Bøger udgivet af Texas A & M University Press

Traces the history of musica tejana from the fandangos and bailes of the nineteenth century through the cancion ranchera and the politically informed.

"It does not take long to tell the difference in the sound of the explosion of a gas, shrapnel, or high explosive shell," Carl Andrew Brannen said of his introduction to trench warfare. As that nineteen-year-old marine from Texas had quickly learned, the first big war of the twentieth century promised new horrors on the battlefield. In this intense journey through the beginnings of modern war, C. A. Brannen's memoirs and battlefield snapshots are complemented with a unique set of contemporary and retrospective photographs. Seventy-five years after World War I, the author's son retraced his father's footsteps across France. The photographs he took on those erstwhile battlegrounds evoke the ghosts of the past and allow father and son to march together through the battlefronts of Belleau Woods in the Chateau-Thierry sector, Soissons, Pont-a-Mousson, St. Mihiel, Blanc Mont Ridge, and the Meuse-Argonne battle. J. P. Brannen's afterword to Over There is a moving tribute to his family's veterans. Over There describes the day-to-day obstacles Brannen and his fellow marines faced during training, troop movement to France, and mortal combat. Brannen served in every major action of the 4th Marine Brigade, which saw more fighting than any other American unit. Serving as rifle grenadiers at St. Mihiel, he and a companion broke up a German attack in an action largely ignored in published accounts of the battle. Although he was wounded at Blanc Mont, Brannen was able to continue on with the 80th Company through the Meuse-Argonne campaign to the armistice. He served in the occupation of the Rhineland and, at its end, earned a place in Pershing's Honor Guard. The Brannens' story should fascinate all those interested in World War I and touch the hearts of other families who have been touched by war. With the added scholarship of the late military historian Rolfe L. Hillman Jr., and of Peter F. Owen, a Marine Corps officer, Over There also is a valuable contribution to the military history of World War I.The late carl andrew brannen was a student at Texas A&M when he joined the marines. After the war, he earned two degrees in history and had a long career as a schoolteacher and administrator. J. P. Brannen is a retired scientist in Cedar Crest, New Mexico.

In honoring the heroic legend of the Texas Revolution, generations of scholars and Texans themselves have cleansed the revolution of its messier--and perhaps more truly revolutionary--dimensions. Focusing on the preexisting causes of the conflict of 1835-36 and the military execution of the war, they have neglected the political turbulence, regional disharmonies, conflicts of interest, social upheaval, and racial and ethnic strife that characterized the period. This ground-breaking work on the Texas Revolution offers the first systematic analysis of the event as political and social history. This fresh perspective, drawn from exhaustive examination of primary documents (claims records and land documents as well as traditional manuscript collections), portrays the Texans entering their quarrel with Mexico as a fragmented people--individualistic, divided from one community to another by ethnic and racial tensions, and lacking a consensus about the meaning of political changes in Mexico. Paul D. Lack examines, one at a time, the various groups that participated in the Texas Revolution. He concludes that the army was highly politicized, overly democratic and individualistic, and lacking in discipline and respect for property. With the statistical profile of the army he has compiled, Lack puts to rest forever the idea that the Anglo community gave an overwhelming response to the call to arms. He details instead the tensions between army volunteers and the majority of Texans who refused military service. Lack provides the most satisfactory account of Texas Tories yet written and, in a particularly sensitive treatment of Tejanos, shows the dilemma Texas Mexicans faced in the conflict. Hetraces the role of black Texans, the panic within Texas over slave rebellion, and the problem of runaway slaves in the Revolution. For the masses of Texans, Lack convincingly demonstrates, the Revolution was a time of dislocation and grief that even the eventual outcome of battle did not heal. This scholarly epic, sure to become a classic and a model for future research on the Revolution, shows clearly how the experiences of the years 1835-36 left a new nation burdened by political upheaval, social disorder, ethnic bitterness, and other consequences of a failed revolution, all of which helped to define the Texas identity for the future.

