The Texas Experience


Book Description

"There is something to be said for experience. Between the two of us, the authors of this text have over five decades of teaching Texas government in the classroom, and almost that many years writing about it. But in our rapidly changing world, the ability to adapt to change is fundamentally important. Among the most notable agents of change in Texas government over the last decade has been the successful launch of the Texas Tribune, an online newspaper devoted to covering Texas politics with an emphasis on helping readers not only know but understand what is happening with the state's government. This non-partisan endeavor is the largest organization covering state politics anywhere. They are experts at providing analysis and process vast data sets into usable content. With our experience and the Tribune's analysis and immediacy, our aim is to create content that is readable, up-to-date, and meaningful to you as a student. You will have the opportunity to engage in Texas government instead of simply reading a textbook. The narrative text you'll find here covers the key concepts in Texas government. But to get the full Texas Experience with current Texas Tribune content integrated, you'll want to access the title in Revel. There you will find interactive resources that will bring the course to life, illustrate how these core concepts affect you and your community every day, help you become an informed consumer of the news, and empower you to make a difference in state and local politics now and throughout your life. Our approach in writing this book is simple. First, be realistic. Texas politics is less a debate about ideology and theory than it is a pragmatic discussion of what works"--




The Texas Experience


Book Description

Starring 150 tantalizing Texas favorites plus 650 scrumptious specialties from around the world. This cookbook tells the history of Texas with color photographs and good food.




The Texas Revolutionary Experience


Book Description

This fresh perspective, drawn from exhaustive examination of primary documents (claims records and land documents as well as traditional manuscript collections), portrays the Texans entering their quarrel with Mexico as a fragmented people--individualistic, divided from one community to another by ethnic and racial tensions, and lacking a consensus about the meaning of political changes in Mexico. Paul D. Lack examines, one at a time, the various groups that participated in the Texas Revolution. He concludes that the army was highly politicized, overly democratic and individualistic, and lacking in discipline and respect for property. With the statistical profile of the army he has compiled, Lack puts to rest forever the idea that the Anglo community gave an overwhelming response to the call to arms. He details instead the tensions between army volunteers and the majority of Texans who refused military service.




The Terrific Texas Coloring Book!


Book Description

The reproducible coloring book includes pictures of characters, places, facts, and fun. The kids can color their way around your state while learning new facts. Great for school, home or on the road.




Photographing Texas


Book Description

One of the most famous images in western history is a photograph of the Wild Bunch outlaw gang, also known as “The Fort Worth Five,” featuring Butch Cassidy, Sundance Kid, and three other members of the gang dressed to the nines and posing in front of a studio backdrop. This picture, taken by John Swartz in his Fort Worth studio in November 1900, helped bring the gang down when distributed around the country by the Pinkerton Agency. It may be seen today as a prominent marketing image for the Sundance Square development in downtown Fort Worth. John, David, and Charles Swartz, three brothers who moved from Virginia to Fort Worth in the late nineteenth century, captured not only the famous “Wild Bunch” image, but also a visual record of the people, places, and events that chronicles Fort Worth’s fin-de-siécle transformation from a frontier outpost to a bustling metropolis—the ingénue, the dashing young gentleman, the stern husband, the loving wife, the nuclear family, the solid businessman, and so on. Only occasionally does a hint of something different show up: an independent-looking woman, a spoiled child, a roguish male. In Photographing Texas: The Swartz Brothers, 1880–1918, historian and scholar Richard Selcer gathers a collection of some of the Swartz brothers’ most important images from Fort Worth and elsewhere, few of which have ever been assembled in a single repository. He also offers the fruits of exhaustive research into the photographers’ backgrounds, careers, techniques, and place in Fort Worth society. The result is an illuminating and entertaining perspective on frontier photography, western history, and life in Fort Worth at the turn of the nineteenth-to-twentieth centuries.




