Texas Books

Updated and enlarged Paperback edition with a new introduction.
Just published
Reviews of the hardcover edition:

"A comprehensive and tolerant study, devoid of jargon. . . . Calder,a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, fairly describes the mixed results of the occupation. . . . Some readers may disagree with Mr. Calder's assessment of the occupation's long-term costs-Dominican hostility to the United States and, less directly, the Trujillo regime that began in 1930-but this is nevertheless an excellent study." -The New York Times Book Review
"A work of exceptional historical analysis. . . . Calder is to be commended for his forthright analysis of the American occupation." -American Historical Review
"A particularly good summary of U.S. imperialism at the turn of
the century and a clear description of Dominican society and the
political system at that time." -Political Science Quarterly

BRUCE CALDER, University of Illinois, the author of Politics of Spirit,wrote a new introduction to this book.

"A comprehensive and tolerant study, devoid of jargon. . . . Calder,
a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago, fairly describes
the mixed results of the occupation. . . . Some readers may disagree
with Mr. Calder's assessment of the occupation's long-term
costs--Dominican hostility to the United States and, less directly,
the Trujillo regime that began in 1930--but this is nevertheless an
excellent study." --The New York Times Book Review

It's pretty depressing that this book is number 1,773,851 on the Amazon sales list. Let's see: Invade and occupy a country to bring it stability and democracy, provoke a stubborn insurgency, antagonize the populace, find it difficult to complete ambitious infrastructure plans, alienate your allies. Where have I heard this before? Let's hope the epilogue-- a 31-year rule by a brutal despot-- doesn't repeat as well. This is a superb treatment of the US occupation of the Dominican Republic that began in 1916; it's thorough, fair, and well-written. If more citizens--and more policy makers--read books such as this, America would be a humbler, wiser, and stronger country. Why has the Uiversity of Texas Press stopped printing it?

I just had a baby and I want her to bilingual. This is a great tool to start with for both her and myself. Since I have to brush up on my Spanish.

The pictures in this book are so detailed. It reminds me so much of many of my family's homes growing up in Texas. Great childrens book.

This is a great book, and Carmen Lomas Garza is a great artist. Everything is so detailed, and she tells you exactly who's who. All her pictures are real memories. There is something going on in every corner

I am also biased, because although I didn't grow up with David, I grew up in Emory. "Tom Turner" is my grandfather, and "Tommy Turner" is my uncle. The book is funny, sweet, sad...all those emotions in one book. I could guess at the identities of several of the people, and my dad helped me with a few. If you don't read any other chapter, read the one about "Mama" and building the playhouse. A fun, quick read about life in a small Texas town in the 50s.

My review is biased because I grew up with the author, David Shiflet. I could not put this book down because it literally tells the story of my childhood in East Texas with all the fun and all the sadness that real life brings. I was particularly interested in the people in the book because they were real characters in our childhood and I knew their real names. Absolutely one of the best books I've read in the last 10 years.

I heard about this book while listening to an interview with the author on NPR. I grew up in a somewhat small town and thought it would be funny to hear someone else's perspective. I ordered a copy and just received it yesterday. Reading through it feels like you're back in the middle of To Kill a Mockingbird, although a lot more funny. It tickles all your emotions; mostly yoru funny bone but it flared up my tear ducts too.

I literally could not put the book down. I usually read a chapter of a book each night but I sped through this one in one evening. Every short story makes you anxious for the next one. He really has a way with putting into words all your senses and puts you in the middle of Smalltown, USA. You feel it, smell it and taste it. I've ordered several more to hand out. Truly a fun and refreshing read.

This is the best travel book, I have come across. I have used it for one year and it has not failed me. The restaurant, lodging and daytrip sections have been particularly helpful. You can't go wrong with this book.

Thank you Hilary and Cam. I hope the 3rd Edition is on its way.

This book is not dry like many guidebooks can be. The authors give enough history and background to put their topics in context, but not so much that it becomes boring. I bought this book because I am considering moving to Austin from Northern California, and every question I have is answered in this book. Specific descriptions of individual neighborhoods, indoor and outdoor activities, annual events, arts and music, food, and the list goes on.

I cannot reccommend this book strongly enough.

This book is full of details and descriptions. Everything you could want to know about Austin. Great for travellers as well as prospective residents (has chapters about neighborhoods and schools). The CitySmart guide is a good supplement, but not nearly as thorough.

