Download or read book The Texanist written by David Courtney and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

Download or read book Nothing Happened and Then it Did written by Jake Silverstein and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The timing couldn't be better--as scandals erupt over journalists and memoirists who've cooked their books--for a work that explores our difficulty in separating fact and fiction, while explicitly demonstrating how they differ and what they share. In prose so fine and wry it makes the back of your neck prickle, Jake Silverstein narrates a journey he undertook through the American Southwest and Mexico, looking to become a journalist. His picaresque travels are filled with beguiling and hilarious characters: nineteenth-century author Ambrose Bierce; an unknown group of famous poets; a twenty-first-century treasure hunter in the Gulf of Mexico; an ex-Nazi mechanic shepherding an old Mexican road race; a stenographer who records every passing moment; and various incarnations of the trickster devil. As bold, ambitious, and funny as it is unconventional, Nothing Happened and Then It Did is a deep and lasting pleasure.

Download or read book A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove written by John Spong and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A photo-filled behind-the-scenes journey into the creation of the book, the miniseries, and the world of Lonesome Dove. Widely acclaimed as the greatest Western ever made, Lonesome Dove has become a true American epic. Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel was a New York Times bestseller, with millions of copies in print, and the miniseries has won seven Emmys. In this treasury, John Spong talks to forty of the key people involved, including author Larry McMurtry; actors Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, D. B. Sweeney, Frederic Forrest, and Chris Cooper; executive producer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff; executive producer Suzanne de Passe; and director Simon Wincer. They and a host of others tell lively stories about McMurtry’s writing of the epic novel and the process of turning it into the miniseries Lonesome Dove. Accompanying their recollections are photographs of iconic props, costumes, set designs, and shooting scripts. Rounding out the book are continuity Polaroids used during filming and photographs taken on the set by Bill Wittliff, which place you behind the scenes in the middle of the action. Designed as a companion for A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, Wittliff’s magnificent fine art volume, A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove is a must-have for every fan.

Download or read book The Midnight Assassin written by Skip Hollandsworth and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller, The Midnight Assassin is a sweeping narrative history of a terrifying serial killer--America's first--who stalked Austin, Texas in 1885. In the late 1800s, the city of Austin, Texas was on the cusp of emerging from an isolated western outpost into a truly cosmopolitan metropolis. But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch. Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city. With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.

Download or read book Forget the Alamo written by Bryan Burrough and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller! “Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review "Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal “Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head. Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness. In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.

Download or read book Plaza Suite written by Neil Simon and published by Concord Theatricals. This book was released on 1969 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A portrait of three couples successively occupying a suite at the Plaza. A suburban couple take the suite while their house is being painted and it turns out to be the one in which they honeymooned 23 (or was it 24?) years before and was yesterday the anniversary, or is it today? This tale of marriage in tatters is followed by the exploits of a Hollywood producer who, after three marriages, is looking for fresh fields. He calls a childhood sweetheart, now a suburban housewife, for a little sexual diversion. Over the years she has idolized him from afar and is now more than the match he bargained for. The last couple is a mother and father fighting about the best way to get their daughter out of the bathroom and down to the ballroom where guests await her or as Mother yells, "I want you to come out of that bathroom and get married!"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Variations on a Rectangle written by DJ Stout and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Editorial design is the art of storytelling, and DJ’s brand of it is uniquely American. Western American. It starts out slow and builds. It wins you with a bit of humility (almost ‘shucks-gee-whiz’) and then comes back at you with a surprise punch. The pacing and analogies feel like a Will Rogers narrative. . . . When he first began presenting his work to his London Pentagram partners, they thought he could have just as easily been from the moon. But the storytelling was so strong, so funny, so completely designed but guileless at the same time that the Londoners, and the rest of us, found ourselves confronted with something real, authoritative, and probably definable only as pure American Graphic Design.” —Paula Scher, from the introduction An internationally renowned graphic designer and partner in Pentagram, the world’s most famous graphic design firm, DJ Stout is a fifth-generation Texan whose strong sense of place has inspired his design work for over thirty-five years. His contributions to Texas Monthly, where he was art director for thirteen years, helped the magazine win three National Magazine Awards. American Photo magazine named Stout one of its “100 Most Important People in Photography,” and I.D. (International Design) magazine selected him for “The I.D. Fifty,” its annual listing of design innovators. The Society of Illustrators honored Stout with the national Richard Gangel Art Director Award, and he was made a Fellow of the Austin chapter of the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) for his lifetime achievements. Variations on a Rectangle presents both a career retrospective of DJ Stout’s work and his inimitable, often humorous perspectives on publication design. Using nearly eight hundred images to illustrate more than two hundred fifty major design projects, Stout describes the inspiration and creative process behind his highly innovative designs for magazines, books, brochures, posters, and even a fiberglass “batcow.” He tells fascinating, behind-the-scenes stories of Texas personalities such as Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, and Ann Richards, who figured prominently in Texas Monthly’s pages, while also discussing how his Texas heritage has influenced his more recent design work US and international clients. An essential primer for younger graphic designers and a revelation for everyone who values exceptional design, Variations on a Rectangle proves Stout’s maxim, “A publication without style is just a document, and documents don’t do well on the newsstand. And that’s why you need editorial art directors. Amen.”