Geo-Texas succeeds in bringing together astronomy, geology, meteorology, oceanography, and environmental studies in a highly informative, one-of-a-kind guide to earth sciences in the Lone Star State. Eric R. Swanson draws on the latest scientific findings in treating the natural history of Texas from the oldest known rock, through the age of the dinosaurs, to the geologic present, and from the early development of Texas' water and land resources to the current crisis of environmental pollution. In examining Texas natural sciences - and the abiding connection between Texans and their physical surroundings - Geo-Texas is engagingly anecdotal and draws freely on the wry humor with which Texans have always observed and regarded their environment.

Cartooning Texas presents a century of this state's history through a craft that is one of the nation's liveliest art forms. Few states have enjoyed as rich a history of political cartooning as the great state of Texas. William Sydney (O. Henry) Porter and his depiction of railroad graft, turn-of-the century Tobe Bateman and his trademark goat, Pulitzer Prize winner Ben Sargent--these cartoonists have helped readers understand what this country's changes would mean to them. Even the first cartoon known to have lampooned native son Lyndon Johnson appears in these pages. Their sometimes humorous, always pointed lines have appeared in the Austin American-Statesman, the Rolling Stone, the Houston Post, the Dallas Morning News, and other state papers. With deft movements of pen across page, they have portrayed the events and personalities that have shaped public life. Lone Star cartoonists have provided a record that will amuse and educate new generations of Texans as well as those who remember the originals. Maury B. Forman and Robert A. Calvert provide context and explanations for each cartoon and overviews of each decade's main developments in the art.

Sallie Reynolds Matthews wrote Interwoven so that her children and their children would know how their family and the Lambshead Ranch legacy grew on the Texas frontier. Far beyond her modest intentions, the book became a classic soon after its original publication in 1936. As Robert Nail wrote in his introduction to the 1958 edition designed by the renowned bookman Carl Hertzog, "When you read her account of the day her family moved into a mysterious, abandoned ranch house on the very edge of the unconquered prairie and see, as her small girl eyes saw, the broken window glass littering the floor, the fang marks left by a wild animal on the door, you sense quite keenly what it must have been like . . . " Sallie Reynolds was born on May 23, 1861, during a period on the prairie frontier when settlers were almost as nomadic as the Indians and building material was as scarce as trees. Her family moved around Texas, frequently living near the Matthews family, whom they had known in Alabama before both families headed to Texas. In 1867, the first marriage between a Reynolds and a Matthews formally sealed the informal bond between the clans. Four more Reynolds siblings married into the Matthews family, including Sallie Ann in 1876, and other Reynolds relatives followed suit. As daughter, sister, wife, or mother of three generations of cattle ranchers, Sallie Reynolds Matthews writes from the perspective of a woman intent upon embodying the strength and gentleness required of a wife and business partner. She describes traveling by wagon through the wilds, encountering Indians, and setting up housekeeping with little more than buckets, blankets, and cast-iron cookpots. Tragedy and illness often visited the interwoven Matthews and Reynolds families, but those who settled on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River--the Lambshead range--put down roots that tornadoes, droughts, Indians, and disease could not dislodge. As her memoirs so clearly show, Sallie Reynolds Matthews had an intelligence, warmth, and zest for life that nourished her family through difficult times. Nine children were born to Sallie and John Matthews. Their first child Annie died in infancy, and their last, Watkins Reynolds Matthews lived to be ninety-eight. This new printing of Interwoven, which includes the original E. M. Schiwetz drawings and Sam Newcomb's diary of his trip through the Clear Fork range in 1864, is dedicated to the memory of Watt Matthews, who did so much to preserve his family's legacy. Readers have to be given more than a personal story. Successful memoirs creat a world, a spirit of place, and re-create a time. Sallie Reynolds Matthews has done just that. Interwoven is not just Sallie Reynolds Matthews's personal story. It is a book about two families who built ranches in West Texas and intermarried to form a dynasty. It is the story of pioneering on the Brazos in the years following the Civil War. Interwoven is a narrative about the great years of the Cattle Empire in Texas. And woven into this chronicle of the plains is the story of Sallie Reynolds as a girl and Mrs. Sallie Reynolds Matthews as a young wife and mother as Texas entered the twentieth century.