I am a fan of Hedwig Gorski's work since I started researching performance poetry as a historical predecessor to Slam poetry. I think I found something better than slam, and it is performance poetry. I have to recommend this book along with a CD I link here of the someone who is called the original performance poet, Hedwig Gorski, because she made up the term to publicize what she started doing in the late 1970s. This is a great book that shows how she started with what she called in a recent interview as "neo-verse drama" coupled with "conceptual art." You don't hear about literary artists doing anything this new and daring anymore. Read this book if you want to read about something so bizarre and unexpected, that it will spin your ideas about poetry around 360 degrees. The book reminds me of a real-world Harry Potter.

I also recommend this CD of spoken word by Hedwig Gorski because it shows how she evolved what she was doing in the book as a literary performance artist into what she began to call performance poetry. Here is the link.
The Performance Poetry of Hedwig Gorski and East of Eden Band: Send in the Clown (Poets Media Projects)

The band work like that in the "Clown" CD comes after the performance poetry theater events archived in the book. The book presents a look of pure creativity in its most inventive form. If anything, the CD sounds tamer to be much more radio friendly and even entertaining. She comes "as close to singing as anyone can without really singing," a playwright wrote of Gorski vocals. It is really something that should be part of every slam poet's collection. Has anyone been thinking that all the slam poets are beginnig to sound the same? How about Def Poets? Are they all beginnning to deliver the same style of poems and voice inflections? I think so. That is why performance poetry is so much better than slam. Especially the one and only original performance poet, so-called, on the CD. Gotta hear it and own it before the CDs disappear. Really a treat.

So buy the book. It is a must have, signed and numbered. I have it and think it will become one of the most valuable items in my alternative poetry/art collection, a huge part to document, sort of, my collection of audio poetry. I have them all, Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Giorno, but this is much more rare and post-Beat/pre-slam. But buy both the CD I linked to and this book to understand how performance poetry evolved from Gorski's "neo-verse drama" literary performance art if you are a collector and maybe poetry historian. Better 'n slam and regular poetry.

Hey, they should make a movie from this book!

What ever happened to the American avant-garde? To the freedom of interdisciplinary aesthetics? Avant-gardists, artists, poets and dramatists, are tucked away in academia. They used to be out and available in public before the Congressional witch hunts designed to demolish the National Endowment for the Arts. Republicans have been after NEA funds for military efforts since the 1980s. This book has been waylaid by this sublimation and archived before it ever made it to press, rumors have it. Wow! Here it is. Some of these people have died, but the work is alive and full of the spirit of experimentalism and American optimism and democracy of the sort unknown to the neo-cons. It is all-inclusive and promotes an egalitarian search for selfhood. That is probably why the nod to Romanticism--intoxication from the earnest and honest search for self. Austin, Texas, was once among the "bohemian trade routes" artists and musicians traveled between coasts. What a flashback to an American experience by American dreamers of the type retro-government tried to destroy. Avant-garde and experimental art are not dirty words except to those who exclude all except for the puritanical, anti-democratic, morally convoluted, politicians supporting the Bush presidency. Save America from their nightmare. Return democracy to the United States. (This political rant is not part of the book in any way. It reflects my own disappointments about our nation's current direction.) Anyway, taste the feelings of pure enthusiasm and honesty that prevailed before art was shackled or compartmentalized. All repressive regimes imprison or execute the artists, writers, intellectuals, and free-thinkers first. Where has the American avant-garde gone? Compare Heathcliff to what is labeled "experimental" or "avant-garde" since then.
We need a cultural revolution in USA. I read an article that called Hedwig Gorski the "American Mayakovsky." Both so-called "beloved" endearing but bewildering personalities, or something like that, it said.
This chapbook, Polish Gypsy with Ghost: And Special Guests, with audio record contains Roxy Gordon (Choctow Indian) with his band, Joy Cole, WOW!, and Hedwig Gorski in 1980s with East of Eden. It is a great find and progresses a few of the bunch in INTOXICATION outside of Austin city limits, and it is great to hear their voices. Joy Cole must have been the bomb. Wish there were more of her material avaialable, but I can't locate it. I would have loved being a fly on the wall when these two women, Gorski and Cole, were together!!!!!
Polish Gypsy with Ghost (Poets Media Projects, Vol. 4)

The portrait of Austin, Texas, is much different than the one many people might have. So this is the milieu that spawned Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lucinda Williams, Daniel Johnston, Townes van Zandt, and Hedwig Gorski. Reality proves to be crazier than fiction. Fiction is so much more organized than this "pedestrian" theater art group was.

