Texas Books

There are few species of birds better known to the general public than the Robin; with it's red breast and distinctive voice, few can say they have little affection for it. This book, as slim as it is, is a wonderful portrait of this cherished bird. It was a pleasure to read, and very informative to boot. One cannot but gain a better appreciation for the Robin by reading this book.

Author Wauer has given us more than a delightful book of cheer. Who is there that does not love a robin? I have been a lifetime observor or robins, but learned many new things about my old friend. The pictures chosen for this volume are outstanding and capture this little guy in a charming way. Our thanks for such a warm picture of the American Robin.

I went right to the middle section of this book to read about The Haskell Silk Mills in Westbrook, Maine. Why? Because my Great Grandfather Edwin Haskell was the founder. Excellent research by the author and her obvious love of the subject matter gave us, the Haskell descendants, an incredible look at the success and subsequent failure of this local business. I learned much more about my forebears and the operation of the mills than I had picked up anecdotally all these many years. If you have an interest in the textile industry in New England or in fact, anywhere. This is a wonderful read about the days before the synthetics came to town.
Ben Haskell
Brewer, ME

Co-authored by a former costume curator, a professor of math and science history, and a costume curator, three top authors create a high-quality scholarly analysis of an industry in AMERICAN SILK 1830-1930: ENTREPRENEURS AND ARTIFACTS. At one time America's silk industry was the largest in the world, so even though it hasn't nearly the stature today, it's an essential piece of American and business history. Here three case studies of silk company production mills span the heyday of the silk industry era and cover the technological and social issues surrounding silk. A key college-level title for any holding serious about American and American business history.

True mystery, true events, truly engaging reading. The other side of the moral values of the land of Bush is revealed in this exciting read. Five stars for sheer entertainment in reading.

This is a must read for those who find truth stranger than fiction and prefers their mystery reading torn from the pages of today's headlines. The stories are real, exciting and chocked full of everything mystery lovers enjoy. The editing is superb, the writing top notch.

I read this book some years ago (about 1994 or 5) and it stays with me every day. What Montejano has done for Texas in telling its social and racial history sheds light into the complex contemporary tensions of the southwest. He skillfully uncovers the racial and class subordination of people with Mexican ancestry. I found this book to be extraordinarily enlightening and useful in interpreting California history. What he does best in the book is isolate the racism of Anglos in the Southwest targeting Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. If you're looking for a quick snippet to get a feel for the book, I recommend chapter 10 on "Segregation". I can only hope that Montejano will grace us with more books.

I can not tell you how many copies of this book I have given away. Why? Because if you're visiting Texas, or have just moved here, and you don't "get" it (& why would you?), or have lived here a while but have been only subjected to the official story, you MUST read this book. But it's not only Texans -- new and veteran -- who need to read this. If you are interested in Southwestern U.S. history, you need to read it, and if you're interested in a very good case study of how "race" and class work together, against each other, and are intertwined in very complicated ways, you need to read this. And any student of civil rights movements will benefit from Montejano's analysis.

Montejano's writing is clear and direct, without being oversimplified. You'll be grateful you read this book, and probably keep coming back to it....things that may not make sense at first will become clearer with time. If only more history was written this well.

The book of pleasures is a wonderful book where a woman, Dori, learns to have pleasure in life. She is a simple woman that was looking for love when she met Ulysses, a phylosophy teacher. He tells her that she does not know how to have pleasure and therefore she was not ready to be with him. She, then, goes into a very deep travel to inside, finding out love, hate, fear and pleasure. It's a wonderful and sensitive book... Specially made for women, with a feminin view of life.

Lispector is an incredible writer, the type that causes me to wish I knew a time traveller so I could go back and try my darnedest to seduce her into bed. I say this absurd line because her writing, her style, her heart and her head are unlike any I've ever read or heard, ever. It seems so poignantly to fit the style of thinking that my generation (b. 1982) expresses, when they can express it, and blisteringly articulates in a style like kids my age strive for - when we're at our best, which is to say: longingly ambitious. I safely feel that I'm not projecting. I love Lispector and I hope we can increase the demand for her writing for both its relevance today and its timeless sincere outpouring of this tender Brazilian woman's bottomless heart.

Well-written book that shows how early Arab immigrants integrated into the American society. We Americans need to know all the facts about Arabs before we judge them and stereotype them. Read Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts. It will help you better understand the Arab mind.

