Bøger udgivet af TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIV PR

Most people are familiar with the siege of the Alamo in 1836, but many do not realize that there was a second battle in the early twentieth century. In 1903, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas began fighting a large eastern company for the old warehouse that was once the mission convent. With the property secured, infighting between two factions of the DRT, led by Clara Driscoll and Adina de Zavala, divided the organization and endangered the Alamo again. At one point, Adina de Zavala barricaded herself inside for three days to protect the building from demolition.Alamo Heights is a fictional account of the battle to protect the Texas landmark. More than simply a book on history, it is a story about the people behind the events. Each character has a hidden agenda, and the tension and battles between them represent the larger conflict between Anglo and Hispanic cultures. The novel addresses the assimilation of Tejanos in a racially divided, increasingly Anglo state.

Almost eighty years before the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Ricardo Flores Magón--revolutionary, anarchist, labor organizer and expatriate nationalist--challenged the prevailing social order of both Mexico and the United States. Magón predicted that if Mexican workers failed to organize and shake off the yoke of capitalism, the nation would soon be dominated by foreign economic interests. And American workers, he warned, would find their firms and factories employing low-wage laborers in Mexico. Magón's message: "Mexico for Mexicans." Organized labor, however, would never gain a strong foothold in Mexico. Although the Constitution of 1917 guaranteed the right of workers to organize and strike, government restrictions, a historically unstable economy and meddling by the American interests (including the IWW and the AFL), combined to limit the effectiveness of Mexican unions. "Mexico for Mexicans," or working-class nationalism, was and is little more than rhetoric. In Mexican Workers and the State, historian Norman Caulfield traces the evolution of organized labor from its radical roots during the Mexican Revolution to its present status as a mere pawn in the game of Mexican politics. The implementation of NAFTA in 1993 has been beneficial to some (almost one million low-wage workers are employed in the maquila industries south of the border), but it has also aggravated the question of workers' rights. Outside industries continue to play an unsettling role in the vacillating Mexican economy. Ricardo Flores Magón's 1914 prediction was right. Mexico has become a haven for foreign interests. Material on which Mexican Workers and the State is based has won the Harvey Johnson Award from the Southwestern Council of Latin American Studies.

Galveston--a small, flat island off the Texas Gulf coast--has seen some of the state's most amazing history and fascinating people. First settled by the Karankawa Indians, long suspected of cannibalism, it was where the stranded Cabeza de Vaca came ashore in the 16th century. Pirate Jean Lafitte used it as a hideout in the early 1800s and both General Sam Houston and General James Long (with his wife, Jane, the "Mother of Texas") stayed on its shores. More modern notable names on the island include Robert Kleberg and the Moody, Sealy and Kempner families who dominated commerce and society well into the twentieth century. Captured by both sides during the Civil War and the scene of a devastating sea battle, the city flourished during Reconstruction and became a leading port, an exporter of grain and cotton, a terminal for two major railroads, and site of fabulous Victorian buildings--homes, hotels, the Grand Opera House, the Galveston Pavilion (first building in Texas to have electric lights). It was, writes Cartwright, "the largest, bawdiest, and most important city between New Orleans and San Francisco." This country's worst natural disaster--the Galveston hurricane of 1900--left the city in shambles, with one sixth of its population dead. But Galveston recovered. During Prohibition rum-running and bootlegging flourished; after the repeal, a variety of shady activities earned the city the nickname "The Free State of Galveston." In recent years Galveston has focused on civic reform and restoration of its valuable architectural and cultural heritage. Over 500 buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and an annual "Dickens on the Strand" festival brings thousands of tourists to the island city each December. Yet Galveston still witnesses colorful incidents and tells stories of descendants of the ruling families, as Cartwright demonstrates with wry humor in a new epilogue written specially for this edition of Galveston. First published in 1991 by Atheneum.

Stanley Ely says that when the fiftieth or so person confronted him with a skeptical, "You mean you're Jewish, and you're from Texas?" he decided to do more than smile and say, "Yes". The result is this funny, caustic and nostalgic tale in the tradition of popular regionally and ethnically focused memoirs. Ely combines the stories of his grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and friends, and an abundance of family photos as he shares his family story from the immigration of his parents (as young children) and grandparents to Galveston from Russia and Romania until today, as Ely faces his own senior years living in New York. The story of Ely's family and their friends reflects the impressive growth of Dallas and its Jewish population in the first half of the twentieth century. As he narrates the building of new lives in Texas, Ely also portrays the integration of a minority segment of Jewish immigrants in America outside the great cities of the North. Though the book is not a typical "coming out" story, the reader also learns of Ely's gradual and sometimes reluctant acceptance of himself as a gay man.

A sampling of Texas literature and movies in pieces.

"Folklore, which delves into the culture of peoples, may be a more important study about real life--private life--than standard, formal history. . . . One of the lessons that we have learned--or are beginning to learn--from the study of folklore is the importance of food and eating customs in unravelling the history of a people. . . . Eats may provide as much information about the way we live and see the world as the people we elect to office or the houses we build or the books we approve or the movies we film. . . . The foods we eat, the way we eat them, and the imagination we bestow upon their preparation will tell [much about us] to historians, folklorists, and anthropologists." --James Ward Lee, from the foreword