Texas Books

While many underground cartoonists of the `60s and `70s focused their stories on counter-cultural issues of the time, writer/artist Jack Jackson headed in the other direction, bringing the stories of early Texas personalities to life. COMANCHE MOON tells the epic story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her famed son, Quanah. Set during the final days of the Comanche, who once roamed from the Kansas Territory to central Texas, it is a fascinating and moving historical portrait.

At age 9, Cynthia Ann, the daughter of Anglo settlers, is kidnapped by Comanches during a raid in 1836. Renamed Naduah, she adapts to their ways, marrying a chief and bearing a son, Quanah. Quanah rises from an uncertain beginning to become a powerful and feared warrior, and the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche. But his most startling transition was yet to come, as he adopted the white man's ways and introduced Native American culture to white society.

Jackson pulls out all the stops for this graphic novel. While I recall studying Quanah Parker and these events in my Texas history class many years ago, it was not presented with this level of detail. This is certainly not your typical read-in-an-hour trade paperback - you actually have to focus, and you may even learn a thing or two if you're not careful. Jackson's historical sources are numerous, events and characters are clearly identified, and maps are abundant. I especially enjoyed his casual presentation of the Comanche's speech, almost as if they were using modern slang. The art is very detailed, at times almost approaching photorealism. Jackson takes great pains to accurately depict historical figures from daguerreotypes. At times, it resembles the early black and white work of his contemporary, Richard Corben.

With all that said, there are certain parts that should appeal to the purely underground comic fan - Jackson's depictions of Quanah's mystic vision, his first experience with peyote, and his death resemble psychedelia straight out of Zap Comics. Great reading, fully educational, and very cool.

This is the finest and most intricate graphic book (not quite a novel) I've ever read. The illustrations reach levels of beauty and artistry seldom seen in this genre of storytelling. Comanche Moon (not to be confused with the Larry McMurtry novel of the same name) tells the end times history of the Comanche peoples, with emphasis on their great leader, Quanah Parker, and his mother, the "white Comanche" Cynthia Ann Parker. The story of the Comanche's' violent way of life, their struggles against the whites in Texas and across the Southwest, and of the brilliant leadership of Quanah Parker, are rendered in a way that provides as much meaningful information to a reader as most text-only tales of the Comanche and the brutal period of the mid-1800's thru the 1870's. This is a great (though often sad and bloody) segment of North American history, and this rapidly-paced, carefully produced graphic re-telling of it is a more than worthy read.

Historically accurate biography of Quanah Parker, last Commanche to live free on the LLana Estacata of Texas. Also bio information about his mother Cynthia Ann Parker, a European girl captured and raised by Commanches as their own, later taken back by her white family by force after she had married and had children as a Commanche woman. Lots of information regarding the everyday life of Commanche people. Told in a graphic novel format , the drawing is not particularly beautiful, but the story and accuracy make up for it. My copy is bound in psuedo leather, looks nice. Highly recomended for adults or older adolecents. Especially those who are intellectually curious, who may or may not have trouble with standard written texts.

Richard Wiley's novel takes you to a time of great change in Japan, the opening to the west. You will see history through the eyes of memorable vivid characters - and you will feel attached to these people - their strengths and foibles - their love affairs, rip-roaring bloody battles and roll on the floor laughing scenes as well.
It's got something for everyone and just beautifully written.

I've read all of Richard Wiley's books, and like anyone else, I have my favorites. Soldiers in Hiding is, of course, a fine book. Fool's Gold is a beauty, and Festival for 3,000 Maidens is a great little Peace Corps Novel. I have to ask myself whether Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show is now my favorite because I've just finished it, but it's a strange and wonderful delight.

Who else would write about such an unusual subject? And what makes the book such a pleasure? It has to do with the beauty of the characters and the language, both light as a feather and yet capable of great and sudden strength. I've rarely seen a book with such a texture, bright and dark, comic and serious, distant and close, ridiculous and urgent.

At times I found myself wondering why I became so involved with this odd bunch of characters from the mid 1800's Japan, but generally I was too involved to ask the question. Of course, it's no wonder, since Richard Wiley has lived in, visited, and obviously loved Japan over the years. But what surprised me the most was the book's ability to make me gasp now and again. And to curse the writer for having received, worked for, and developed such a gift.

