Bøger udgivet af Texas Christian University Press

The saga of Cynthia Ann Parker is well known to historians of the Texas frontier and readers of historical fiction. Kidnapped from Parker's Fort near Mexia by raiding Comanches in 1836, she was completely assimilated into the Noconi band. She married tribal leader Peta Nocona and bore him two sons, Quanah and Pecos, and a daughter, Toh-Tsee-Ah. Late in 1860, she and toddler Topsannah (as the whites called her) were recaptured by Texas Rangers and returned to ""civilization"" and the extended Parker clan. Cynthia Ann never adapted to white culture. She was shunted from one Parker family to another, living in constant grief and doubt—about herself and her daughter and about the fate of her Comanche family still on the prairies. Convinced she was a captive of the Texans, Cynthia Ann was determined to escape to the high plains and the Comanche way. The Parkers neither cared for nor understood Cynthia Ann's obsession with returning to her homeland and her people.Charles Brashear's thoroughly researched and vividly realistic novel, Killing Cynthia Ann, tells the story as it might have happened and turns it into a compelling and unforgettable drama. "Basing his fictional speculation on a careful reading of the historical record, Brashear chronicles the heartbreaking descent into despair of a proud woman who could not forget her warrior husband and two sons. . . [The public] will appreciate this engrossing novel, which can also supply a personal perspective to supplement history texts.”--Library Journal

In the 1870s, buffalo hunters moved onto the High Plains of Texas. The Plains Indians watched hunters slaughter the animals that gave them shelter and clothing, food and weapons. The author presents both sides of a clash between cultures. With a firm grasp of Comanche life, he describes 'The People' as very human and very threatened.

As he flees to the sanctuary of Mexico, Chacho Fernandez is unaware of the fuel he has added to the already simmering racial hatreds in and around the quiet town of Domingo, Texas. Through events set in motion by a misunderstanding, Chacho becomes a folk hero to his people and a dangerous fugitive to a group of zealous lawmen.

While the Spanish are often remembered for bringing smallpox and other diseases to the New World, little attention is paid to their efforts to eradicate one of the greatest killers in human history. In the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, King Charles IV funded and dispatched a humanitarian mission aimed at inoculating all of the imperial colonies in Latin America and Asia. Known as the Balmis Expedition, it was launched in 1803 and utilized Edward Jenner's new method by which to vaccinate people against smallpox. Using a human daisy chain of two dozen orphans, Dr. Francisco Balmis was able to bring the live virus across the Atlantic Ocean and later the Pacific. Yet, despite saving hundreds of thousands of lives, the history of the expedition was largely forgotten for the next two hundred years. Many at the time resented the Scientific Absolutism that the mission represented, doing away with old methods and cures, as well as its economic implications. Finally, the onset of revolutions in the region only a few years later resulted in a rewriting of history which necessarily eliminated any positive accomplishments of the Bourbons. The Expedition became yet another victim of the Black Legend in Latin American historiography. A voyage which Jenner himself once called "an example of philanthropy so noble, so extensive," and which served as the precursor for future world efforts at disease management, became forgotten. Yet despite this, its effects on the population and on public health efforts in the region were profound. The Balmis Expedition represented a perfect confluence of the tenets of the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and Absolutism, and bridged the divided between medieval and modern public health management.

"In 2017, the centennial of our nation's military entry into World War I provided the perfect opportunity to bring the war's historical lessons to a wider American and Texan audience. Working in tandem with national and grassroots organizations such as the United States World War One Centennial Commission and Texas World War I Centennial Commemoration Association, the Texas Historical Commission was tasked by the governor with coordinating the state's response to the centennial. This placed the agency in the unique position of being able to document fresh perspectives on the state's role in the conflict and its memorialization. In the United States, public memory of World War I remains weak, especially compared to other conflicts. A YouGov poll from 2014 revealed that while three quarters of Americans believed the history of World War I to be relevant today, only half could correctly name the year hostilities began and only a little more than a third knew when the United States entered the war. This lack of cultural memory is in stark contrast to the war's historical significance: empires fell and new nations were born, instability brought about yet another world war and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and accelerated social reforms saw traditional conventions rejected and minority violence increase. The First World War is easily one of the most transformative and important events of world history. A Centennial Perspective on Texas in the Great War provides a record of the memorialization of World War I in Texas in 2017 as well as offering critical background on the importance of the conflict in the United States and Texas today"--

