A Texas Destiny, The Saga Begins is the prequel to Joe Bax’s award winning reconstruction-era epic, The General and Monaville, Texas. The intoxicating notion of free land draws characters to Texas during the early period of Stephen F. Austin’s colony, including the family of young Leander Wilhite. When a yellow fever epidemic takes his family, Leander finds himself the owner of over six thousand acres of cotton-growing land. The responsibility matures him beyond his years. The community of Monaville looks to Leander for leadership. He becomes a ranger, chasing Comanches and attempting to protect his neighbors. With the fall of the Alamo, his company joins Sam Houston at San Jacinto. Later, Leander and his community become embroiled in the National debate over slavery issues. The birth of his mulatto son intensifies long-strained friendships and the American Civil War heats to a boiling point. A Texas Destiny, The Saga Begins dusts off old tales that have long since been dropped from the history books. It follows the beloved characters the General, the Colonel, Momma Mae and Blue, and reveals what made them the individuals that they had become. Fictional and historical figures are imaginatively intertwined as Austin, Houston, Bowie, Rose, Zuber, the notorious Pamela Mann, and the entire cast play out their parts on a giant stage called Texas.

While observing the childhood of his grandsons, Joe G. Bax realized that his own childhood stood in stark contrast to theirs, and his childhood could never be repeated. Contemporary children, completely supervised and engulfed in technology, could never imagine a childhood of complete freedom, limited only by the boundaries of your imagination. Bax grew up in Meadowbrook, a subdivision in Houston, Texas. Meadowbrook would best be described as a neighborhood designed for the free and unimpeded flow of kids and dogs. On balance, it was an ordinary neighborhood of average families. Yet, those people would make a lasting impression on the children who were fortunate to grow up there. Collectively, Meadowbrook rose to the top as the most influential force in the development of its children. Bax walks you back in time. Using his adolescent voice, he takes you through the pains and joys of his adolescence, ages 5 to 12, during a much simpler time, 1953 to 1961. Let the author guide you through a different era, when respect and tolerance were a given. Discover first hand, how a young boy actually learned of war, college, sex and race. A chronic eavesdropper who relished adult conversations, Bax will show the reader the true educational process at work. Contemporary parents will be amazed at the geographic freedom of an entire generation. As you join this stroll down the streets and alleys of Meadowbrook, be prepared for a lot of humor, some interesting characters and more than a few touching moments.

"Chasing the Sun" is a guide to Western fiction with more than 1,350 entries, including 59 reviews of the author's personal favorites, organized around theme.

He’s fallen for a woman . . . Anxious to meet her soon-to-be husband, Dallas Leigh, for the first time, mail-order bride Amelia Carson is en route to Fort Worth, Texas. When she steps off the train and locks eyes with her betrothed, she immediately feels drawn to him. But the cowboy standing before her isn’t Dallas. Instead, Dallas’s brother Houston has been sent to accompany her on the three-week journey to the ranch where she’ll begin her new life. Who belongs to another . . . The war Houston Leigh fought has left him with visible scars, a daily reminder of his cowardice on the battlefield. Denying his intense attraction to Amelia, he is determined to deliver her untouched, as promised. But during their long dangerous trip, he can’t help but admire her inner strength and fearlessness. And when she looks at him—as if she can see beyond his scarred face and read his innermost thoughts—he loses his heart to her. Now as they near the ranch, Houston must choose to remain loyal to his brother—or find the courage to fight for the woman he’s convinced is his destiny . . .

The Persistence of Whiteness investigates the representation and narration of race in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Ideologies of class, ethnicity, gender, nation and sexuality are central concerns as are the growth of the business of filmmaking. Focusing on representations of Black, Asian, Jewish, Latina/o and Native Americans identities, this collection also shows how whiteness is a fact everywhere in contemporary Hollywood cinema, crossing audiences, authors, genres, studios and styles. Bringing together essays from respected film scholars, the collection covers a wide range of important films, including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Color Purple, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Essays also consider genres from the western to blaxploitation and new black cinema; provocative filmmakers such as Melvin Van Peebles and Steven Spielberg and stars including Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Lopez. Daniel Bernardi provides an in-depth introduction, comprehensive bibliography and a helpful glossary of terms, thus providing students with an accessible and topical collection on race and ethnicity in contemporary cinema.

From afar, Latin America looks like a blurry tableau: devoid of defining lines, particularities and nuances. Little is understood about the idiosyncrasies of Latin-Americans, their cultural identity and social values. Differences between Brazilians and Spanish Americans, or amid the diverse Spanish American countries, are not sufficiently understood. Even less is known about the amplitude of the Iberian heritage of such countries, or about the miscegenation and acculturation processes that took place among their different constitutive races. There is no clarity regarding the Western nature of Latin America or about its cultural affinities with Latin Europe. Nor is there sufficient understanding of the links between the Latin population of the United States and the inhabitants of Latin America.This book aims to fill the gap by focusing on Latin America's history, culture, identity and idiosyncrasies. It serves as a guide to understand regional attitudes, meanings and behavioural differences of the region. It also analyses the present economic situation of the region, while trying to predict the future of the region. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will be of interest to readers keen on exploring the region for potential opportunities in trade, investment or any other kind of business and cultural endeavor.

The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.