Bøger udgivet af Texas A & M University Press

Around midnight on August 13, 1906, shots rang out on the road between Brownsville, Texas, and Fort Brown, the old army garrison. Ten minutes later a young civilian lay dead, and angry residents swarmed the streets, convinced their homes had been terrorized by newly arrived soldiers. Inside Fort Brown, the alarm was sounded. Soldiers leaped from their bunks and grabbed their rifles, thinking they were under attack by hostile townspeople. The soldiers were black; the civilians were white. Still proclaiming their innocence, 167 black infantrymen of the segregated Twenty-fifth Infantry Regiment were summarily dismissed without honor (or a trial) by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Brownsville Raid, first published in 1970, is John D. Weaver's searching study of the flimsy evidence presented in a 1909-1910 court of inquiry. That court had upheld the president's action and closed the case against the soldiers, not one of whom had ever been found guilty of wrongdoing. The case remained closed until 1971 when, after reading The Brownsville Raid, Congressman Augustus F. Hawkins of Los Angeles introduced a bill to have the Defense Department rectify the injustice. Amid a flurry of national publicity, honorable discharges were finally granted in 1972. All were posthumous except for that of Private Dorsie Willis, who received his in a moving ceremony on his eighty-seventh birthday.

Outside, where the wind is blowing, we see the world on nature's terms, and we see that it is severely endangered. Turning inward, we seek a sense of connection with nature that could perhaps help us through the current environmental crisis. In this book, some of the most observant Americans of our day explore these outer and inner worlds in powerful pieces that show the vitality and range of contemporary nature writing. John Hay's "A Faire Bay," an original collection of thoughts on the pollution of the Chesapeake, opens the book, and Edward Hoagland's "A Year as It Turns," a group of short seasonal pieces that originally appeared as editorials in the New York Times, serves as the conclusion. Some of the other authors represented here include Rick Bass, Marcia Bonta, Charles Bowden, Jean Craighead George, Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, and Terry Tempest Williams. Whether swimming with dolphins in the Florida Keys or stalking deer with the mountain lions, these authors experience and reflect on the terms nature sets and the terms we set for nature. With them, we discover the importance of the jack pine in the Boundary Waters, uncover the hidden beauty of Sonoran cacti, explore the very alive world of a Pennsylvania winter, visit the startling silences of the Canadian River Gorge in the Southwest, experience the breathtaking world of life on arctic ice, and view Venus at daybreak from the Grand Canyon. These are stories of place, and of family and friends, both human and nonhuman. They are tales of understanding and coming to terms with the world around us. THOMAS J. LYON, of Carlsbad, California, edited the journal Western American Literature for over twenty years. He taught at Utah State University and has received awards from the Utah Wilderness Association and Bridgerland Audubon Society. PETER STINE is the author of Survival, a collection of literary essays. He was the editor-in-chief of Witness from 1987 to 2008 and during that time received ten editorial grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. What Readers Are Saying: "While aiming for a wider audience, this collection attempts to bridge the gap from modern suburban and urban life to the wild. Drawing equally from lesser-known writers and from those who are already established, . . . the editors strive, through the eyes of the essayists, to make the reader `see' the wild again. On the whole, they succeed. . . . [it then compares it to a similar book and says it's the better buy because it's more comprehensive and reprints complete essays rather than excerpts]"--Library Journal " . . . an impassioned, personal, poetic and sometimes political cry from the heart, and from the heartland."--Salt Lake Tribune "Taken together, these essays are hallmarks of thoughtful, careful writing. They represent nearly every region in the country, indicting chemical pollution in Pennsylvania, the destruction of rivers in Texas, the massacre of cougars in New Mexico. It's just the sort of book to dip into before sitting down to write an angry letter to the folks in charge."--Outside Magazine "Thomas J. Lyon . . . has assembled some of the best contemporary nature writers in his most recent book, On Nature's Terms. . . . One of the most impressive essays in the collection is "The Afterlife," by Rick Bass . . . Bass has once again proven himself to be a master of the short essay-nature writing simply does not get any better than "The Afterlife." . . . This is a book to buy and treasure, loan to friends and family, and take on long trips to fill the hours."--Bloomsbury Review "There is something in this collection to delight and disturb everyone."--Okiotak (Anchorage Audubon newsletter)