Once called the Fighting Colonel of the Texas frontier, Ranald S. Mackenzie in the brief years of his career through the 1870s and early 1880s secured that land for the surging wave of settlers who turned the wilderness into a place of cattle ranches, productive farms, and prosperous towns. In this classic account of the dashing cavalryman's campaigns, first published in limited numbers in 1965, eminent historian Ernest Wallace brought to life an era of the frontier that continues to intrigue readers. Mackenzie, after achieving an amazing record during the Civil War, rode onto the unexplored Southern Plains as commander of the 4th Cavalry, assigned to drive the Comanche and Kiowa tribes from their favorite hunting and camping grounds. These campaigns, along with his strikes across the Rio Grande to stop Apaches and Mexican Kickapoos from raiding across the border, won for him the respect and admiration of his superiors and subordinates alike and the plaudits of the Texans of his day. In eloquent prose, Wallace presented his careful research on Mackenzie's military career in a way that illuminated the period and its ethos. David J. Murrah, in his introduction to the 1993 edition, places this important volume within the corpus of Wallace's work on Texas history. He rightly claims that the action-filled narrative represents Ernest Wallace at his best.

In February 1945, some 80,000 US Marines attacked the heavily defended fortress that the Japanese had constructed on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. At the cost of 28,000 American casualties, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions dutifully conquered this desolate piece of hell. Captain Robert S. Burrell masterfully reconsiders the costs of taking Iwo Jima and its role in the war effort.

The world's first women combat pilots were members of the Soviet Army Air Force. Here they speak openly of their experiences and their courageous efforts to show the Red Army that they were adequate to the great role they sought, grappling with deep distrust from male pilots and officers.

For the ecologically concerned, this book offers a perspective on our future relations with our planet. The author examines ways in which the contemporary world fulfills and frustrates its basic needs and intentions. He evokes dreams and psychiatry to reveal a view of the two million-year-old self as embodying no less than the will of nature.

In 1952 C. G. Jung published a paradoxical hypothesis on synchronicity that marked an attempt to expand the western world's conception of the relationship between nature and the psyche. Jung's hypothesis sought to break down the polarizing cause-effect assessment of the world and psyche, suggesting that everything is interconnected. Thus, synchronicity is both "a meaningful event" and "an acausal connecting principle." Evaluating the world in this manner opened the door to "exploring the possibility of meaning in chance or random events, deciphering if and when meaning might be present even if outside conscious awareness."Now, after contextualizing Jung's work in relation to contemporary scientific advancements such as relativity and quantum theories, Joseph Cambray explores in this book how Jung's theories, practices, and clinical methods influenced the current field of complexity theory, which works with a paradox similar to Jung's synchronicity: the importance of symmetry as well as the need to break that symmetry for "emergence" to occur. Finally, Cambray provides his unique contribution to the field by attempting to trace "cultural synchronicities," a reconsideration of historical events in terms of their synchronistic aspects. For example, he examines the emergence of democracy in ancient Greece in order "to find a model of group decision making based on emergentist principles with a synchronistic core." JOSEPH CAMBRAY is the president-elect of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. He is a consulting editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology, and coeditor of Analytical Psychology: Contemporary Perspectivces in Jungian Analysis (Brunner-Routledge, 2004). He resides in Providence, Rhode Island.

On May 25, 1945, while American and Japanese forces on Okinawa were locked in bitter struggle, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff sent out plans for an amphibious invasion which would subjugate Japan. "Operation Olympic" was to seize Kyushu, while "Operation Coronet" was to strike directly against the Tokyo area. Westheimer's meticulously researched novel about this plan startled readers in the 1970s.

This volume collects the best known or most representative or the most classically Texas traditional songs set in a social and historical framework.

