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 ......
A Journey Into the Shadows at the Dawn of Creation
"Explore the collective unconscious from a different angle and perspective than we have seen in the European, Slavic, Celtic, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern cultures," says series editor Michael Escamilla in the foreword to Nancy Swift Furlotti's The Splendor of the Maya: A Journey into the Shadows at the Dawn of Creation. This examination and ......
Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest in the nation. It has long been regarded as the "Energy Capital of the World." Trademarked boasts frequently refer to the "world's busiest commercial seaport," "world's biggest medical complex," and "world's control center for space exploration." Houston has been home to some of the most ......
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 ......
The Lyme Letters is epistolary verse that spells out a memoir. R, a non-binary femme character, narrates their experience of disease and recovery through recurrent letters to doctors, pets, family members, lovers, and a "Master." R, in letter form and repurposed religious texts, also explores the paradoxical experiences of queer ......
The North American handgame has a long lineage, attested in the myth, oral traditions, and archaeological records of Native American people. In The Handgame of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache: Spirited Competition on the Southern Plains, noted scholar William C. Meadows examines the game's history, evolution, and practice from origin accounts to ......
James and Annetta White opened the Broken Spoke in 1964, then a mile south of the Austin city limits, under a massive live oak, and beside what would eventually become South Lamar Boulevard. White built the place himself, beginning construction on the day he received his honorable discharge from the US Army. And for more than fifty years, the ......
Race, Redemption, and the Soul of an American Artist
In 1977, when the Voyager deep space probes were launched on their journey into interstellar space, they each carried a gold record containing music from a wide variety of cultures. Of the four selections of American music chosen, one was a recording of Texas street evangelist "Blind" Willie Johnson's haunting gospel song, "Dark Was the Night, ......
A cascade of recent reports has described unprecedented growth in every category measured-population, employment, new business starts, manufacturing indices, traffic counts, in-migration, school attendance, and airport enplanements-highlighting the dynamism of the two "anchor cities" of Central Texas: Austin and San Antonio. In The Austin-San ......