Seventy-five years ago the growing city of Los Angeles, amid considerable conflict, appropriated water from a rural area 250 miles away. Still unresolved, the controversy surrounding the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Aqueduct has long since moved from the personal, even violent level fictionalized in the movie Chinatown to the dry realm of court proceedings, injunctions, and environmental impact reports. But water remains a problem in California, and the questions raised by these events--the rights of a rural area versus a growing metropolitan area, environmental issues, and levels of government responsibility--are of recognized national importance today. Much of the history of the controversy has been incompletely or imperfectly reported. Conventional accounts have focused on city versus valley, overlooking the role of the federal government. Others espouse the conspiracy theory popularized in Chinatown, dealing in plots and personalities. Relying on primary sources, many unused until now, Dr. Hoffman demonstrates how the utilitarian views of Theodore Roosevelt and his agents in the Geological Survey, the Reclamation Service, and the Bureau of Forestry helped determine the future of Los Angeles and the fate of Owens Valley. A model of historical reporting, this book redresses the balance in a record that too often has been oversimplified, usually at the expense of the city and often in terms of heroes and villains.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, unleashed a conflict that had both diplomatic and military fronts. Using contemporary accounts and recently released military documents, Col. Arthur H. Blair, USA (Ret.), traces both fronts as they developed day by day. Efforts to avoid war, coalition formation, mobilization of public support, military build-up in a foreign desert--all of these aspects of Desert Shield are presented in clear detail. Then, from the beginning of the air war through the final ground assault, Blair recounts troop movements, tactics, munitions, and casualties leading to the unconditional surrender of Saddam Hussein on February 28, 1991. With military maps of principal troop movements and photographs of many of the stunningly accurate aircraft and tanks involved, this chronology puts into sequence and perspective the dramatic events that reshaped global alliances, revitalized the United Nations, and brought victory to the American military. Blair, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the U.S. Army, with combat experience in Korea and Vietnam, is now deputy director of the Mosher Institute for Defense Studies at Texas A&M University and served as a media analyst and commentator during the Gulf crisis. His clear and concise description will provide context and a starting point for scholars, students, and analysts of the war and of the U.S. military. For those who cared about and tried to follow this first technological war as it happened, it brings order and sense to what was at the time a desert whirlwind.

When the U.S.S. battleship Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, it set off the Spanish-American War, that "splendid little war" which forever changed the United States' position among nations. "Remember the Maine!" was the outraged public's call for battle, but here it is a call to remember the seemingly star-crossed ship and the more than 260 young men who perished with it. Author John Edward Weems tells the story of the ship from beginning to explosive end, with the help of the Maine's survivors, whom he interviewed in 1957. The text of this edition has not been revised, for good reason. Since the book's first publication in 1958, no conclusive evidence of what caused the fatal explosion has ever been found. When the U.S.S. battleship Maine mysteriously exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, it set off the Spanish-American War. "Remember the Maine!" was the outraged public's call for battle, but here it is a call to remember the ill-fated ship and the more than 260 young men who perished with it. John Edward Weems tells the story of the ship from beginning to explosive end, with the help of the survivors. The text of this new edition has not been revised, for good reason. Since the book's first publication in 1958, no conclusive evidence of the explosion's source has ever been found. "Whatever the cause of the disaster, . . . it was the beginning of an American imperialism from the dangers of which we are not yet entirely free. . . . John Weems, whose A Weekend in September examined the Galveston flood, has presented the incident with painstaking detail from every possible angle."--New York Times Book Review

