The British horn player Dennis Brain (1921-1957) is commonly described by such statements as "the greatest horn player of the 20th Century," "a genius," and "a legend." He was both a prodigy and popularizer, famously performing a concerto on a garden hose in perfect pitch. On his usual concert instrument his tone was of unsurpassed beauty and ......
Winner of the Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry, 1994. Barbara Hamby makes her poems out of jokes, Italian phrases, quotes from saints and philosophers, references to meals eaten and wines drunk. In a fluid, compelling voice, she sets a stage, peoples it with real and imagined characters, spins them into dizzying motion, and then makes everything ......
The Assassination of J. W. Jarrott, a Forgotten Hero
In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these "nesters." In August 1902 a ......
When Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan walked into the Fort Hood Soldier Readiness Processing Center and opened fire on soldiers within, he perpetrated the worst mass shooting on a United States military base in our country's history. Death on Base is an in-depth look at the events surrounding the tragic mass murder that took place on November 5, ......
Returning to the scene of his turbulent childhood, a dying man comes to grips with a chilling truth--that his father was never capable of giving him affection. As he looks back on one particular summer, he realizes that much of his will to survive came from the unconditional love and support offered by his grandfather, and it is that heritage, ......
This debut collection includes love songs and prayers, palinodes and pleas, short histories and tragic tales as well as a series of ventriloquist poems that track the epiphanies and consequences of speaking in a voice other than one's own. Other poems speak to a Beloved and the highs and lows of parenthood and personhood-all with music and verve, ......
Texas Rituals, Superstitions, and Legends of the Hereafter
Death provides us with some of our very best folklore. Some fear it, some embrace it, and most have pretty firm ideas about what happens when we die. Although some people may not want to discuss dying, it happens to all of us - and there's no way to get around it.This publication of the Texas Folklore Society examines the lore of death and ......
A Soldier's World War II Journey from North Africa to Germany
Joe Olexa enlisted in the US Army in December 1940, figuring that if he was going to be in a war, he might as well start training. Assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, nicknamed "The Big Red One," he served in Company L of its 26th Infantry Regiment for the next four years. Along the way he trained with the division in maneuvers in the United ......
The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration
Over the past seventy years, the Allied invasion of Northwestern France in June 1944, known as D-Day, has come to stand as something more than a major battle. The assault itself formed a vital component of Allied victory in the Second World War. D-Day developed into a sign and symbol; as a word it carries with it a series of ideas and associations ......