"Javier Espinoza manages a hungry young rock band without quite enough money to record their debut album. When the slog of playing their hearts out for tiny crowds in Texas border towns gets to be too much, a dangerous idea takes hold of Javier: smuggling migrants across the border for cash. He knows a thing or two about it, after all. He made his own perilous journey from a farm in Coahuila to the US at age eleven, surviving brutal coyotes and dodging authorities. So he and the band find a ramshackle tour bus and an alibi, and are soon plunged into the heart of Juâarez, where the harsh realities of human trafficking, corrupt border agents, and ruthless cartels are waiting. "Travis Burkett knows these roads, these horizons, these fencelines, and, most importantly, the pulse and grit of the border he takes us back and forth across."--Stephen Graham Jones"--

"Hank O'Sullivan, a 65-year-old widower, lives a routine life, nursing his loneliness with cocktails at his favorite local bar in Austin, Texas. A brawl lands him in jail, and he's sentenced to community service, picking up trash beside the highway. Luis Delgado lives with his single father in a small apartment. The 16-year-old troublemaker has remarkable artistic abilities, but his penchant for sneaking out and trespassing onto rooftops late at night also lands him in community service. These loners form an unlikely friendship, and when Hank tells Luis about his desire to drive to Houston to reconnect with an old flame, Luis asks to tag along. Luis's estranged mother lives in Houston, and he has been saving money for a trip, dreaming of reconnecting with her. Hank agrees, setting in motion a raucous road trip in a hot pink 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. The Codger and the Sparrow is a rambunctious story about an unusual friendship stretching across the generations"--

Hewey Calloway has a problem. In his West Texas home of 1906, the land and the way of life that he loves are changing too quickly for his taste.Hewey dreams of freedom - he wants only to be a footloose horseback cowboy, endlessly wandering the open range. But the open range of his childhood is slowly disappearing: land is being parceled out, and barbed-wire fences are springing up all over. As if that weren't enough, cars and other machines are invading Hewey's simple cowboy life, stinking up the area and threatening to replace horse travel. As Hewey struggles against the relentless stream of progress, he comes to realize that the simple life of his childhood is gone, that a man can't live a life whose time has passed, and that every choice he makes - even those that lead to happiness - requires a sacrifice.

Life is an amazing adventure. Every moment contains remarkable beauty. Yet we are often hypnotized by popular notions that everyday experience will somehow leave us unfulfilled. So we climb mountains and visit holy cities. We search for beauty and yearn for opulence, all the while overlooking the simple truth that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." If we could just manage to get one eye open to glimpse that heaven, all the things that previously appeared unfulfilling would transform into magnificent opportunities for learning, growing and knowing new and wonderful aspects of reality that previously passed by unnoticed. This book is about opening that inner eye. It is one author's personal exercise in seeing beyond the simple forms of everyday life. It is a study of the invisible dynamics that give life meaning and make transformation possible in all situations, all activities, and all relationships.

This mingling of biography, autobiography and art history has at its centre the life and art of the painter Philip Clairmont, a tortured figure who died by his own hand in 1984. Meeting those who were close to Clairmont and observing where he lived and what he left behind, Martin Edmond makes his own journey.

In this novel, first published by Doubleday in 1985, Texas novelist Ehner Kelton returns to the Civil War period, once again examining, as he first did in Texas Rifles, the effect of the war on Texans at home. Even while the conflict raged to the east, several groups of Texan Union loyalists hid out across the state, trying to avoid the anger and violence of the confederate sympathizing home guard. Kelton bases this story on a group who lived in a then-huge thicket on the Colorado River near present day Columbus, although the characters, incidents and town of the book are of Kelton's invention. As he always says, fiction writers are liars and thieves. Owen Danforth, a wounded Confederate soldier, comes home to Texas to recover, intending to return to his regiment. His family is torn apart by the war -- two brothers dead, one uncle, a Union sympathizer, shot in the back by the home guard. His father -- also a Unionist -- hides out in the thicket with his remaining family because the home guard, led by Captain Phineas Shattuck, has sworn revenge on the Danforth clan. Torn between duty and family loyalty, Owen Danforth faces difficult decisions until a violent encounter leaves him only one choice.