After the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in December, 1941, and the subsequent fall of Manila, defending American and Filipino troops withdrew to the Bataan peninsula. For four months these troops, badly outnumbered and crippled by starvation and disease, fought a gallant holding action against the Japanese. When they surrendered in April, 1942, they were subjected to the infamous "death march" to prison camp. Thousands died, and those who survived faced the ordeal of further harsh treatment by the Japanese. John S. Coleman, and air force officer assigned to the Philippines to train air corps regiments for infantry combat, was among those who fought on Bataan and lived to tell about it. Based on a shorthand diary which he kept at great risk throughout his imprisonment, this straightforward account details the ground combat on Bataan, the horrors of the march, and the desperate conditions that were his lot as a POW during the next three and one-half years. The courage and ingenuity of men surviving when survival seemed impossible comes through vividly in this unembellished narrative. It is a compelling eyewitness record of a grim chapter in American history.

Bill Brett's folk tale of life in the Big Thicket takes place in the years around the turn of the century. Brett heard the story from the old man who had lived it. He retells it as a captivating, earthy yarn that won the National Cowboy Hall of Fame's Western Heritage Award for folklore in 1978, when it first appeared in cloth edition. The narrator, a young man hurt in an oilfield accident and down on his luck, runs out of money. When the opportunity presents itself, he steals a small herd of steers and a horse and sets out to drive them to a distant market. Suddenly his plans are halted when he comes down with a severe case of malaria. Fortunately he meets a poor but generous black man and woman who nurse him back to health, spending their last dollar to buy his medicine. Like a modern Robin Hood, the young man shares the fruits of his theft with the poor, trading the stolen steers for a small farm he then signs over to his benefactors. They never learn the source of their wealth, which they in turn continue to share with others. In one more effort to repay his friends--and in a final act of revenge for a wrong done to them--he ensures their security while giving up his own.

The major cities of Texas have developed through a complex web of politics, society, and economics. To describe and explain the state's urban evolution, the contributors to Urban Texas use comparative and multidisciplinary perspectives that explore the relationships among interest groups and voting; religion, reform, gender, and race; civic clubs and suburbs; infrastructure and land development. Texas' cities have experienced boom and expansion, bust and depression. They have also been marked by inequity and disadvantage. Today's cities face not only the limits of a period of economic downturn, but also the inheritance of a history of bias and public-sector inactivity. The story of such forces, challenges the myths that surround Texas' explosive growth and probes the staggering costs that growth has entailed.

In this lively yet systematic commentary, a Welshman surveys the American Southwest with the steady, perceptive eye of a stranger who has grown to appreciate it. He finds in its history and topography signs that nature still holds its own against the human hand. "One is aware that such immense landscapes must exist--but until one views them for oneself it is impossible to grasp their impressiveness, or experience their liberating quality." White is equally fascinated with the people who have moved across this spectacular stage and those who inhabit it now. Trained as an anthropologist and archaeologist, as well as in literature, he traces the Indian history of the region from the Anasazi-Pueblo peoples, to Geronimo, Mangas Colorados, and Cochise, "the horse Indians with their fierce, Faustian view of the world," to today's Navajo silversmiths. Following stage coach lines and railroads, Spanish conquests and cattle drives, he leads us through the domain of gunmen like Billy the Kid and "good guys" like Kit Carson, through the world of Hispanics and Anglos, through the literature that portrays the regional drama. With him, we experience repeatedly and delightedly the "small peculiar thrill" of discovery.