The novelist Richard Bausch once remarked that a reader is always guaranteed to learn something new in any novel written by Richard Wiley. Wiley shepherds us into a foreign landscape and introduces us to a culture that is strikingly remote from our own yet is so intimately and recognizably human that we close the book with the realization that not only are we more savvy about the workings of the world at large, but we have a rich new insight into ourselves as well. These two feats can be achieved only by a literary master capable of topnotch entertainment who also has his thumb firmly on the pulse of humanity. In Commodore Perry's Minstrel Show, Richard Wiley outdoes himself. The novel abounds in characters who will live in the reader's mind long after finishing that last page; a plot that is riveting in terms of tragedy, comedy, and samurai action; if that's not enough, this novel is one of the most poetically rendered achievements I've read in the past year. Each sentence is carefully crafted and is in full service to a compelling story about the cultural clashes, tribal rivalries, and familial conflicts that occur when Commodore Perry and his unlikely crew sail into Japan's Edo Bay in 1854 to open trade with the United States. Along the way we are treated to sex, romance, swordplay, deapitation, high and low comedy, and a sense of history whose heartbeat resounds through the ages to make it all feel insistently modern. I recommend this book without reservation to anyone who cares about excellent storytelling.

The back cover of this small volume boasts a blurb, which proclaims, "Monterroso is certainly the leading living Guatemalan writer..." Not being quite an expert on Guatemalan literature myself, I cannot personally vouch for this statement. What I can swear to, however, is the fact that this compilation of writings by Augusto Monterroso is a collection of brilliant short fictions, which quickly call to mind the works of Swift, Sterne, Kafka, J.L. Borges, and Italo Calvino (among others). Reminiscent of Borges, Monterroso is a master of the self-referential (art about art/books about books); his fictions abound with tales of writers (and other story-tellers), readers, reviewers, critics, researchers, musicians, artists and historical figures who may or may not be "real." Like his predecessors, Monterroso's fictions often challenge our assumptions about literature and its conventions. He freely plays with the forms of fiction; there are "short-stories" disguised as letters, essays, and aphorisms. Several of his stories are shorter in length than the literary quotes he uses to introduce them. One of these, "The Dinosaur," (perhaps his most well-known work) is a mere 8 words long ("When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."). In other instances, his fictions mirror the rambling nature of the spoken word itself, as they amble on and meander for 3 or 4 pages without a single bit of punctuation prior to the concluding period.
Like his (above mentioned) literary forbearers, Monterroso is a master of satire, irony, and the absurd. Resembling Swift ("A Modest Proposal"), Kafka, and Borges before him, Monterroso uses a precise, crisp and almost dispassionate writing style to put forth the most absurd and outrageous of fictions. In "Finished Symphony," for example, he casually relates having overheard in passing, someone tell of the discovery, and then destruction of the two lost movements of Schubert's great "Unfinished Symphony." In other instances, his irony can be directed at himself. "Leopoldo (His Labors)," for instance, is a short story about a reluctant short story writer who is eternally frustrated in his decades-long attempt to write his first short story. This entire piece of fiction is a virtuoso bit of satire upon the author, himself (and perhaps on all authors). And then, what could be more absurd, or more comically inspired than "Flies": "There are three themes; love, death, and flies...Let others deal with the first two. I concern myself with flies...In the beginning was the fly...It is easier for a fly to land on the nose of the Pope, than for the Pope to land on the nose of a fly...Oh, Melville, you had to sail the seas before you could finally set that great white whale on your desk in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, not realizing that Evil had long ago circled your strawberry ice cream..."
Monterroso is clearly one of the important figures in the development of modern and contemporary Latin-American fiction. Along with such writers as Bioy Casares, J.L. Borges, Gabriel Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortazar (as well as Italo Calvino, Tomasso Landolfi, John Barth, and Milan Kundera), Monterroso is a brilliant exponent of "Magic Realism". If you admire any of the aforementioned authors, I would urge you to look into this dazzling collection by an inspired writer.