In the wealthy resort town of Pandora, North Carolina, old secrets and heartaches are guarded as closely as rubies cut from the mountain bedrock. It is said that a fine ruby is both silk and stone, light and shadow, fortune and tragedy. And the finest ruby of all is the famous Pandora Ruby, a gem that has divided the Vanderveer and Raincrow families for decades and shattered the lives of all who have possessed it.

Aging cowboy and bronco-buster Wes Hendricks just wants to be left alone on his poor ranch, even when town developers offer him big money to sell it. Wes's grandson reluctantly tries to convince him to give up his home, but that was before he, too, succumbs to the ranch's--and a young cowgirl's--wild beauty.

"Rare images of Fort Worth, Texas in the 1920s and 1930s abound in the art of Samuel P. Ziegler (1882-1967). Standing apart from his local contemporaries, Ziegler regarded Fort Worth's rapid urban development as an indispensable source of ideas. He expressed these ideas in paintings, drawings, etchings and lithographs of significant buildings, street scenes, demolition sites, construction sites, the Texas Christian University campus, where he taught music and art, and the Trinity River. In the late 1920s, his artistic output grew to include depictions of oil production efforts in counties west of Fort Worth. In this publication, many representative examples of Ziegler's work from this period are presented for the first time. Taken as a whole, these little-known works of art capture a sense of the metamorphosis that the City of Fort Worth experienced in the first half of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of a Texas Christian University art professor who never had to look far to find inspiration. Because of his ability to absorb the sights of the city and the oil boom spectacle unfolding on Fort Worth's doorstep, and turn these sights into art, Samuel P. Ziegler embodied the mindset of all Texas artists living in the Depression era who believed in and pursued the regionalist ideal"--

Some who treasure Elmer Kelton's novels - Time It Never Rained, The Good Old Boys, Slaughter and over thirty other titles - may not realize that he led another professional life as a livestock journalist. For forty-two years, he wrote fiction by night and traveled West Texas by day to report on livestock auctions, range conditions, and rodeo results. To those who know him as the retired associate editor of Livestock Weekly, his novels are less important than his knowledge of ranching. This nonfiction collection, assembled with Kelton's enthusiastic cooperation, shows the connection between his separate careers. Here are the causes that interest him and the themes that run through his fiction - environmental issues, agricultural developments, the history of West Texas and its ranching lands, the sport of rodeo, the craft of writing. Here, too, are the profiles and reminiscences of ranching people who give him ideas - and character hints - for his fiction, the bits of history that spark new novels.

"According to author Joe Holley, the story of the Texas Electric Cooperatives, a collective of some 76 member-owned electric providers throughout the state, is a story of neighborliness and community, grit and determination, and persuasion and political savvy. It's the story of a grassroots movement that not only energized rural Texas but also showed residents the power they have when they band together to find strength in unity. Opening with the coming of electricity to Texas' major cities at the turn of the twentieth century, Power: How the Electric Co-op Movement Energized the Lone Star State describes the dramatic differences between urban and rural life. Though the major cities of Texas were marvels of nighttime brilliance, the countryside remained as dark as it had been for centuries before. It was not economical for the startup electrical companies to provide service to far-flung rural areas, so they were forced to do without. Beginning with the New Deal-era efforts of Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson, and others, Holley chronicles the birth and development of the electric cooperative movement in Texas, including the 1935 federal act that created the Rural Electrification Administration. Holley concludes with the devastation wrought by Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 and the intense debate that continues around climate resilience and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), overseer of the state's electric grid, all of which has profound implications for rural electric cooperatives who receive their allocations according to procedures administered by ERCOT. Power is sure to enlighten, entertain, and energize readers and policymakers alike"--