This comprehensive story of logging, lumbering, and forest conservation in Texas records the industry's history from the earliest days of the Republic, when a few isolated operations provided for local needs, through the first four decades of the twentieth century. Supplemented by over one hundred photographs, many never before published, the text re-creates Texas' heyday as one of the nation's leading timber producers. At that time, the forested area equaled the state of Indiana. In the words of one visitor, the forest was "like a vast wave that has rolled in upon a level beach ... creeping forward, thinning out, and finally disappearing, except where, along a river course, it pushes far inland."

When the first European explorers reached the southern shores of North America in the early seventeenth century, they faced a solid forest that stretched all the way from the Atlantic coast to eastern Texas and Oklahoma. The ways in which they and their descendants used—and abused—the forest over the next nearly four hundred years form the subject of The Southern Forest. In chapters on the explorers, pioneers, lumbermen, boatbuilders, and foresters, Laurence Walker chronicles the constant demands that people have made on forest resources in the South. He shows how the land's very abundance became its greatest liability, as people overhunted the animals, clearcut the forests, and wore out the soil with unwise farming practices—all in a mistaken belief that the forest's bounty (including new ground to be broken) was inexhaustible. With the advent of professional forestry in the twentieth century, however, the southern forest has made a comeback. A professional forester himself, Walker speaks from experience of the difficulties that foresters face in balancing competing interests in the forest. How, for example, does one reconcile the country's growing demand for paper products with the insistence of environmental groups that no trees be cut? Should national forests be strictly recreational areas, or can they support some industrial logging? How do foresters avoid using chemical pesticides when the public protests such natural management practices as prescribed burning and tree cutting? This personal view of the southern forest adds a new dimension to the study of southern history and culture. The primeval southern forest is gone, but, with careful husbandry on the part of all users, the regenerated southern forest may indeed prove to be the inexhaustible resource of which our ancestors dreamed.

At a public picnic in the South in the 1890s, a young man paid five cents for his first chance to hear the revolutionary Edison talking machine. He eagerly listened as the soundman placed the needle down, only to find that through the tubes he held to his ears came the chilling sounds of a lynching. In this story, with its blend of new technology and old hatreds, genteel picnics and mob violence, Edward Ayers captures the history of the South in the years between Reconstruction and the turn of the century. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic Redeemers swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crows laws and disfranchisement. The teeming nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. When this book first appeared in 1992, it won a broad array of prizes and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The citation for the National Book Award declared Promise of the New South a vivid and masterfully detailed picture of the evolution of a new society. The Atlantic called it "one of the broadest and most original interpretations of southern history of the past twenty years.

This book, an economic history of the interwar era, is the first major reinterpretation of the New Deal in thirty years.

The forces that turned Northeast Texas from a poverty-stricken region into a more economically prosperous area. Winner, Texas State Historical Association Coral H. Tullis Memorial Award for best book on Texas history, 2001 Federal New Deal programs of the 1930s and World War II are often credited for transforming the South, including Texas, from a poverty-stricken region mired in Confederate mythology into a more modern and economically prosperous part of the United States. By contrast, this history of Northeast Texas, one of the most culturally southern areas of the state, offers persuasive evidence that political, economic, and social modernization began long before the 1930s and prepared Texans to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the New Deal and World War II. Walter L. Buenger draws on extensive primary research to tell the story of change in Northeast Texas from 1887 to 1930. Moving beyond previous, more narrowly focused studies of the South, he traces and interconnects the significant changes that occurred in politics, race relations, business and the economy, and women's roles. He also reveals how altered memories of the past and the emergence of a stronger identification with Texas history affected all facets of life in Northeast Texas.

A comprehensive history of the sawmill towns of East Texas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sawmill communities were once the thriving centers of East Texas life. Many sprang up almost overnight in a pine forest clearing, and many disappeared just as quickly after the company “cut out” its last trees. But during their heyday, these company towns made Texas the nation’s third-largest lumber producer and created a colorful way of life that lingers in the memories of the remaining former residents and their children and grandchildren. Drawing on oral history, company records, and other archival sources, Sitton and Conrad recreate the lifeways of the sawmill communities. They describe the companies that ran the mills and the different kinds of jobs involved in logging and milling. They depict the usually rough-hewn towns, with their central mill, unpainted houses, company store, and schools, churches, and community centers. And they characterize the lives of the people, from the hard, awesomely dangerous mill work to the dances, picnics, and other recreations that offered welcome diversions. Winner, T. H. Fehrenbach Award, Texas Historical Commission “After completing the book, I truly understood life in the sawmill communities, intellectually and emotionally. It was very satisfying. Conrad and Sitton write in such a manner to make one feel the hard life, smell the sawdust, and share the danger of the mills. The book is compelling and stimulating.” —Robert L. Schaadt, Director-Archivist, Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center

Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving our dwellings has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry that includes countless books, consumer magazines, a cable television network, and thousands of home improvement stores. Building a Market charts the rise of the home improvement industry in the United States and Canada from the end of World War I into the late 1950s. Drawing on the insights of business, social, and urban historians, and making use of a wide range of documentary sources, Richard Harris shows how the middle-class preference for home ownership first emerged in the 1920s—and how manufacturers, retailers, and the federal government combined to establish the massive home improvement market and a pervasive culture of Do-It-Yourself. Deeply insightful, Building a Market is the carefully crafted history of the emergence and evolution of a home improvement revolution that changed not just American culture but the American landscape as well.

From pre-European contact to the present day, people living in what is now the United States have constantly manipulated their environment. The use of natural resources – animals, plants, minerals, water, and land – has produced both prosperity and destruction, reshaping the land and human responses to it. The Environment in American History is a clear and comprehensive account that vividly shows students how the environment played a defining role in the development of American society. Organized in thirteen chronological chapters, and extensively illustrated, the book covers themes including: Native peoples’ manipulation of the environment across various regions The role of Old World livestock and diseases in European conquests Plantation agriculture and slavery Westward expansion and the exploitation of natural resources Environmental influences on the Civil War and World War II The emergence and development of environmental activism Industrialization, and the growth of cities and suburbs Ecological restoration and climate change Each chapter includes a selection of primary documents, and the book is supported by a robust companion website that provides further resources for students and instructors. Drawing on current scholarship, Jeff Crane has created a vibrant and engaging survey that is a key resource for all students of American environmental history.

From two veteran ecologists comes a new and sweeping exploration of the natural history of Texas in all its biological diversity and geological variation. Few states, if any, can match Texas for its myriad species, past and present, and its many distinctive landscapes, from prairie grasslands and hardwood forests to coastal lagoons and desert mountains. Beginning with the stories of how biologists and naturalists have over time defined the ecological areas of this very big state, the authors visit each of the eleven regions, including the Texas coast. They describe the dominant flora and fauna of each, explain the defining geologic features, and highlight each region’s unique characteristics, such as carnivorous plants in the Piney Woods and returning black bears in the Trans-Pecos. Throughout, the authors remain especially conscious of the conservation and management issues affecting the natural resources of each region, revealing their deep affection for and knowledge about the state. Bolstered by a glossary, further reading suggestions, a description of state symbols, and an appendix of scientific names, this is an educational and essential volume for all Texans. ECOREGIONS Piney Woods Post Oak Savanna Blackland Prairies Cross Timbers and Prairies Rolling Plains Edwards Plateau High Plains Trans-Pecos South Texas Brushland Coastal Prairies Texas Gulf Coast