I was in conflict, fluctuating between agreeing with Plato's criticism of art and poetry, and contrasting the surreal mind set of the real folks and their bizarre ambitions and activities with other types of delusions that rule our lives. The whimsy of art and the possibility for stark honesty seem to have disappeared in social striving for political correctness over these past three decades. What a mind-trip it is to go back to these "innocent" times, post-hippie-dippie but pre-Reagan, when honest soul searching happened using invented methodology. I guess that is what they mean by Conceptual Art. We probably need the magic of exercising our free wills fully and the ideal of deep soul searching that late 19th century Romanticism was about. That is definitely a positive type of intoxication.

Reading the book makes me examine where I go wrong and how America got here from there in 1978. The sense of wonder, invention, and complete personal freedom seems almost vanished. Whether what the book documents is valid art, though, could be in question. Isn't art more than manifesting a concept? I have always wondered, too, if all experimental theater can be classified as avant-garde. The book doesn't really settle into any genre or category completely. It's verse drama, poetry, memoir, essay, performance art, literary art, and some theory. It also includes a short-short story. The Afterward defines Conceptual Art, but I still don't understand what that is.

The real people come through honestly, though, and their stories bring up divine ideas to investigate while being entertained and bewildered by this so-called cast of characters. They lived more intensely and honestly during the months the book documents than most of us dare. I would like to know what they are up to now. When is the sequel coming out?

This is a book you will share with friends and revisit time after time. Few books make me laugh aloud--this one did. Don't let this one pass you by.

Absorbing and adventurous reflections of life on a Texas farm as told by a precocious adolescent girl to her best (same-named) girlfriend. Have fun remembering drive-in movies, first dances, second best friends, and the first time driving the tractor!

This is a funny and realistic view of life in a small Texas town as seen through the eyes of a young girl writing to a friend. Can be read by children 9 and up. Best loved by mothers who remember when. Highly recommend.

This is such a wonderful book! I commend the author for filling it with all kinds of wonderful, educational, and entertaining facts about Texas. It is a great teaching tool and I would recommend it for the classroom as well. Each letter is presented in verse, which children AND adults retain much easier. Being a proud Texan already, this book helped many elements of our wonderful state resurface in my memory as well as teaching me a few new things to additionally be proud of. If I was a teacher, I would want this entire series in my classroom. I give 5 LONE STARS to the author and illustrator!

This book is part of Sleeping Bear Press' State Alphabet series. Now, some of these books need some liberal stretching to get 26 verses of relevant information. Not this one, though. We're talking Texas here. If there's one state that could easily fill an ABC book, it's the Lone Star State.

Carol Crane has done a very nice job selecting a wide range of Texas locations, events, and people to use in this book. Besides the usual suspects, such as the Alamo, the book mentions Scott Joplin, armadillos, Quanah Parker, Spindletop, Dr. Pepper, and, of course, bluebonnets.

The book's layout, like that of the others in this series, features a very interesting two-tiered system. The main flow of the book is carried by a series of 4-line verses, one per letter. This portion is suitable for reading to pre-readers. Along the sides of each page, relevant factoids are given, further illuminating the main verse. This makes the book hold appeal for older readers, probably even up to 4th or 5th graders.

Alan Stacy's well-drawn illustrations bring the subjects to life, especially for younger readers.

I found this book to be a great way to deliver a working knowledge of Texas. Highly Recommended.

I am going to use this next year with my students. They will then make a Texas ABC book of their own. I love it!

The Big Bend is a rugged, powerful, unforgiving, and beautiful country,that exists on a scale that most of civilized man never experiences. Most casual tourists who visit Big Bend are disappointed, as I was, in their pitiful efforts at capturing the essence of the experience both in words and 35mm photographs. This is a land that does not exist in standard format; it is truly a large-format landscape that requires exceptional verbal ability and skillful large-format photography to do it justice. Gentry Steele has done just that. His love and knowledge of the Big Bend country are clearly evident in his text and, especially in his striking black and white photographs. A hearty thumbs up for this spectacular book!

