as there is inside our heads.

A marvelous collection. The quote on the inner cover (by Harold Bloom) says it all "The book is a profound pleasure, the gift of a master."

If you want to learn how to be "appropriate" and become a skillful buisness pioneer, then this is a must own book. It entails key facts about Mr Stanley Marcus, a pioneer of the business realm.

the follow up to 'minding the store',these books give you an excellent overview of running any sort of company in a 1.st class way.
putting the client in a comfortable position,in comfortable surroundings,with well trained staff, add-- product selected with care, usage thought,& background, add--a slight sense of humour, is a recipe to do well.

I first read "Quest for the Best" when it was published in 1979. I was in college then, and Mr. Marcus' view of retailing was so informative, to say nothing of interesting. I learned more from reading that book than I did from some of my college courses. If you're thinking of a career in retailing, or just wanting a glimpse into the high-end retail world, read this book, as well as "Minding the Store," which is also by Mr. Marcus.

When you read this book you won't be reading a history book that puts you to sleep with dates, places and a few well known people. You also won't be reading the stories about these people from the author's point of view. You will be reading stories from the people who lived them. Raisins and Almonds and Texas Oil is well written and very well researched. It is easy to understand. You don't have to know of or be involved with the Jewish culture to enjoy this book. The people and events come to life in your imagination just like the stories your grandparents told you. You can relate to the people this book is about because they came to East Texas from all over the United States. During the depression "you went where the hope of a job was". That happened to be the East Texas oil fields. Picture if you will a small town going from a population of 500 to 10,000 almost overnight! What an exciting time it must have been.

"Raisins and Almonds" provides a vivid newsreel of the migration of Jews to the East Texas oilfields. It is a book textured with portraits of colorful characters and their improbable adventures. One of my favorite anecdotes is about a penniless diamond dealer. He displays his precious stones in rent space in a drugstore window, then winds up selling a diamond to Stanley Marcus. That's a Texas-sized story.
Until reading this book, I was unaware of the Depression-era chain migration of Jews from Oklahoma to the Kilgore-Longview region. It is reminiscent of the California Gold Rush (and it is the reverse of the Grapes of Wrath). Jewish youngsters who had gone to religious school together in Seminole, Okla., ended up being merchants and pipe-and-supply dealers (and possibly bootleggers) in Kilgore and Longview.
The chain migration of "boomers" is but one of the sociological patterns that emerges through this book's lively memoirs. Another common pattern is for women to launch the synagogue rather than men. Discussions about the lack of anti-Semitism in Kilgore reflect the egalitarianism of the frontier -- in this case, an oilfield frontier. This egalitarianism comes through at Mattie's Dance Hall where everyone socializes. There does not seem to be a "five o'clock curtain" in the oilfield communities.
The book's frank discussions of intermarriage are a realistic aspect of Jewish life everywhere. What is more remarkable is the cohesion of the Jewish communities detailed in this very readable book.

Jan Statman was able to capture the personal stories of how many Jewish people came to East Texas during the depression. They came to this G-d forsaken place, where one would never expect to find other Jews, with the attitude that they would somehow observe their Judiasm and make a living for their families. And they did.
I started reading, and couldn't put this book down until I was finished. I could hear and see in my mind the all of the families she wrote about. I knew that these stories were similar to those of second generation Jews everywhere. They did whatever they had to in order to be successful in this wonderful country, just as their parents had when they left Europe to escape religious persecution. Both were survivors, and proved it.
This is a remarkable book that reminds us of why so many people immigrated to the USA...Here, in America, even in Kilgore, TX all people who were willing to take a risk could make it. The American Dream come true.