A Treasury of Texas humor


Book Description

Author Bill Cannon has been collecting jokes and humorous stories about the antics of fellow Texans for literally years. Once he began this book people started sending him their own special favorites. This delightfully funny book covers every facet of Texas humor from life on the range to church, politics, Texas women, history, and hysterics. And it's a book your kids can read.




Texas Boys In Gray


Book Description

Based on a 1912 publication about Texans who fought for the South in the Civil War, Texas Boys in Gray presents a collection of fascinating remembrances of those who were there. Sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking, the experiences of these men are documented as a tribute to Texas war veterans. Texas Boys in Gray captures, in their own words, the patriotism, the fear, the confusion, the bravery, the terrible wounds, the desperate hunger, the camaraderie, the horrible prison conditions, and the joyful reunions that were all part of that historical time.




Tom Dodge Talks About Texas


Book Description

Tom Dodge is at his best when he talks about Texas. This collection of writings over the past decade includes his most poignant and provocative National Public Radio vignettes as well as longer pieces from newspapers and magazines. Here are the wry, sometimes ironic, observations on all things Texas his listeners are used to. His insights include a unique analysis of junkyards, railroads, bookstores, horned toads, sandy-land farms, and his grandmother's homemade grape jelly.




Lone Star Menagerie


Book Description

There's more than one kind of Texas native-we share our magnificent state with numerous other species some with four legs or more and some with no legs at all. Naturalist Jim Harris has studied most of them, and in Lone Star Menagerie he shares some little-known facts, fascinating tales, and amusing personal experiences with these creatures that we live alongside.




Tales From Toadsuck Texas


Book Description

Humor and trivia author Bill Cannon discovered there really was a Toadsuck, Texas, and he has collected a series of delightfully funny stories about folks he imagined might have lived in a town with such a comical name.




Famous Texas Folklorists and Their Stories


Book Description

Jim Gramon, a native Texas storyteller, introduces you to some of his friends: John Henry Faulk, Cactus Pryor, Allen Damron, Mason Brewer, Mody Boatright, and Ben King Green. And he shares funny Texas stories from all over the state, from the Oil Patch to the Panhandle, from the Big Bend to the Piney Woods; big towns and small (Dallas, Houston, Austin, El Paso, Terlingua, Manchaca, Cumby, Sulfur Springs, Commerce).




Texas


Book Description

There is a myriad of little known, often forgotten, and sometimes unbelievable events, places and people that make up the warp and woof of the Texas mystique. This book consists of intriguing facts taken from age-old legends about the people who developed and settled the state. A section called Truth is Stranger than Fiction will defy imagination. The Texas history buff is sure to enjoy Forgotten Footnotes to Texas History. Have You Ever Wondered? will supply answers to questions about certain Texas legends and folklore. Texas: Land of Legend and Lore presents the Texas of fact and fantasy that so captivates the imaginations of Texans and non-Texans alike.




From My Mother's Hands


Book Description

"From My Mother's Hands" celebrates the positive roles mothers can play in the lives of daughters. In a collection of poignant memoirs crafted from interviews with thirty-three notable Texas women, Susie Kelly Flatau weaves a tapestry of intimate memories, family photographs and recipes, and profiles of each daughter. The daughters' observations and discoveries about their mothers are filled with a wide range of emotions. Lessons of integrity, love, and hope chronicle the powerful bonds that can exist between a daughter and her mother.\r\n\r\n "Every day is Mother's Day in this wonderful collection of daughters' memories of their mothers their guidance, their endurance, even their recipes. And what remarkable daughters speak here! This is a tribute to two generations".\r\n\r\n Nancy Baker Jones, Ph.D., independent scholar specializing in Texas women's history. Co-author (with Ruthe Winegarten) of the recently released book "Capitol Women" and the video Getting Where We've Got to Be, histories of Texas's female legislators\r\n\r\n "So many books are about what went wrong. This is a book about what went right. There is immense wisdom in these lives, wisdom that mentors us, inspires us, gives us hope for our own future and our children's future. The section on [Creating Your Own Mother's Journal] is both an occasion for reflection and a reminder of what is yet possible".\r\n Chuck Meyer, author of "Twelve Smooth Stones: A Father Writes to His Daughter About Money, Sex, Spirituality and Other Things That Really Matter"\r\n\r\n Susie Kelly Flatau is an author whose fascination with people and places lives within the spirit of herwriting. In "Counter Culture Texas" (in collaboration with photographer Mark Dean) Ms. Flatau's vignettes taken from on-the-spot interviews capture the histories of old-time diners, dance halls, drugstores, and more.\r\n For over twenty-five years this award-winning educator has taught writing and literature to students of all ages in both public schools and the private sector. Susie lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, Jack, and daughter, Jenni.\r\n




Bible in Pocket, Gun in Hand


Book Description

"'The Story of Frontier Religion' could have been told in a great many ways, many of them dull. Here, however, inter-pretative matter has been kept to a minimum and source material selected with an unerring sense of humor. . . . There are chapters on the styles of preaching and of praying, the phenomena of revivalism, the church as a disciplinary force, frauds and 'bad men' who preached, scoffers and trouble-makers, the fiercely jocular competition among the various sects, and the hard lot of circuit ministers."--Virginia Kirkus' Bulletin "This is an admirable piece of research, unpedantic but authentic, packed with entertaining anecdotes (some of them hilarious) based on obscure pastoral autobiographies, the diaries of early missionaries, the minutes of church court trials, and other curious source materials. . . . A unique book."--Chicago Sunday Tribune Ross Phares has written widely for magazines and is the author of several books.




Lowering the Bar


Book Description

What do you call 600 lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Marc Galanter calls it an opportunity to investigate the meanings of a rich and time-honored genre of American humor: lawyer jokes. Lowering the Bar analyzes hundreds of jokes from Mark Twain classics to contemporary anecdotes about Dan Quayle, Johnnie Cochran, and Kenneth Starr. Drawing on representations of law and lawyers in the mass media, political discourse, and public opinion surveys, Galanter finds that the increasing reliance on law has coexisted uneasily with anxiety about the “legalization” of society. Informative and always entertaining, his book explores the tensions between Americans’ deep-seated belief in the law and their ambivalence about lawyers.