Download or read book Texas Month by Month Gardening written by Robert Richter and published by . This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas Month-by-Month Gardening, the companion to Texas Getting Started Guide, presents a month-by-month breakdown of what to plant, when to plant, and how to take care of it in order to have a beautiful Texas garden year-round.

Download or read book Hugo Ortega s Street Food of Mexico written by Hugo Ortega and published by Bright Sky Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning chef presents street food recipes that represent the best of traditional Mexican cooking, including octopus cocktail, deep-fried fish tacos, and empanadas stuffed with shrimp.

Download or read book Big Wonderful Thing written by Stephen Harrigan and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 944 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Wild Focus written by Earl Nottingham and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Wild Focus, Earl Nottingham, chief photographer for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department and its magazine, provides a unique perspective on Texas featuring images of the woods, waters, and wildlife of the Lone Star landscape. Nottingham’s engaging photography—landscape, nature, and wildlife; environmental portraiture of people; photojournalistic coverage of events, including natural disasters—provides a cohesive overview of biodiversity and the state of conservation in Texas. The nearly 200 stunning photographs collected here encompass the expansive mission of TPWD, presenting traditional landscape images from state and national parks as well as from vast private lands. Cultural and historic sites are included along with environmental portraits of the people associated with those sites. From the state’s wildlife, both great and small, to nature shown in not only its beauty but also its fury—wildfires, hurricanes, and floods—Earl Nottingham offers a visual compendium of events, people, places, and things that have shaped the face of natural Texas. The author logged untold miles and wore through many sets of tires to offer timely stories that would “inform, educate, entertain, and empower” readers about the outdoors. These images that capture the richness and diversity of wild Texas inspire a greater appreciation for the state’s beauty and promote a sense of stewardship for its natural treasures.

Download or read book Works Well with Others written by Ross McCammon and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hilarious and indispensable guide to the weirdness of the workplace from Esquire editor and Entrepreneur etiquette columnist Ross McCammon Ten years ago, Ross McCammon made an incredible and unexpected transition from working at an in-flight magazine in suburban Dallas to landing his dream job at Esquire in New York. What followed was a period of almost debilitating anxiety and awkwardness—interspersed with minor instances of professional glory—as McCammon learned how to navigate the workplace while feeling entirely ill-equipped for achieving success in his new career. Works Well with Others is McCammon’s “relentlessly funny and soberingly insightful”* journey from impostor to authority, a story that reveals the workplace for what it is: an often absurd landscape of ego and fear guided by social rules that no one ever talks about. By mining his own experiences at the magazine, McCammon provides advice on everything from firm handshakes to small talk in elevators to dealing with jerks and underminers. Here is an inspirational new way of looking at your job, your career, and success itself; an accessible guide for those of us who are smart, talented, and ambitious but who aren’t well-“leveraged” and don’t quite feel prepared for success . . . or know what to do once we’ve made it. *Entertainment Weekly

Download or read book The Gates of the Alamo written by Stephen Harrigan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestselling novel, modern historical classic, and winner of the TCU Texas Book Award, The Spur Award and the Wrangler Award for Outstanding Western Novel It’s 1836, and the Mexican province of Texas is in revolt. As General Santa Anna’s forces move closer to the small fort that will soon be legend, three people’s fates will become intrinsically tied to the coming battle: Edmund McGowan, a proud and gifted naturalist; the widowed innkeeper Mary Mott; and her sixteen-year-old son, Terrell, whose first shattering experience with love has led him into the line of fire. Filled with dramatic scenes, and abounding in fictional and historical personalities—among them James Bowie, David Crockett, William Travis, and Stephen Austin—The Gates of the Alamo is a faithful and compelling look at a riveting chapter in American history.

