Mirabeau Lamar seeks nothing less than a Texas empire that will dominate the North American continent. Brave exploits at the Battle of San Jacinto bring him rank, power, and prestige, which by 1838 propel him to the presidency of the young Republic of Texas and put him in position to achieve his dream. Edward Fontaine, who works for and idolizes ......
Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin
The Elkhorn River originates in north-central Nebraska and empties into the Platte River just west of Omaha. One of the first written records of the Elkhorn describes a flood. A flood hindered travel up the river by the valley's first non-Indian settlers. Decade after decade, floods have swept away mill dams, destroyed crops, drowned stock, soaked ......
What Is Gone is a story of violence and nostalgia, the inextricable connections between identity and place, narrated by a woman who grew up in the comforting cultural geography of Lincoln, Nebraska, a town that made her feel so safe she became almost incapable of comprehending danger. Even after her own encounter with violence-a brutal rape in ......
This is the story of Watson Mithlo, Chiricahua Apache, his family, and his life. Watson's story embodies the life of the Chiricahua Apache people, who in 1886 were forced into exile to Fort Marion, Florida, by the US government and considered prisoners of war until 1914. This story tells Watson's lived history as the Chiricahua were relocated from ......
A Naval Hospital Corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam, 1965
Having just turned eighteen and graduated from high school, and living in small-town Nebraska with nothing much to do, young Dick Schaefer joined the Navy on impulse, hoping that by choosing his branch of the military he would have some measure of control over his future. Not fully aware of the increasing military action in Vietnam, Schaefer found ......
Texas grapples with an identity crisis. One camp insists that the state's roots in slavery, segregation, and cotton make it southern. Another argues that its Native and ranching history make it western. Outside Texas, southern and western historians who don't know what to make of the state ignore it altogether. In his innovative settling of the ......
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 ......
John Poch's newly curated collection, Gracious: Poems of the 21st Century South, spotlights both emerging and notable voices from this poetry-rich region. This book promises to be the best and most influential anthology of Southern poetry published in over thirty years. Gracious steers away from stereotypical mockingbird-and-magnolia verse and ......
The black sun, an ages-old image of the darkness in individual lives and in life itself, has not been treated hospitably in the modern world. Modern psychology has seen darkness primarily as a negative force, something to move through and beyond, but it actually has an intrinsic importance to the human psyche. In this book, Jungian analyst Stanton ......