Hidden treasures dot the Big Bend country of far west Texas. From the Guadalupes to the Chinatis and the Chisos, lost mines and abandoned hoards lie like magnets, pulling at the treasure hunter's heart. Or so the stories go. But perhaps the stories are themselves the hidden treasures. The Big Bend has always attracted an unusual sort of settler, and the settlers have spawned an unusual wealth of lore. Their tales live in the oral tradition of the place, adding to its color, mystery, and appeal. There is horse trader Zack Miller, who has to unload two thousand horses bought from the Mexican army of Victoriano Huerta. There is generous Maggie Smith, who trades in candelilla wax (obtained legally or otherwise), raises stray children who need a home, and cares for every honest passerby. Evans Means appears, weathering the border troubles the Mexican Revolution spawned by putting a smile on his face, a pistol on his hip, two languages on his tongue, and [drinking] coffee with anybody on the border. For more than thirty years Elton Miles collected the lively stories and legends that spring from the unique Big Bend lifestyle. A companion to his successful Tales of the Big Bend, this collection will fascinate visitors to the region and will make a lasting contribution to the annals of Texas folklore.

Houston was Boomtown USA in the 1970s, growing through tremendous immigration of people and through frequent annexation of outlying areas. But in the shadow of the high-rise petropolis was another city ignored by and invisible to Houston municipal boosters and the national media. Black Houston, the largest black community in the South, remained largely untouched by the benefits of the boom but bore many of the burdens. Robert D. Bullard systematically explores major demographic, social, economic, and political factors that helped make Houston the golden buckle of the Sunbelt. He then chronicles the rise of Houston's black neighborhoods and analyzes the problems that have accrued to the black community over the years, concentrating on the boom era of the 1970s and the dwindling of the economy and of government commitment to affirmative action in the late 1980s. Case studies conducted in Houston's Third Ward--a microcosm of the larger black community--provide data on housing patterns, discrimination, pollution, law enforcement, and leadership, issues that the author discusses and relates to the larger ones of institutional racism, poverty, and politics. During Houston's rapid growth, freeways were built over black neighborhoods and municipal services were stretched away from the inner city and poverty pockets to the new, far-flung, and mostly white city limits. Businesses thrived, but many jobs called for advanced education and skills, while black youth still suffered from inadequate schools, inexperienced teachers, and, later, unemployment rates nearly double those of whites. When the oil-based economy collapsed in the early eighties, many blacks again bore a heavier share of the burdens. Invisible Houston describes the rich cultural history of the South's largest black community and analyzes the contemporary issues that offer the chance for black Houston to become visible to itself, to the larger community, and to the nation.

An early observer remarked that it was doubtful that organic life was anywhere more exquisitely adjusted to its environment "than in the marshes of the ocean shore." Yet through most of American history, coastal wetlands have been viewed as noxious regions, some good for recreation but most fit only for dredging and reclamation. Recently, however, ecologists have recognized the diversity and biotic fecundity of the nation's tidelands. Joseph Siry carefully traces the interplay among scientific knowledge, popular values, legal frameworks, and public policy in the development of a wetlands ecological ethic. He demonstrates how the 1968 National Estuary Protection Act reflects the fruition of a vision first expressed by Adam Seybert in 1798 and developed by such luminaries as Frederick Law Olmstead, George Perkins Marsh, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson. Since 1945, Siry argues, growing anxiety over destructive industrialism, loss of wild seashores, and the need for coastal resources have produced wetlands protection. He describes, in language appealing to the lay enthusiast as well as the specialist, the nationwide estuarine sanctuary system that exists today as the result of a new ecological awareness.

Escalante Canyon is a red-walled hole in a geologic uplift (the Uncompahgre Plateau) in western Colorado. Pioneers surging west fell into this canyon hole the way gold nuggets get caught in the potholes of a stream. Like nuggets eddying against stone, they were shaped by the Canyon--rounded off, shattered, or tossed away, according to how they conformed or resisted. Indeed, treasure richer than gold settled into that hole in time; in the onrushing current of history the lifestyle--the Old West--settled and still survives there--in fact, in artifact, and in living memories. The tale of the canyon is a tale of struggle, change, frontier friendship, and enmity that is part of the story of the West itself: Anglo settlement; conflict between cowman, nester, and sheep man; epidemics; hardships; loneliness. Many of its stories, though, are tantalizing episodes unique to this place, laced with oddity and tragedy. Using as digging tools the camera, tape recorder, diaries, memoirs, and a hundred years of old newspapers, Marshall has mined more gold than the first prospectors ever suspected lay in that mysterious red hole.

