Associations Books

Literally an encyclopedia of everything Texas, this set of books is the ultimate resource for all things Texan. Wanna know why your town has the name it does or who was that guy they named that road after? This is the place to go.

There's no way you'll cuddle up in your bed with one of these books, but you'll love `em just the same.

The answer to this question /defines/ your business/career commitment, so know it now.

Once you've answered the question, though, then NO MATTER which answer you discovered yours to be ( and almost all business-books, including this one, assume that ONLY entrepreneurs exist, and don't consider propreneurs or our needs/motivations... )
... this book you need. It gives you the what, the why, the /sense/ of startup-surviving.

Excellent book. These guys have /really/ been there: when they say ( paraphrase ) "fix it right, or you're paying endlessly and /still/ not having it right" they give examples... including one where the standard chemical-engineering-textbook version of what they were doing wasn't correct! Only by having the active integrity to perceive-it-right, and fix-it-right, up-front can one survive competition ( and having one's textbooks all be incorrect on a point fundamental to one's own current endeavour, is competitive pressure from a /really/ unexpected quarter ).

The rest of the book? Ah, that's for you to read, eh?

I'll give you the TOC, though, since it isn't included above in the book-data listed ( and I'm including page-numbers so you get the sense of the quantity-of-information given to each area in the book )

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Preparing Yourself - 1
2. The Business Concept - 24
3. Building a Team - 53
4. Market Research - 84
5. Finding Your Niche - 105
6. The Marketing Function - 125
7. Sales Tactics - 147
8. Production - 171
9. Research and Development - 189
10. Financial Planning - 207
11. Management Systems - 228
12. The Business Plan - 247
13. Finding Capital - 259
Appendix: Assorted Unavoidable Topics - 287
Reading List - 297
Index - 301

The compiler/editor, a great great grandson of the Chapmans, seems to have chosen wisely among the largesse of the Chapman Family Papers deposited in the Barker Texas History Center.

Thanks to the preservation of this splendid collection and to Caleb Coker's judicious efforts in assembling these letters, both the general reader and the historian have access to an enjoyable, enlightening account of a distinctive frontier experience. Rarely do private letters possess the literary grace, the intelligent observations of new surroundings and acquaintances, and the warmth of family relationships on display in this volume, resulting in a welcome addition to the limited body of published material on the history of the Lower Rio Grande.

Caleb Coker, an attorney in Jacksonville, Fla., took on the task of preserving New Englander Helen Chapman's voluminous correspondence from the Texas frontier, where she lived with her husband, William, a West Pointer who built Fort Brown and helped found Brownsville.

The News from Brownsville is more than just good reading. Coker has done a fine job of combining the letters with newspaper accounts of the day to create a chronicle of the frontier experience and a portrait of an exceptional woman.

When Helen Chapman left her home in Massachusetts to join her husband after a two-year separation while he participated in the Mexican War, she also left behind (with her mother) her 8-year-old son, Willie, whom she would not see for 20 months. This was a great hardship, but life on the south Texas frontier was too unsettled for a child. For the first six months after Helen landed at Brazos Santiago in January 1848, the Chapmans lived in Matamoros, Mexico. At war's end, they moved across the Rio Grande, where Major Chapman built Fort Brown; it was a primitive home, but the community quickly developed and Helen worked hard for the establishment of Brownsville's first Protestant church in 1850.

Live on the edge of civilization transformed Helen from a woman of privilege who had never had to think much about social concerns to one who was right smack in the middle of them: violence, poverty, intemperance and its results, disease, war, racism, slavery, the ravages of weather and the lack of educational and religious facilities. She wrote about them and she worked hard for change, soliciting funds from Northern friends for schools. She is now credited as the first Anglo to demand civil rights for Mexicans living in Texas. She also defined racism in modern terms as "as dreary hatred (to) be subdued between men who are now living side-by-side as citizen! s of a common republic."

Coker's narrative notes placing the letters in their historical contex and appendices containing profiles of those whose paths crossed the Chapman's and excerpts from newspaper articles are particularly helpful.

Helen Chapman is a woman every reader will be glad to have met, and her correspondence captures a time and place with great clarity.

This work contributes useful insights for both military and social historians. The letters that deal with the United States's military withdrawal from Mexico provide bits of interesting information regarding Captain Chapman's role as defacto mayor of Matamoros as well as his responsibilties in moving equipment and supplies across the river and building Fort Brown. It is also interesting to note that Captain Chapman's duties required him and his wife to travel regularly between Fort Brown and the Gulf coast and to maintain homes in both locations.

Military historians will also find interesting the mention of individual military personnel who visited the Chapman home and about whom Helen Chapman commented. Equally interesting are her observations about Mexican military officers Mariano Arista, commandant of Matamoros and later president of Mexico, and Francisco Avalos,also commandant of Matamoros.