Whether you're a musician with no previous experience in computer programming, or a computer hobbyist interested in learning about music, Automated Music Composition has something to offer. The book contains BASIC language tutorials for beginning programmers; an overview of computer music applications; a systematic exposition of the principles and techniques of automated music composition; insights into contemporary trends in music and computerized sound; principles of MIDI-interfaced computer/synthesizers; a beginning course in music composition, showing in detail how to create a variety of sounds with the computer; step-by-step instructions for using plug-in-and-play programs; interactive MIDI programs listings ready for immediate use; over 50 BASIC routines for automated composition adapted for MIDI sequencers and synthesizers; numerous examples and programming ideas.

Hanging Sam chronicles the life of Lt. General Samuel T. "Hanging Sam" Williams, who, after being relieved of his duties as Assistant Division Commander of the 90th Infantry Division and demoted from the rank of brigadier general following the 1944 Normany invasion, persevered to recover not only his lost star but two additional ones as well, an accomplishment unmatched in modern U. S. Army history. Following enlistment in the Texas Militia in 1916 to fight Pancho Villa along the U.S.-Mexican border, Williams served in both World Wars, the Korean War (where he commanded the 25th Infantry Dividion), and Vietnam (where from 1955 to 1960 he was Chief of the U. S. Military Assistance and Advisory Group). Wounded twice in battle, Williams was decorated with every medal for valor the Army awards, except the Medal of Honor.

Four diverse Texas poets are presented in the anthology.

Everyone worth his salt knows that a snappin' turtle won't let go until it thunders, but did you know that more than thirteen blackbirds on a fence with their tails to the north is a sure sign of a coming blue norther? Or that you should eat every grain of rice in your bowl or you will have a spouse who has chicken pox marks? Think of the needless human suffering the world has endured simply because no one bothered to collect the combined wisdom of the folk and to make it available for quick reference! Thanks to Kenneth W. Davis and Everett A. Gillis, those dark days are now at an end. Whether you need advice on the moon and stars; weather; water witching; planting and growing; worms, frogs, roosters, crickets and other critters; clothing; or love, marriage, home and family, it's all here in this handy little compendium.

Some 111 million years ago, deep in the heart of Texas, a herd of twenty-ton dinosaurs sauntered across a wet mud flat. Their footprints eventually became frozen in stone, leaving a sign of one fleeting moment of a particular day in the lives of these magnificent creatures. Today, after mountains of time have passed, the story of dinosaurs in what is now Texas is being reconstructed, footprint by footprint, bone by bone. Lone Star Dinosaurs tells that story, along with the exciting tale of the discoveries that have opened a peephole into the past. Behind each fossil find, there is not just a dinosaur but a person-- sometimes a child--whose spark of curiosity lights the picture of prehistory. This is a thrilling story, engagingly written and beautifully illustrated, through which young and old alike can enter the world of the dinosaurs and the world of the dinosaur hunters. Dinosaurs are a Texas legacy from worlds long past. Pleurocoelus, Alamosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, Chasmosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Tenontosaurus are among the representatives Texas boasts of every basic group of dinosaurs--a remarkable diversity that samples nearly the entire range of dinosaurian development over an immense expanse of time. In fact, the three dinosaur-bearing areas within the state--the Panhandle, Central Texas, and Big Bend--yield treasures of vastly different ages, from the beginning of the Mesozoic Era more than 200 million years ago to the time of the big extinction some 66 million years ago. These dinosaurs lived in such different arrangements of the continents and oceans that they may as well have lived in different worlds. Their stories offer a compelling picture of the history of life on our planet.

This guide to the identification of just over two hundred of Texas' most common native and naturalized trees brims over with life-sized, black-and-white photographs of leaves, fruit, flowers, and bark. Scanned directly from actual specimens, these images accompany species descriptions that include height, growth rate, commercial or wildlife value, family, and vegetation region of the trees, alongside captivating folklore and interesting cultural and historical annotations.