The Birds of North Central Texas is the culmination of a seven-year study by Warren M. Pulich, who set out to assess and evaluate the avifauna within the 25,000-square-mile area rather than to produce a field guide. With the aid of trusted observers, the author has compiled information on arrival and departure dates and peak numbers during migration for approximately 400 species. Texas' large variety of bird species is due to the convergence of four vegetation zones in the north central region of the state. In effect, species predominating in the moister eastern portions of the region mingle with species inhabiting the mesquite and cacti of the dry western reaches of the study area. The presence of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and its numerous birders and visitors has ensured volumes of data for sorting and study. Ornithology students, visiting naturalists, environmentalists, and dedicated birders will find this book a valuable aid to understanding more clearly the status of birds in north central Texas.

The Lone Star State finds itself in the midst of a great transition. No longer the rustic frontier state of myth and legend, Texas is a complex, highly urbanized society that is rapidly replacing old dreams with new ones. Faced with increasing demands on state services and with unreliable revenues tied to an unsteady oil industry, Texas must make hard decisions for its future. This volume seeks to appraise Texas as it is today and to assess the direction in which the state is headed. The first part of the book deals with the Texan people--demographics, economic changes that have affected Texas' political economy over the past decades and continue to shape its future, and the shifting style of Texas politics and its potential for change. Part two explores seven major policy areas: management of water resources, energy policy, educational reform, funding of higher education, highway policy, crime and the penal system, and welfare reform. By seeking to understand the status and prospects of the state in terms of its changing political economy, this book will provide readers with insights into the challenges and opportunities facing Texas as it moves into the twenty-first century. The excellent case studies of Texas policy areas will be a most valuable resource for students and scholars of state and local history and comparative politics, policy makers, journalists, and all Texas citizens who are concerned with the problems that lie ahead.

With the publication of Profile of Man and Culture in Mexico (1934) Samuel Ramos launched the modern search for Mexican national identity, shifting examination of that country's problems from a physical to a psychological plane. But Ramos' work crystallized a long inquiry into the meaning of Mexican civilization, discernible from the 1920s on. From 1900 to 1934 Mexicans made the difficult transition from a culture largely foreign in spirit to one created in the aftermath of the 1910 Revolution, insistently and proudly Mexican. In the decades following the revolution the term lo mexicano (meaning both the Mexican ethos and its study) became a sacred phrase in the reappraisal of Mexican civilization, a concept analogous in the history of ideas to the quest for Mexican authenticity in painting, music, the novel, and education. Schmidt examines the origins and development of lo mexicano in the work of Ramos' intellectual antecedents, particularly that of Justo Sierra, Antonio Caso, José Vasconcelos, Alfonso Reyes, and Daniel Cosío Villegas. Schmidt shows why and how Mexican intellectuals went about the task of defining national character during this period. His analysis establishes a context for viewing Ramos' admittedly seminal work, shows the growth of Mexican self-awareness as the intellectual foundation of nationalism, and extends our understanding of the central driving force within the complexities of Mexican society today.

As early as the 1960s innovative builders were beginning to design and construct underground and earth-covered houses. At first this different approach to house building was simply an outgrowth of the search for alternative life-styles, but since the energy shortages of the seventies, many homeowners have rekindled their interest in earth-sheltered dwellings for the energy savings they afford. This book has been written in response to the continuing need for information on earth shelters. Though many books on these new buildings have appeared in recent years, most of them have been "how-to" books--many of them long on photographs and short on detailed discussion of the basic variables that play a most important role in the success of the designs. This volume presents a comprehensive technical view of the problems involved for building science professionals, including students of architecture, working architects, building contractors, and engineers, as well as the informed lay public. Boyer and Grondzik discuss and interrelate such earth shelter design concepts as passive solar heating, daylighting, and hazard protection for all regions and climates, at the same time evaluating shelter performance in terms of comfort and habitability, cooling and heating effectiveness, and levels of protection. In addition, they present the proper use of various construction and waterproofing techniques in relation to climate, characteristics of the site, and other regional factors. The text encourages a system approach to design to allow the builder to achieve a house with outstanding performance. Readers will find the list of references provided particularly useful as a guide to further study of specific design features or problems. More than 120 supporting tables, charts, and other illustrations add clarifying information to the text. In compiling this comprehensive introduction to earth shelter design, the authors have used the evaluations provided by occupants of earth shelters, measurement and long-term studies of specific earth shelters, and various prediction models and methods as well as a thorough study of the literature on the subject. Although the text deals largely with residential applications, significant attention is also given to select nonresidential examples