This labor of love documents the experience of Arabs who emigrated to Worcester, Massachusetts between 1880 and 1915. The author, a third-generation Worcester Arab-American, has interviewed immigrants from Lebanon, Syria and Palestine; she dis-cusses their lives and their connections with fellow Arab immigrants in the United States and South America, particularly Brazil. She also highlights the political and eco-nomic factors that brought Arabs to America and led many of them to stay, even after they had met their goal of earning enough to prosper in their homelands. Interviewees, most in their 80's and 90's, are succinctly quoted about subjects including their neighborhoods, work, traditions and education. The author offers evidence aplenty of how hard work and creativity enabled Arabs to put down roots in America, to the bene-fit of the community and the country. APC

I had to look for a long time for a copy of this novel when I wanted to read it last year; it's fantastic that it's been brought back into print in the US and abroad. The success of McG's recent novels Amongst Women and By the Lake/That They May Face the Rising Sun casts a soft light upon his earlier fiction from the 1960s, but this novel is no romantic landscape.

In the bogs of west-central Ireland, a policeman cycles about pretending to do his duty while his wife takes care of the children and waits to find out whether she has a terminal disease. Told in a powerful voice largely from within her consciousness, the narrative style shows amazing assurance for a then emerging writer. The last scene from her point-of-view ranks in my estimation with Joyce's closing of "The Dead."

I heard McG introduced at a reading as the greatest Irish author from the second half of the 20th (and 21st?) century. This is no hyperbole. While his reticence means he is not the showman that Seamus Heaney is, and while his oblique commentary acknowledges the trauma of the past Irish century rather than exploiting it like many of his lesser contemporaries, McG's dignity in the face of 1960s censorship (for subsequent work) commands respect and a renewal of interest in his entire body of work. Read this story and you'll find the ebb of rural Ireland charted precisely.

The late John McGahern wrote incredibly poetic and beautiful novels set in his native country. The Barracks is about a middle-aged woman named Elizabeth Reegan who marries a widowed man with three children. A frustrated police officer with dreams of buying his own farm, and fulfilling the legacy of the Reegans, her husband is a man all but oblivious to Elizabeth and her needs. Already a widower, when he learns Elizabeth has breast cancer he can hardly bring himself to face the reality. When his first wife died his only thought was what a horror it was seeing her in the morgue. Any feelings of love or support are simply beyond him, leaving Elizabeth to deal with mortality on her own.

As she worsens, declining into death, Elizabeth is able to observe the family as an outsider. Already all but a ghost, she watches them go about their daily tasks while inside she's screaming with frustration, hoping for any bit of attention or kindness she doesn't dare ask for.

The Barracks is a heartbreaking novel, and a masterful one. McGahern gets inside the head of Elizabeth, expressing her plight with such empathy it's staggering. The prose is poetic and lyrical. I would even say it's flawless, and as perfect a work of fiction as I've ever read.

What a loss to literature, and to humanity, when McGahern died earlier this year, leaving behind him an award-winning body of fiction. There simply aren't enough contemporary writers out there like McGahern, more's the pity, but that's what made him stand out like a shining light while he was alive. Better to have written like an angel and then been lost than never to have written like an angel at all.

This is a great book, Texas has so many great buildings built during this time, formost being the UT campus, the Rice Campus and Fair Park Dallas. This book is exhaustive and the images are beautiful. Anyone, who has a love for architecture should have this book, not just those of us who love Texas.

With this entertainingly written and well organized book, you can settle down to painlessly learn about Texas history and architecture. Or have fun browsing.Look in the index to seek out the parts about favorite buildings in your town or city. Once you start, you'll have a hard time finding a place to stop. This wonderful book includes a zillion pictures of familiar and beloved structures, including *historic railroad stations, *the campuses of UT, Rice, SMU, Texas Tech, etc.*the office buildings, department stores, hotels, movie theaters, banks, and other commercial structures that mark the downtowns of the state's big and small cities, *city halls, courthouses, post offices, etc.*churches, houses, roadside gas stations & motels. This volume includes photos of fine buildings from Galveston to El Paso, and even from my smalltown hometown of Seguin in between (maybe your hometown has some entries, too).It also describes the identifying features of the various architectural styles (Romanesque, Mission Revival, Art Deco, etc.) in a way that a layman can quickly understand. It helps us appreciate the quality of what was been built in our cities and towns in the first half of the 20th century.