The back cover of this small volume boasts a blurb, which proclaims, "Monterroso is certainly the leading living Guatemalan writer..." Not being quite an expert on Guatemalan literature myself, I cannot personally vouch for this statement. What I can swear to, however, is the fact that this compilation of writings by Augusto Monterroso is a collection of brilliant short fictions, which quickly call to mind the works of Swift, Sterne, Kafka, J.L. Borges, and Italo Calvino (among others). Reminiscent of Borges, Monterroso is a master of the self-referential (art about art/books about books); his fictions abound with tales of the weaknesses and general absurdities of writers (and other story-tellers), bibliophiles, reviewers, critics, researchers, musicians, artists and other intellectual and historical figures who may or may not be "real." Like his predecessors, Monterroso's fictions often challenge our assumptions about literature and its conventions. He freely plays with the forms of fiction; there are short stories
"disguised" as letters, essays, and aphorisms. Several of his stories are far shorter in length than the literary quotes he uses to introduce them. One of these, "The Dinosaur," (perhaps his most well-known work) is a mere 8 words long ("When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there."). In other instances, his fictions mirror the rambling nature of the spoken word itself, as they amble on and meander for some 3 or 4 pages without a single bit of punctuation prior to the concluding period.
Like his (above mentioned) literary forbearers, Monterroso is a master of satire, irony, and the absurd. Resembling Swift ("A Modest Proposal"), Kafka, and Borges before him, Monterroso uses a precise, crisp and almost dispassionate writing style to put forth the most absurd and outrageous of fictions. In "Finished Symphony," for example, he casually relates having overheard in passing, someone tell of the discovery, and then destruction of the two lost movements of Schubert's great "Unfinished Symphony." In other instances, his irony can be self-deprecating. "Leopoldo (His Labors)," for instance, is a short story about a reluctant short story writer, who is eternally frustrated in his decades-long attempt to write his first perfect(and never finished)short story. This entire piece of fiction is a virtuoso bit of satire upon the author, himself (and perhaps on all authors). And what could be more absurd, or more comically inspired than "Flies": "There are three themes; love, death, and flies...Let others deal with the first two. I concern myself with flies...In the beginning was the fly...It is easier for a fly to land on the nose of the Pope, than for the Pope to land on the nose of a fly...Oh, Melville, you had to sail the seas before you could finally set that great white whale on your desk in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, not realizing that Evil had long ago circled your strawberry ice cream..."
Monterroso is clearly one of the important figures in the development of modern and contemporary Latin-American fiction. Along with such writers as Bioy Casares, J.L. Borges, Gabriel Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Julio Cortazar (as well as Italo Calvino, Tomasso Landolfi, John Barth, and Milan Kundera), Monterroso is a brilliant exponent of "Magic Realism". If you admire any of the aforementioned authors, I would urge you to look into this dazzling collection by an inspired writer.

Monterroso has a fantastatic sense of humor. I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

This book is one of the best, I own on the subject matter. Very well done and extreemely detailed. I bought a second copy and gave it away as a Christmas gift this year, at my company Christmas party. It was a great success. Everyone wanted it. I'm glad Matt got to keep it.

I must say that very few texts on this subject are as well done as Conklin's. I highly recomend it to anyone interested in "Compassionate Cannibalism" through history.

I looked into this book a source for a term paper I was writing on Ritual Cannibalism, but then chose to buy if as my summer reading material. The book is very well written and easy to understand, which make it ideal for professionals, students, and lay-people alike. Coklin does a great job letting the reader into the mind of Wari' peoples; the testemonials are engaging and thought-provoking. I must warn that if you are looking for material that is critical of cannibalism, or argues that it does not exist, this isn't it. "Consuming Grief" makes cannibalism seem rational, and makes you feel sad that these peoples customs and culture were forced away. Coklin is biased in the sense that she is an anthropologist, in that I mean she does not pass any judgement on the peoples she is studying.

This book is one of the best, I own on the subject matter. Very well done and extreemely detailed. I bought a second copy and gave it away as a Christmas gift this year, at my company Christmas party. It was a great success. Everyone wanted it. I'm glad Matt got to keep it.

I must say that very few texts on this subject are as well done as Conklin's. I highly recomend it to anyone interested in "Compassionate Cannibalism" through history.

Although I've never been to Texas, I *LOVE* this cookbook, as does everyone to whom I've given it as a gift. The recipes are all delectable, and written clearly enough for even northerners to understand. They are also preceded by clear descriptions of what makes them so wonderful (which I, myself, find invaluable in cookbooks), and many are quick and easy to prepare. You can't help but love this one!

I absolutely love this book! Over the last ten years, it has become a staple in my kitchen and the kitchens of friends who I have blessed with a copy. I am not a very talented cook, but I find these recipes easy to follow and virtually fail proof. My husband, a fabulous cook, also loves cooking with recipes from Cooking Texas Style. The book is filled with great unheard of recipes as well as Texas and Tex-Mex classics. In addition to the recipes, the personal notes that Ms. Marquez and Ms. Wagner have included are a thrill to read. There is information about the origin of some of the dishes as well as great family stories. I highly recommend this book to the novice or master chef! Enjoy!

This cookbook is the best book on regional Texas cooking that I have ever read. The recipes are clear and informative, spanning Mexican, German, and Southern dishes. The work is made all the more interesting by its insights into Texan life and culture.