An account of the dying Plains Indian culture and the march of white commerce across the frontier. The Adobe Walls trading post was built by a handful of men in 1874 but incurred the wrath of several Indian tribes who attacked the post and burned all trace of the white man's presence.

Michael Isenberg casts aside the traditional textbook approach and presents the study of history as a series of puzzles to ponder, with neither right nor wrong answers. Thinking about history, from this point of view, becomes an exciting intellectual adventure that has little to do with rote memorization. This stimulating, open-ended approach focuses not on quick answers but on searching questions, the building of a relationship between an individual and the past. Isenberg offers a compelling invitation to "greet the subject and call it fun" by delving into different cultures and by coming to grips with the many interpreters of the past. He leads the reader on a study of history that evokes a sense of culture transmitted directly, achieving an immediacy that allows the "historian" to march with Napoleon, hear Cicero orate, or see what the headsman's ax did to Charles I of England. Each person becomes a compound of both individual and collective history; the boundaries of past and present are forever blurred. This intriguing work--presented with a vibrancy rare for such subjects--is especially geared to beginning or intermediate students of history and is also ideal for graduate-level courses in historiography or historical methodology. It will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in historical study.

Many thousands of Americans in such cities as Miami, New Orleans, Galveston, and Corpus Christi live near an estuary, one of nature's most intriguing ecosystems. But the same citizens who depend on a neighboring estuary for fresh shrimp or who visit it on a Sunday outing often know little about the physical makeup of estuaries and their contributions to the quality of human life. In this comprehensive study, Robert Stickney examines the physical, chemical, geological, and biological characteristics of estuaries, coastal regions where fresh water and seawater intermingle. This book, the first to bring together data on estuarine ecology in the region of interest, will provide a benchmark for future studies of estuaries and their mysteries and will be invaluable to aquatic ecologists, nonbiological oceanographers and limnologists, and interested laymen. Its storehouse of technical information will assure it a continuing place in the literature of estuarine ecology.

What Jesse James was to the United States, Lampião was to Brazil, and then some. With a band that at times numbered a hundred or more, this notorious bandit confronted state armies on more than equal terms and cowed political bosses, virtually dominating large sections of his native northeastern backlands during the 1920s and 1930s. Although Lampião was often brutal and merciless, his occasional acts of compassion, together with his exploits, have made him a folk figure in Brazil. Based on contemporary news accounts, archival materials, and extensive interviews by the author, this book presents the first systematic and reliable account of the famed desperado. Examining Lampião's career from his boyhood in Pernambuco to his death at Angicos, Chandler sorts fact from fiction and places the bandit in the context of the backlands, where in the early part of this century becoming a cangaceiro (bandit) was as natural and attractive to the son of a tenant or small farmer as taking a degree in law or medicine was for the sons of the Recife or Salvador elite. Chandler sees Lampião and other cangaceiros as the inevitable products of a lawless society in which frontier conditions reminiscent of the American West persisted far into the twentieth century.