This is a comprehensive and intelligent study of the work of John Staub, who designed many of the most notable structures in Houston (both domestic architecture and commercial structures). He designed an incredible number of buildings, and not only in Houston, but in other parts of the country. For a student of architecture, and for someone interested in the history of Houston, this book is a must.

As someone who grew up admiring Mr. Staubs talent, I am so thankful that Mr. Barnstone created this perfect book. It does a wonderful job of giving scholarly text and extensive photographs of the structures. The book leaves no doubt that Mr. Barnstone was a great admiror of this singular architect. The book gives floor plans as well has historical archival text on homes. He gives most weight and time to Mr. Staubs most famous building, most notable Bayou Bend. The reader marvels at Mr. Staubs command of different mediums and styles. His buildings, no matter how stylistically diffent, all have his touch of understated elegance. This book is a must have for anyone who admires great residental architecture. Mr. Staub was one of the great residental architects and Houston was lucky to call him her own.

Family of 4 killed in Ohio plane crash.

BUCYRUS, Ohio - A plane crashed in a field, killing four members of a Texas family and raining debris on a nearby apartment complex, authorities said.

No injuries were reported on the ground after the crash Sunday evening about 60 miles north of Columbus, state highway patrol Lt. Tony Bradshaw said.

Paul and Lillian Martin, of Austin, Texas, and their two children had been visiting relatives in Oklahoma and was flying to Searsmont, Maine, where the couple owned property, the highway patrol said. All four were killed on impact.

The crash site is about a mile from the Bucyrus-Crawford County Airport. But there was no sign of a distress call or any contact with air traffic control before the crash, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said Monday.

Damage to the Indian Creek Apartments, the complex hit by debris, was minor, authorities said. Residents said they heard the plane's engine sputtering, followed by an explosion.

"When you're listening to something like that, you don't even think to take cover," resident Chris Beck said. "If it had gone a little further, it would have hit the apartments."

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Light rain was reported in the area when the crash happened about 7:10 p.m. National Transportation Safety Board and FAA investigators were heading to the scene, Bradshaw said.

Authorities said Paul Martin was 49 and his wife 45, and identified their children as Kitanna, 10, and Shawn, 11. In Searsmont, Maine, town clerk Kathy Hoey said the Martins often spent time there during the summer. He was involved in marketing, and his wife was a marine archaeologist who wrote a book on Venetian ships, she said.

Rotund merchant ships. Sleek warships. Humble fishing boats and sturdy lighters. Pleasure craft and gondolas. The harbor of Medieval and Renaissance Venice thronged with watercraft. Ships and boats were unquestionably vital to the Venetian Maritime Republic, and her ships were of extreme importance historically. Venice, settled in the fifth century in the lagoons of the Adriatic Sea, was always a maritime nation. Three factors gave Venice advantages over other medieval trading city-states: the city's location, governmental policies, and the skills of her inhabitants. Nearly the entire population of Venice was involved in maritime trade in one way or another. Venice became a key trading agent between the European and Mediterranean world market and her citizens made a fortune. Many details as to the nature of their watercraft, however, have yet to be well understood. Three forms of evidence potentially fill in the void: archaeological remains of ships or boats, written documents concerning vessels, and artistic representations of watercraft. Remains of Venetian ships and boats are scant, and written records, rarely complete in their information. Excavations in the region have revealed only a few small boats, two merchant ships, and a galley, yet this limited sample of the ships and boats of Venice offers the base on which to build. A more accurate understanding of Venetian maritime history is achieved only through integrating all forms of evidence.

Pictorial documents constitute a unique corpus of data, invaluable information for anyone studying the history of ships and boats, yet these documents are rarely adequately studied. I had the pleasure of living and working in Venice with the goal of discovering and documenting maritime art from the region. Maritime themes prevail in the culture and legends important to the area. Ships and boats abound in Venetian mosaics, frescoes, paintings, sculptures, manuscript illuminations, technical treatises and graffiti. For example, the relics of St. Mark (who became patron saint and symbol of Venice) were "pirated" away from Alexandria, hidden from the Muslim customs officials in a basket of pork on board the ship. This story was frequently depicted in Venetian art, and these images show us what Venetians conceptualized when they thought of "a merchant ship". This book, with 158 illustrations, is full of interesting and beautiful maritime art, and offers intriguing details to ponder. The book appeals at one level to the layman interested in archaeology, ship history and art history, but has the substance (index, bibliography), detail and depth to satisfy the researcher.