Ms. Lopez gives us a work that is thorough in its research and skillfully crafted. The reader is unobtrusively drawn in by a warmth that results from the author's personal interviews with many of the informants. The African American athletes and the University of Houston Coaches become so much more than a record of facts about racial integration; each person has a unique story set against a common backdrop of the cultural and historical context of the South. The facts are threaded with stories, thoughts, reports and comments that reveal the humanity, the courage, the tenacity and the passion of all involved. A book that will appeal to many across diverse disciplines and not just sports fanatics ! ASIN:0786437219 Cougars of any Color: The Integration of University of Houston Athletics, 1964-1968]]

This book is a must read. "Cougars of Any Color" documents how the University of Houston broke down the racial sports barriers prevalent throughout the South. Reading this book made me proud to be not only a supporter of The University of Houston, but of the accomplishment of three brave athletes, their teammates, and their coaches. A great book.

The University of Houston should be proud of it's contribution to collegiate sports. "Cougars of Any Color" tells a story of courage and determination by UH to dismantle segregated athletics. This book has very thorough documentation and first person accounts and is a quick read.

I purchased this book not knowing whether I would like it, but I loved it. It is a fascinating collection of stories from people who participated in WWII in numerous diverse ways. Recounted here are the experiences of bomber pilots, men on submarines, infantry soldiers from the wars in the Pacific and in Europe, POW's, and countless others. The author steps aside and lets the soldiers tell the stories in their own words, yet the narrative is consistently compelling. You get a realistic view of what WWII was like from the perspective of people who were there. I highly recommend this book.

``The Courage of Common Men: Texans Remember World War II'' is a must-read for Texans and World War II history buffs.

The book contains stories from 19 veterans across Texas and is thoroughly engaging. It's an extremely quick read. The stories are tragic and at times humorous. It's told in an interview-style, so you feel the emotions that the veterans are experiencing as they relive their personal accounts. One of my favorite chapters is of the Gibesons, a couple from San Antonio, who met during the War and are still married today. What a love story!

The names you'll find in ``The Courage of Common Men'' aren't those that you have read about in history books. They are your neighbors and family friends. Ordinary people who lived through extraordinary times. After reading ``The Courage of Common Men,'' you'll gain a greater appreciation for the sacrifices these brave men made.

I have read this book and the author, Stephen Manning, has done a great job of telling stories from men, who are still living, about their experiences while serving their county during World War II.

Mr. Manning has interviewed about 20 veterans from all branches of the service. He tell thier story just like they tell it to him useing their own words. You feel like you have talked to the men youself.

The author has incorperated pictrues of the men interviewd taken while he was in the service and a picture of them as of today.

If you are interested in World War II this is a must read book.

Sincerely, Charles B. Harper

I love all the Hank books, and this is a great one for the Christmas season. These books are hilarious and more important to the young reader, fun to read. I'd also check the rest of the series.

Author of "Hobo Finds A Home" editor "Of A Predatory Heart"

I highly reccomend the Hank the Cowdog books if you're a dog lover, or if you just enjoy good, clean humor and fun! The books
are written in Hank's perspective, which, I think, makes them funnier than if they weren't written in his persppective. He tries to talk "intelligent," but really he is actually quite, um,
well, to be to-the-point... DUMB. And Hank's conversations with Drover are priceless. If you don't have this book, you really should get it.

I read this book about two years ago for the first time and have reread it since. I really enjoy John R. Ericson's writings and he has a good personality, too. If you or your child like Hank the Cowdog, this is probably one of the best of them all. Email me if you want at sgooch@anet-dfw.com and tell me if this review helped you. Love ya!

This book is riveting and will take the reader to places he or she may never have been before. Plotted around a gay man, his "business", and the passions of and in his life, this book is full of good old fashioned sleuthing, intriuge, and a bit of moral-values clarification. This is simply a very good read.

Let me start off by saying that I have a real weakness for revenge books. There is just something truly decadent and delicious about taking a well-orchestrated (and violently nasty!) vengeance against those responsible for the murder of...the only person you've ever loved! Even more impressive is solid writing and interesting dialogue (how often can you say that?) which are accented by a tight plot that actually avoids the usual genre-driven pitfalls. Oh, and the hero is _totally_ hot (or at the very least, smart and charismatic).

Santos De La O (yep, it's a fake name) is a half Italian, half Mexican gunrunner/enforcer for a drug cartel in Mexico. He has family connections in the Italian mob, but leaves to start his own business because he's gay and his uncle, Vito the fixer, "can't employ no finocchio in this business, if you'll pardon the expression."