When the "code of honor" ruled the antebellum South--or at least its upper classes--the slightest insult might give rise to a pistol duel at twenty paces, conducted with elaborate politeness. A crime on the statue books but a matter of honor to Southern gentlemen, dueling reflected the pre-Civil War individualism of this caste and their distaste for legal governance of their personal affairs. An understanding of the gentry's acceptance of dueling may even throw light on the mentality of those who led the South into a great mass duel, the American Civil War. This highly readable book gives a lively account, replete with colorful examples, of the pistol duel, the rules for its conduct, its causes, and its typical participants. A popular 1838 dueling code by John Lyde Wilson, one-time governor of South Carolina, is also reprinted in this volume. Its "practical" advice on the etiquette of dueling and its justifications for the practice give a fascinating and sometimes amusing look into the mind of a more chivalrous age. For Southern history buffs and social historians, this excursion into a little-known way of life and death will make entertaining and informative fare.

Despite his important role in the development of early Texas--he was a close associate of Stephen F. Austin, a successful businessman and land speculator, father of the Texas navy, founder of Texas' first bank, and co-founder of Galveston--Samuel May Williams is unknown to many Texans. Elitist, arrogant, shrewd, sometimes sharp in his business dealings, and politically conservative, Williams made enemies easily, and contemporary prejudice has perhaps led modern scholars to overlook his genuine significance in Texas history. Margaret Swett Henson's biography examines the career of this early entrepreneur, whose interests were closely entwined with those of Texas. Arriving in Texas in 1822 under an assumed name with little but good family connections, some mercantile experience, and fluent Spanish, Williams was hired as secretary in charge of Austin's colonial land office at San Felipe and before long had acquired large holdings of his own. In partnership with Thomas F. McKinney he set up a commission house that did a thriving business and later added a small banking function. The two men helped found the Galveston City Company and in 1848 Williams opened his Commercial and Agricultural Bank in that city. Over three decades Williams participated in the events that determined the course of Texas history and did much to advance the development of Texas and its economy--a less romantic but no less vital role than that of more popular folk-heroes. This study makes extensive use of heretofore largely unexplored manuscript material, notably the Samuel May Williams Papers at the Rosenberg Library in Galveston, Texas.

Hundreds of miles from its supply center in Chihuahua and just freed from the grip of Spain's mercantilist colonial policies, New Mexico was ripe for foreign commerce when the first of the Missouri traders arrived in Santa Fe in 1821. For the next forty years trade flourished between Americans hawking anything that would sell, often at incredible profit, and New Mexican buyers hungry for all types of manufactured goods. But the frontier moved inevitably westward, goods became more readily available and consequently less expensive, and the railroad at last replaced the mulewhackers who had long plied the Santa Fe Trail. Broadcloth and Britches is the first account to synthesize an abundance of primary source material--the reminiscences of traders, the impressions of journalists and soldiers, the unpublished manuscripts of both literate and semiliterate observers--and serious scholarly journal articles and monographs of the Santa Fe Trail and trade. In this detailed and lively narrative, the authors trace the origins, development, and decline of the trade: the early expeditions; the route and its hazards; transport, financing, and profits; the effects of complex political shifts in Spain, Mexico, Texas, and the United States; and the economic consequences of increasingly efficient supply to a relatively fixed market.

Many books and innumerable articles have been published on the subject of "Westerns" since 1960, but the emphasis has been almost entirely on Western movies. Not much attention has been paid to the fiction of and about the American West. This book begins with the assumption that the novel of the West is a sort of autobiography of the West and that the writing must be studied if we are to see what our fiction reveals about ourselves. In these eleven essays C. L. Sonnichsen looks at both popular and "serious" fiction, starting with a consideration of what the West means to America and the world and going on to discuss a number of topics that act as mirrors to our prejudices and emotions. What does our fiction show has happened to our feelings about the Mexican over the last century? About violence? About sex? About the mythical West? The author's final chapter suggests other doors that should be opened--other topics of Western fiction that should be investigated and discussed. In scope and variety of approaches this book is unique. Some chapters will provoke heated disagreement, but the subject is timely. Nothing is more interesting to us than ourselves, and these essays tell something about who and what we are.