This is the kind of book you return to again and again. Steele has both consumate technical skill and the eye (and heart) of an artist. The composition of each photograph is striking, but it is the play of light and shadow -- across canyon walls, over abandoned adobe buildings, and the occasional plant -- that will delight and amaze the viewer. Steele used the intense desert light as his accomplice, creating art out of light, shade, rocks, and space. Each photograph is accompanied by a brief description of what you are seeing and where the photograph was taken. Steele's love and respect for the Big Bend region is evident on every page. This isn't the kind of book to be flipped through casually. I find myself lingering over each page, savoring the image, returning over and over to particular images, seeing some new each time. I plan to give this book to friends and relatives for Christmas this year. I confess to owning two D. Gentry Steele photographic prints, including the one chosen for the cover of this book. Highly recommended!!

Gentry Steele conveys the essence of the remarkable northern extension of the Great Chihuahuan Desert in his well-written text and supliments it admirably with supurb large format photographs. An excellent introduction to one of America's least explored regions.

I got my first lasater order and have been eating way too much beef the last few days. I feel fine. The beef tastes herbier than the grainfed organic beef that I have been eating from Whole Foods for the past few years. The burgers from grinding up the chuck roast is better than the "sirloin" ground beef from Whole Foods. One thing, the bags are not sealed well and defrosting the chuck in my brand new Whirlpool created a pool of blood all over my spring water bottles on the lower shelf. It was madness and now I have to clean it up. With Sal Suds from Dr. Bronner, of course. The burgers are from the chuck roast that was exposed to air and bled all over my fridge the last few days and it smelled fine, tasted very good. It smelled and tasted better than "fresh" sirloin I got from Whole Food. I'm still shaken up over the mess I have to clean up though. The burgers are delicious. The quality and freshness of this beef is unlike anything I have gotten from the supermarket.

The Lasater Philosophy of Cattle Raising, by Laurence Lasater, is an outstanding basic guideline for economic selection of cattle that can used in either an extensive or management intensive grazing system based on sound environmental practices.

The Lasater Philosophy was developed by Tom Lasater, one of the founders of the Beefmaster breed; and a succesful cattleman in Texas. His philosophy has several basic principals that can make any livestock breeder succesful in profitable production. He covers topice like selecting animals that will be hardy and performance oriented in your environment. Basically, select those animals that will be coming from a harsher environment than the one that you will be putting them in. If they come from an easier climate, one can expect performance to drop. Lasater also covers the importance of the bull and the cow in making genetic decisions and how fertility should be measured.

Perhaps the hardest part of the philosophy to grasp is the rather strict cull policy. Any female animal is culled if they lose an offspring for any reason. That means predators, scours, or even lightning. Keeping the best of the best, should prove to produce consistency and quality over the long run.

I found this book to be excellent and recomend it to any breeders of any livestock who are interested in environmentally and grass based production methods. We currently use these principles in correlation with Linear Measurement to manage one hundred head of Belted Galloway cattle. Remeber, if you replace the words cattle raising with sheep, hog, or goat raising, the principals are still quite useful. Excellent photos of the Lasater type Beefmaster are included in all chapters and easily illustrate how these animals should appear in actual management conditions.

As a beginning cattleman I found the book extremely helpful and one can use the philosophy in all aspects of ranching. Great book for all interested in cattle and land stewardship.

Jeff Carroll has a unique way of presenting the history of Texas...from the perspective of the courageous people that settled this great land. While you won't find many of his stories in traditional Texas History text books, they are nonetheless, just as important. In fact, I will go as far as to say that these stories and accounts are more important because they bring the history of Texas to a personal level - they bring it to life!

The stories are fun to read and very educational. I've read all of the 'Legendary Texas' volumes at least twice and will enjoy reading them again! I highly recommend these books for anyone that enjoys a good story and especially those who enjoy Texas History.

Contains easy-to-read stories of Texas Heritage. Makes historical understanding fun. I never tired of Mr. Carroll's vivid and unique storytelling. A must for anyone who is usually bored with history and for the historically-inclined.

As a Texana historian I scour book shelves to find the "New Book" with stories of Real people. This author has indeed done his research with a zesty writing style that will leave you waiting for the next story. This is a "Must read" if you like the West.