The Black Death. Cholera. Spanish flu. Swine flu. HIV/AIDS. COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2. Each of these pandemics has made (or, is making) a lasting impact on humanity. From the immediate mental image of the beaked masks worn in the Middle Ages (bubonic plague) and the birth of epidemiology (cholera) to recognizing the benefits of social distancing (1918 ......
Flowers have played an important role in human culture and survival for thousands of years. The final products of flowers-fruits and seeds-are vitally important as food. Flowers provide bursts of color to homes and gardens and they symbolize love, sorrow, and renewal. Yet we often overlook their real purpose. Why do flowers exist and why do they ......
Cowboy spurs are a pure form of American folk art. Like the cowboy himself, the way spurs developed was molded by their use and the environment of the range, along with a generous dose of individualism and pride. Cowboy Spurs and Their Makers tells for the first time the fascinating story of this western art and the artisans who professional ......
Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West
Offering a fresh perspective on the influence of the American southwest-and particularly West Texas-on the New York art world of the 1950s, Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West aims to establish the significance of itinerant teaching and western travel as a strategic choice for women artists associated with ......
This brief and entertaining history of the Texas Longhorn details the development of the first distinct American breed of beef cattle. The Spanish herds that had roamed Texas for generations, when mixed with English Longhorns brought by Anglo settlers in the early 1800s, yielded a rangy hybrid that could thrive in Texas' climate and was ideally ......
Raised the son of a Methodist circuit-riding minister, Wesley Clark Dodson had just begun establishing himself as a civic-minded architect in Alabama when the outbreak of the Civil War dramatically altered his life. He fought with the 40th Alabama Infantry Regiment and emerged from the war disabled. In 1866, unable to find work as an architect in ......
The History of Texas a&M University's Hagler Institute for Advanced Study
From its post-Civil War beginnings as a land-grant institution, Texas A&M has become a place where great minds are cultivated, nurtured, and given free rein. It is in that spirit that a center was established on campus to enhance excellence through the exchange of ideas and collaboration with the world's finest scholars, researchers, and industry ......
The history of the Mexican Army's activity in the Texas Revolution is well documented but often hidden away. Many important primary sources have been lost or destroyed, but an impressive amount of period documentation has survived. And yet many of these handwritten, Spanish documents have been shelved in the back rooms of museums and libraries ......
Characterizing San Antonio's five Spanish colonial-era missions as "sites of memory," author and historian Joel Daniel Kitchens explores how and why Spain built the missions, what happened to the missions after the Spanish colonizers left, and how and why the missions came to weigh so heavily in American imagination and identity, even into the ......