Texas People's Court


Book Description

From 1983 to 1987, author Mark Dunn worked as a court clerk for a justice of the peace in Travis County, Texas, where, he says, "I learned more about human nature . . . than I could have learned in any other job I might have taken up as a bushy-tailed kid from Tennessee." Based on interviews with 200 justices of the peace from all parts of Texas, Texas People's Court promises to take readers on a tour of what it means to be a Texas justice of the peace: an experience that is by turns hilarious, sobering, heart-wrenching, and, from one end to the other, fascinating. Here in the Texas justice court, wrongs can be righted and lives changed in profound ways. A priceless family necklace might finally be restored to the rightful owner; an occupational driver's license fortuitously granted. A death inquest may become an opportunity for family reflection and valediction, with the attending judge as sympathetic witness. In each of its chapters, Texas People's Court takes up a different aspect, duty, or area of thought related to the profession of justice of the peace taken from conversations with JPs throughout the state of Texas--from those who serve in its most populous municipalities to rural county JPs--putting a human face on the responsibilities, attitudes, and perspectives that motivate their judgments. The result is a thoroughly entertaining, sympathetic view of what Dunn calls "the day-to-day observation of human conflict in microcosm."




The Mexican American Experience in Texas


Book Description

A historical overview of Mexican Americans' social and economic experiences in Texas For hundreds of years, Mexican Americans in Texas have fought against political oppression and exclusion—in courtrooms, in schools, at the ballot box, and beyond. Through a detailed exploration of this long battle for equality, this book illuminates critical moments of both struggle and triumph in the Mexican American experience. Martha Menchaca begins with the Spanish settlement of Texas, exploring how Mexican Americans’ racial heritage limited their incorporation into society after the territory’s annexation. She then illustrates their political struggles in the nineteenth century as they tried to assert their legal rights of citizenship and retain possession of their land, and goes on to explore their fight, in the twentieth century, against educational segregation, jury exclusion, and housing covenants. It was only in 1967, she shows, that the collective pressure placed on the state government by Mexican American and African American activists led to the beginning of desegregation. Menchaca concludes with a look at the crucial roles that Mexican Americans have played in national politics, education, philanthropy, and culture, while acknowledging the important work remaining to be done in the struggle for equality.




Italian Experience in Texas


Book Description

In their humorous, dire, joyous, and sorrowful accounts, Italian immigrants share the experiences of all ethnic groups.




Alamo Images


Book Description

An exhibition at the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, November 16, 1985-March 14, 1986.




In the Shadow of the Chinatis


Book Description

Winner, 2020 Al Lowman Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas County or Local History There is a deep and abiding connection between humans and the land in Pinto Canyon—a remote and rugged place near the border with Mexico in the Texas Big Bend. Here the land assumes a certain primacy, defined not by the ephemera of plants and animals but by the very bedrock that rises far above the silvery flow of Pinto Creek— looming masses that break the horizon into a hundred different vistas. Yet, over time, people managed to survive and sometimes even thrive in this harsh environment. In the Shadow of the Chinatis combines the rich narratives of history, natural history, and archeology to tell the story of the landscape as well as the people who once inhabited it. Settling the land was difficult, staying on it even more so, but one family proved especially resilient. Rising above their meager origins, the Prietos eventually amassed a 12,000-acre ranch in the shadow of the Chinati Mountains to become the most successful of Pinto Canyon’s early settlers. But starting with the tense years of the Great Depression, the family faced a series of tragedies: one son was killed by a Texas Ranger, and another by the deranged son of Chico Cano, the Big Bend’s most notorious bandit. Ultimately, growing rifts in the family forced the sale of the ranch, marking the end of an era. Bearing the hallmarks of an epic tragedy, the departure of the Prieto family signaled a transition away from ranching towards a new style of landownership based on a completely different model. Today, Pinto Canyon’s scenic and scientific value increasingly overshadows the marginal economics of its past. In the Shadow of the Chinatis reveals a rich tapestry of interaction between humans and their environment, providing a unique examination of the Big Bend region and the people who call it home.