Never written about before, this Texas Ranger lived during an era rarely researched. Orphaned as a child, he and his siblings were reared by relatives. Texas in late 1800 was still on the fringes of frontier days. The clean country living fostered times when a man's word was his bond. After schooldays Ransom began working in law enforcement, soon marrying his childhood sweetheart. During the Spanish-American War, he served twice as a volunteer in the Philippines. Between bullets he wrote to his beloved daughter, "little Bee." He was one of the heroes who rescued, after a grueling six-month search in the jungle, Lt. Gilmore and his men who had been kidnapped by the savage enemy. In 1905 he joined the Texas Rangers, then served as a detective in Houston, where he was in a shoot-out downtown. Mayor Baldwin Rice appointed him Chief of Police, a career described in the newspaper as being "short but spectacular." Ransom served two more times in the Texas Rangers, captain of his company each time. He was famous for his incredible marksmanship. A devoted family man, he was loved by the law-abiding and feared by the criminals. Incorruptible, he believed no man was above the law, stepping on toes of high public officials when necessary. He was assassinated in 1918 at age 44. Although this was covered up as an accident, clues in archival records lead to another conclusion. Book jacket.

Laisha and Kenitay had known each other as children. Fate reunites them when Kenitay returns to west Texas to track down the man who murdered his Apache father. He is blinded by vengeance. Leisha sees only the man she has always loved. Drawn by his need, Leisha rides at the side of this rebel on his quest for justice.

Published to high praise--"groundbreaking . . . a landmark" (Poets and Writers)--this was the first anthology to celebrate the diversity of women who write.

He gave Sarah her first kiss when she was 13. Now, Billy Cooper has taken up with a gang of outlaws. So 17-year-old Sarah Bass rides out to rescue the man she loves from a life of crime. But when innocent wiles lock them in a shotgun marriage, Sarah must come to terms with the vengeful passions that drive Billy--passions destined to unite them.

It’s 1953 and life is good at Shady’s, the Sweetwater brothers’ fish camp, dancehall, and beer joint on Ransom Island. The biggest event in the island’s history is coming up—an integrated dance featuring Duke Ellington. It’s a daring idea for fifties-era Texas, and not everyone is happy about it. But soon interracial dancing becomes the least of the Sweetwaters’ problems. Galveston mobsters track a runaway girl to Shady’s and decide the offbeat island is the perfect place to diversify their illegal rackets . . . And God help anyone who gets in their way. Suddenly, life on sleepy little Ransom Island becomes crowded, complicated—and very, very dangerous.

In 1946 historian William Ransom Hogan, then a professor at the University of Oklahoma, published The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History. The book became an instant classic of Texas historical literature. In an era when scholarly writing on Texas history still gave disproportionate emphasis to military and political history and "great men," this book emphasized the lives of ordinary people as well as of the legendary figures of the Republic period. Hogan knew how to be a "revisionist" in the best sense of the term, offering up fresh interpretations that, as he put it, challenged the "pleasant myth" of "heroic" Texas history. Yet he also managed to balance his revisionism with an acknowledgment that the Republic era did indeed embody much that was heroic, even legendary. Naturally The Texas Republic is a product of its time. If written today, it would undoubtedly pay more attention to African Americans and Tejanos, for example. But whatever shortcomings the book may have in the eyes of modern readers, even those shortcomings make the book valuable in the college classroom, because they serve as important points of discussion for students and professors.

Like many Texans, Michael H. Marvins has been making regular pilgrimages to the Hill Country for much of his life. Traveling the back roads of the Texas Hill Country, cameras always poised for action, Marvins has captured the excitement of small-town rodeos, savored the mesquite-smoked atmosphere of local eateries, observed the daily lives of people on the land, and admired the scenic beauty of the landscape and its natural denizens. Most important, he has captured his impressions with the skilled eye of a master photographer. Popular Houston Chronicle columnist Joe Holley opens The Texas Hill Country by highlighting the many qualities that draw Marvins—and so many of the rest of us—to the Hill Country. Next, Roy Flukinger, senior curator of photography at the University of Texas’ Harry Ransom Center, discusses Marvins’s unique photographic vision and the fresh ways in which he helps us see this popular region. But the principal focus in The Texas Hill Country: A Photographic Adventure centers on Marvins’s artful images, inviting readers to share his unique perspectives on this enchanting and popular region. He takes us with him on leisurely backcountry drives and into the laughter and swirl of dance halls. His lens embraces the people, the land, and the culture that keep so many Texans—and would-be Texans—coming back to the Hill Country again and again. The author's proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation.

In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand. Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainability. INSIDE THIS BOOK:Introduction: the Living Waters of Texas—Ken KramerWhere the First Raindrop Falls—David K. LangfordSpringing to Life: Keeping the Waters Flowing—Dianne WassenichHooked on Rivers—Myron J. HessFalling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East Texas—Janice BezansonOn the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban Environment—Mary Ellen WhitworthA Taste of the Marsh—Susan Raleigh KaderkaBays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?—Ben F. Vaughan IIIRio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the Desert—Mary E. KellyLeaving a Water Legacy for Texas—Ann Thomas HamiltonTexas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the Flow—Ken Kramer

Winner, Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association, 2012 The Gernsheim Collection is one of the most important collections of photography in the world. Amassed by the renowned husband-and-wife team of Helmut and Alison Gernsheim between 1945 and 1963, it contains an unparalleled range of images, beginning with the world's earliest-known photograph from nature, made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826. The Gernsheim Collection includes some 35,000 major and representative photographs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a research library of some 3,600 books, journals, and published articles; about 250 autographed letters and manuscripts; and more than 200 pieces of early photographic equipment. Its encyclopedic scope—as well as the expertise and taste with which the Gernsheims built the collection—makes the Gernsheim Collection one of the world's premier resources for the study and appreciation of the development of photography. Published to coincide with a landmark exhibition staged by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which owns the collection, this volume presents masterpieces of the Gernsheim Collection, along with lesser-known images of great historical significance. Arranged in chronological order, this selection effectively constitutes a visual history of photography from its beginnings to the mid-twentieth century. Each full-page image is accompanied by an extensive annotation in which Roy Flukinger describes the photograph's place in the evolution of photography and also within the Gernsheim Collection. Flukinger also provides an enlightening introduction in which he traces the Gernsheims' passionate careers as collectors and pioneering historians of photography, showing how their untiring efforts significantly contributed to the acceptance of photography as a fine art and as a field worthy of intellectual inquiry. Appreciations of the Gernsheim Collection by Alison Nordström and Mark Haworth-Booth confirm its singular importance as a collection of outstanding breadth and depth in the history of photography.