Texas Books

This book is one of the best I've actually read so far that is recommended for the novice. It contains and index and glossary, as well as illustrations that explain the various parts of the plant, and gives simple, precise descriptions of each form of cacti and where it can be found. It also has excellent photographs of the entire plant in close-up that aid in visual identification. It has been a tremendous help in identifying cacti that once were nameless to me. If you can obtain a copy, it's well worth it.

Del Weniger has given us an excellent compilation in this volume. Fortunately, copies are still available of the out-of-print title. I highly recommend the book for beginners & experts alike. Excellent photography. Insightful text. Good organization.

My interest in the Caddo Indians stems from having worked in the area formerly controlled by the tribe. From Nacogdoches to Natchitoches, on northward into present-day southeastern Oklahoma and southwestern Arkansas, the Caddo and related tribes once controlled a vast area and were by all accounts well-organized, fairly disciplined, and relatively settled in relation to the nomadic tribes of the plains.
The Caddo Indians: Tribes At the Convergence of Empires 1542-1854 is the story of how a people who from the beginning strove to maintain peaceful and profitable relations with the white settlers fell victim to disease, alcohol and the duplicity of many of those whom they trusted. But it is also the tale of bravery, perseverance and unity in the face of all the forces of history that conspired against them.
The reader will see how the accidents of geography and the vagaries of events beyond the control of the Caddo nations brought them down from a tribe numbering in the hundreds of thousands, to a rump nation of just a couple hundred members today whose headquarters now sits on a meagre 37 acres in Oklahoma. You will meet good men and scoundrels on both sides and you will see how the scoundrels among the white nations (Spain, then Mexico, Texas and then the United States) eventually gained the upper hand. Of the white colonists who dealt with the Caddo tribes over the centuries, only the French come away largely free of the stench of dishonor.
The story of the Caddo Nation is yet another sad chapter in the history of Euro-American interaction with the Native peoples. It is doubly sad for the Caddo tribes as they took an actively friendly stance from the start.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in history as it pertains to the Indians. F. Todd Smith gives the reader a fine, easy reading overview of an important but overlooked tribe and a little-known era in what was then a remote section of the frontier.

If there is just one book you buy this year on the Caddo Indians, let it be this one. This is a book for scholars. But it is also a book for the armchair history buff. Smith writes in a palatable style. In the end, it is the natural narrative that carries the story. This part of American history is missed in most public education. Sit back with a cold one and this book. I did.

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

Well written book about very interesting people that most of us would never know anything about. I enjoyed reading this book.

I loved reading "Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador," by Judy Blankenship. The book had special meaning for me, being one of those people who dream constantly about living and getting to know other cultures, but alas, manage to get to visit few foreign places. From its opening words the writing gripped me and I traveled with the author every step of the way as she so compellingly wrote about her experiences and her affection for the Cañari people. The expressive photographs that accompany the text transported me even more deeply into a land I will never know for myself. We armchair travelers are endlessly indebted and grateful to artists like Judy Blankenship.

Fraidie Martz

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.

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.