Chapman's letters are a rich treasure t! rove for social and family historians. She comments extensively on subjects ranging from diet and religion to temperance and the social customs and mores of the Mexican borderlanders. A faith in the benefits of education inspired her campaign for both Sunday and regular schools. Her attempts to deal with the guilt caused by the separation from her young son, who remained with her parents in Massachusetts, is evident in much of the early correspondence, as is the joy and pride that she felt in him once the youngster joined the family in south Texas. Letters relating to her own pregnancy and her bout with the dreaded cholera reveal attitudes about mid-nineteenth-century medical problems and their treatment. The social problems of children and family are also emphasized when the Chapmans, at the behest of a Mexican man, "adopt" his daughter and then give her up when the father demands her return.

[T]his work provides a fascinating and riveting account of a four-year period in one woman's life.

When "atom spies" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg went on trial in 1950 there was a third American defendant. While the Rosenbergs took the stand in their own defense and adamantly maintained their innocence, which so angered the judge and prosecutors that the death penalty was imposed, Morton Sobell remained silent on advice of counsel, and waited for the government to fail to make its case against him. He was convicted anyway, but his silence might have saved his life: He was spared the death penalty and sentenced to a 30-year prison term instead. He served 18 years, 5 years of them on Alcatraz, which is where much of ON DOING TIME takes place. The book was first published in 1974 but was just reissued by the Golden Gate National Park Association. 

Despite the title, the book is about much more than what it was like for an extraordinarily decent, gentle and probably innocent man to be locked away in the country's most notorious maximum security penitentiary. This is Sobell's first person account of the events surrounding one of the most infamous trials in American history, which sparked demonstrations all over the world and began a debate that still rages today. His insights into the trial and the events leading up to it are as valuable historically as they are fascinating. The new edition includes a CD that contains many of the heretofore-classified documents he fought for decades to get his hands on.

Sobell's quest to unearth these documents was not driven by his desire for exoneration -- he seems unconcerned with whether anyone believes in his innocence -- but by his fervent wish to expose what he considers the devious, underhanded and outright fraudulent means to which the government will resort in its pursuit of "undesirables" in emotionally-charged situations. (I imagine he danced a jig when the government's reprehensible treatment of Wen Ho Lee was exposed.) He is particularly incensed about the highly-publicized "Venona" decryption project that purportedly led to his and the Rosenbergs' apprehension and, using the files on the CD, does a mighty convincing job of demonstrating how absurd some of the links between cabled code names and actual persons were arrived at.

ON DOING TIME, however, is not another rehash of the facts and speculation already well-covered in dozens of books. It is the very human tale of how it all affected one man who, to this day, refuses to be bitter and insists on casting his personal experience in a larger historical and political context, all of which is heavily layered with his persistent and unapologetic left-wing slant. It is extremely well-written, gripping and enlightening, and I recommend it very highly to the general reader as well as the armchair historian.

Nelson does a fantastic job of tackling these hard issues. In each and every case he examines, he puts forth convincing reasons for God's actions and shows they were all borne of love. In formulating his central argument, Nelson goes all the way back to Lucifer's fall from grace and the introduction of sin in this world. He does a wonderful job explaining why God did not simply destroy the rebel angels; moving from this, he blames Satan for spreading the lie that God should be feared. He devotes a chapter to explaining just what sin really is, making brilliantly illuminating use of the parable of the prodigal son in this regard. He backs up his argument that God meets us where we are and as we are, extrapolating from this notion a brilliant explanation for the frightful appearances of God to the Israelites of Moses' day. In cases such as the seemingly extreme deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, Nelson explains God's actions as a form of "accelerated judgment" made so as to protect the larger body of followers from the dangers it would otherwise be exposed to. In each and every case, no matter how cruel God's action may seem on the surface, Nelson certainly proves to my satisfaction that God acted out of love and not jealousy or rage.

God is not to blame for suffering and pain on earth, Nelson argues; He in fact shares all of our afflictions with us, and He proved the depth of his relentless love beyond doubt on Calvary some two thousand years ago. God wants his children to love Him, but true love cannot exist unless men and women have the freedom to say No to divine love. That is the heart of Nelson's explanation for the existence of pain and suffering among believers and non-believers alike. I found two of Nelson's related arguments very interesting. Nelson does not think the existence of pain and suffering can be explained completely in terms of God using pain and suffering in order to teach us some valuable lesson or to somehow reach someone else in a special way. I know many Christians who react to hard times by thinking God is punishing them for something, but Nelson warns against such thinking. Such thoughts lead to a fear of God, which is exactly what Satan wants to achieve in the hearts of men. In the pages of Outrageous Grace, Nelson shows that the God of the Old Testament is the same God of Jesus' day and our own time, a loving Father who acts only out of undying love for his children. I believe all Christians would benefit enormously from reading this book.