We get to watch Santos be really clever, make lots of money selling cool high-tech guns and missiles, and discover his softer side by of course falling in love with Tony. (All this happens in only about 70 sparse but perfect pages. The novel is only 200 pages long.) I can't express what a pleasure it was to read a book that has NO wasted filler, yet manages to convey a clear and emotional impact. When Santos is standing over Tony's body at the morgue "he kissed his fingertips and pressed them gently against the empty face" and says "Te amo...te amo tanto, tanto. I love you. I love so very much." Yes, my eyes actually teared up.

Without giving the rest of the book away, let me just mention some of the things the book doesn't do.

(1) Santos doesn't magically know who is responsible. We have an actual witness. And a license plate number. Wow.
(2) The drug cartel has nothing to do with Tony's murder. Yes, we were spared the tired and annoying drug cartel conspiracy plot.
(3) Not all of the cops are stupid and corrupt.
(4) Not one of the cops is a genius. ;-)
(5) Santos only does "normal" stupid things and he's only mostly lucky. We are not subjected to plot holes a 12 year old can figure out.
(6) There is no impossible action. No one jumps through a second-storey window and survives.
(7) The violence is not our usual boring blah, blah, blah violence. Really. Santos's revenge against one of the murderers is, um, original.

Hopefully I've convinced you to try this book. Oh, and if you're worried about the gay sex angle, well I'm sorry to have to say, it's of the boring ...and the next morning they woke up together...variety. Alas there is no explicit sex.

This well constructed, tightly edited mystery brings a new character to the mystery/thriller genre. This is the assassin we have all been waiting for. This is the killer with a heart that we yearn to identify with in all those other books, but with whom we are never really satisfied. The "man with no name" in Conner's story is based on the stereotypes we thriller fans have met before, but succeeds somehow in a very short space of time to grab our sympathies and rivet our attention.

Tales of revenge are many. In some the hero is redeemed and returns to society, in others he goes down with his foe. This book leaves us hanging, hopeful that he will come back again in another incarnation, and wondering whether this is a character who will be able to live any other way but in the thick of deceit, lies, and greed on the grand scales of drug empires and intelligence agencies.

Necessarily short, so carefully worded that it could not be longer than it is, it reads quickly and when I came up for air I ran to Amazon looking for a sequel. Guess we just have to wait and hope.

I really enjoyed this book. The author wove together her personal experiences --the pain of growing up in a loveless yet nuturing home in Texas, and a type of everyman's history of the civil rights movement and the annonomous worker bees and vanguard her mother belonged too. She does this in an interesting and engaging way. She weaves her story of being born at the "wrong time" and coping with feelings of being an unwanted late life child which lead to an emotionally and physically abused childhood into the visual story and history of Blacks in media and film at the time Blacks created the protest movement(s) to erase injustice, and pyschological pain the african Americans experienced in America's south. Her story is a compelling one. Especially because it is so universally human. Her love hate relationship with her mother was the most poinant aspect of this book. She describes her response to the abuse of her mother yet she so admired, love, and comes to understand and forgive her finally.

There were some unanswered questions the reader might have , like what about her brother. What kind of relationship did they have? Was he too mistreated by her mother? Is she still married and what role did being married have on her relationship with her mother? but this is a story about a tragic and troubled and mother and daughter relationship.

IT IS A VERY INTERESTING READ for anyone interested in autobiography/civil rights movement and the media.

This is one of the most creative approaches to autobiography I've read in a long time. I enjoyed reading and studying it. The book is a highly visual autobiography---part prose, part poetry, part history and historical images. I particularly enjoyed how Ms. Blue revealed the nuances of an African American middle class mother-daughter relationship. Telling her story against the backdrop of the movies that were coming of age when she was growing up provided an enlightening perspective on the powerful influence of American movies on the human psyche. This book is a wonderful gem!

If you appreciated Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt for its presentation and viewpoint of growing up in poverty, you'll like this book for the same reasons--not on the subject of poverty but on race and understanding what it's like to grow up Black (& middle-class) in this country. It just tells, in a straightforward voice, the story of her life.

As a 10 year old, my mother had me read a book called "Black Like Me." It was a white man's experiment with wandering around in the world as a Black man. Carroll Parrott Blue's book is a better, more authentic version written by a Black woman who has lived the experience and is willing to talk about it.

I loved this book because from the first pages, with its pictures and its text, it lets the reader inside like an intimate friend--she shares what most Black people don't talk about. She lets you inside her experience. It's personal, yet it's nonfiction that reads like a novel. She shares her difficult personal relationship with her mother and her view of the world through popular culture that is familiar to all of us--but seen through Black eyes.