Download or read book Dirty Dealing written by Gary Cartwright and published by Cinco Puntos Press. This book was released on 2010-11-09 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Cartwright tells the story of the Chagra brothers, Lee and Joe, as they get mixed up with the drug-running community along the border and in short order find themselves hopelessly entangled in a net cast by the DEA. Even readers unfamiliar with the well-publicized events of the book or of the dark, lawless aspect that often rules El Paso will find themselves pulled along by the plot: brigands and intrigue leap from almost every page, and the story just gets wilder the further into it you venture."—from an Amazon.com review Four pages into this rollicking good story, the central figure, Lee Chagra, comes alive: "[Lee] washed his morning cocaine down with strong coffee and remembered the time he had met Sinatra, how genuine he appeared." Everything you'll need to know and remember about Chagra—the son of Syrian immigrants to Mexico and an attorney who spun the world of dope-running, border-crossing, high-living outlaws along the El Paso–Juarez border around his finger like the gaudy rings he favored—can be neatly summarized in that one sentence. Chagra dies two pages later, yet he haunts the rest of this cautionary tale like a high-rolling specter. Gary Cartwright is a long-respected, award-winning journalist and contributing editor to Texas Monthly magazine. The author of numerous books, he has contributed stories to such national publications as Harper's, Life, and Esquire. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Download or read book Empire of the Summer Moon written by S. C. Gwynne and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-25 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award* *A New York Times Notable Book* *Winner of the Texas Book Award and the Oklahoma Book Award* This New York Times bestseller and stunning historical account of the forty-year battle between Comanche Indians and white settlers for control of the American West “is nothing short of a revelation…will leave dust and blood on your jeans” (The New York Times Book Review). Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches. Although readers may be more familiar with the tribal names Apache and Sioux, it was in fact the legendary fighting ability of the Comanches that determined when the American West opened up. Comanche boys became adept bareback riders by age six; full Comanche braves were considered the best horsemen who ever rode. They were so masterful at war and so skillful with their arrows and lances that they stopped the northern drive of colonial Spain from Mexico and halted the French expansion westward from Louisiana. White settlers arriving in Texas from the eastern United States were surprised to find the frontier being rolled backward by Comanches incensed by the invasion of their tribal lands. The war with the Comanches lasted four decades, in effect holding up the development of the new American nation. Gwynne’s exhilarating account delivers a sweeping narrative that encompasses Spanish colonialism, the Civil War, the destruction of the buffalo herds, and the arrival of the railroads, and the amazing story of Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah—a historical feast for anyone interested in how the United States came into being. Hailed by critics, S. C. Gwynne’s account of these events is meticulously researched, intellectually provocative, and, above all, thrillingly told. Empire of the Summer Moon announces him as a major new writer of American history.

Download or read book Being Texan written by Editors of Texas Monthly and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The editors of Texas Monthly explore what it means to be a Texan in this anthology packed with essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from their renowned list of contributors. Big hats, big trucks, big oil fortunes—Texas clichés all. And while those elements do flourish throughout Texas, they alone hardly define the place. The Lone Star State is and has always been a great melting pot, home to sprawling cities, trailblazing innovators, and treasured traditions from all over, many of which become ingrained in popular culture and intertwined with the American ideal. In this collection, the editors of Texas Monthly take stock of their multifaceted, larger-than-life state, including the people, customs, land, culture, and cuisine that have collided and comingled here. Featuring essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from the magazine’s legendary roster of contributors, and accompanied by original drawings, Being Texan explores the landscapes that are home to more than 29 million people; the joys and idiosyncrasies of Texan life; underappreciated episodes of Texas history; and distinctive strains of Texan arts and culture. Illuminating, surprising, and entertaining, Being Texan reveals the Lone Star State in all its beauty, vastness, and complexity.

Download or read book Ticker written by Mimi Swartz and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. If America could send a man to the moon, shouldn’t the best surgeons in the world be able to build an artificial heart? In Ticker, Texas Monthly executive editor and two time National Magazine Award winner Mimi Swartz shows just how complex and difficult it can be to replicate one of nature’s greatest creations. Part investigative journalism, part medical mystery, Ticker is a dazzling story of modern innovation, recounting fifty years of false starts, abysmal failures and miraculous triumphs, as experienced by one the world’s foremost heart surgeons, O.H. “Bud” Frazier, who has given his life to saving the un-savable. His journey takes him from a small town in west Texas to one of the country’s most prestigious medical institutions, The Texas Heart Institute, from the halls of Congress to the animal laboratories where calves are fitted with new heart designs. The roadblocks to success —medical setbacks, technological shortcomings, government regulations – are immense. Still, Bud and his associates persist, finding inspiration in the unlikeliest of places. A field beside the Nile irrigated by an Archimedes screw. A hardware store in Brisbane, Australia. A seedy bar on the wrong side of Houston. Until post WWII, heart surgery did not exist. Ticker provides a riveting history of the pioneers who gave their all to the courageous process of cutting into the only organ humans cannot live without. Heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, whose feud dominated the dramatic beginnings of heart surgery. Christian Barnaard, who changed the world overnight by performing the first heart transplant. Inventor Robert Jarvik, whose artificial heart made patient Barney Clark a worldwide symbol of both the brilliant promise of technology and the devastating evils of experimentation run amuck. Rich in supporting players, Ticker introduces us to Bud’s brilliant colleagues in his quixotic quest to develop an artificial heart: Billy Cohn, the heart surgeon and inventor who devotes his spare time to the pursuit of magic and music; Daniel Timms, the Brisbane biomedical engineer whose design of a lightweight, pulseless heart with but a single moving part offers a new way forward. And, as government money dries up, the unlikeliest of backers, Houston’s furniture king, Mattress Mack. In a sweeping narrative of one man’s obsession, Swartz raises some of the hardest questions of the human condition. What are the tradeoffs of medical progress? What is the cost, in suffering and resources, of offering patients a few more months, or years of life? Must science do harm to do good? Ticker takes us on an unforgettable journey into the power and mystery of the human heart.