Hill Country
Hill Country

Author: Richard Zelade

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publications

Published: 1999-02-01

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 1461625394

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This book features ten tours to Central Texas that capture the essence of its flavor and charm. Included in this guide are historic tidbits, folklore, geography, major attractions, maps, listings of accomodations, a calendar of events, and more.

Lone Star Justice
Lone Star Justice

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 0195127420

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"In the annals of law enforcement few groups or agencies have become as encrusted with legend as the Texas Rangers. The always-readable historian Robert Utley has done a thorough job of chipping away these encrustations and revealing the Ranger's rather rag-and-bone, catch-as-catch-can beginning in a time when the Texas frontier was very far from being stable or safe. A fine book."--Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove From The Lone Ranger to Lonesome Dove, the Texas Rangers have been celebrated in fact and fiction for their daring exploits in bringing justice to the Old West. In Lone Star Justice, best-selling author Robert M. Utley captures the first hundred years of Ranger history, in a narrative packed with adventures worthy of Zane Grey or Larry McMurtry. The Rangers began in the 1820s as loose groups of citizen soldiers, banding together to chase Indians and Mexicans on the raw Texas frontier. Utley shows how, under the leadership of men like Jack Hays and Ben McCulloch, these fiercely independent fighters were transformed into a well-trained, cohesive team. Armed with a revolutionary new weapon, Samuel Colt's repeating revolver, they became a deadly fighting force, whether battling Comanches on the plains or storming the city of Monterey in the Mexican-American War. As the Rangers evolved from part-time warriors to full-time lawmen by 1874, they learned to face new dangers, including homicidal feuds, labor strikes, and vigilantes turned mobs. They battled train robbers, cattle thieves and other outlaws--it was Rangers, for example, who captured John Wesley Hardin, the most feared gunman in the West. Based on exhaustive research in Texas archives, this is the most authoritative history of the Texas Rangers in over half a century. It will stand alongside other classics of Western history by Robert M. Utley--a vivid portrait of the Old West and of the legendary men who kept the law on the lawless frontier. "A rip-snortin', six-guns-blazin' saga of good guys and bad guys who were sometimes one and the same. By taking on the Texas Rangers, Utley, an accomplished and well-regarded historian of the American West, risks treading on ground that is both hallowed and thoroughly documented. He skirts those issues by turning in a balanced history.... An accessible survey of some interesting--and bloody--times."--Kirkus Reviews

At the Heart of Texas
At the Heart of Texas

Author: Richard B. McCaslin

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 0876112645

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"History like that of Texas is rare. . . . Is it not discreditable to the people of Texas, that they should leave the collection of material for the history of the State to the great endowed Northern libraries? . . . Let Texas arouse herself for very shame, and begin at once the discharge of her filial duty." So wrote George Pierce Garrison in the first issue of the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, published in July 1897, just months after the establishment of the organization on March 2. The state of Texas was just half a century old; the city of Austin, going back to the days of the Republic, was a little older—a few years past its half-century; and the University of Texas, where Garrison was "the history professor," was not yet fourteen. Earlier attempts to organize historical societies in Texas, traced in the opening chapter, illuminate the factors that came ultimately to be decisive in the success of the Association: the wisdom in linking the organization with the University of Texas, the inclusion of lay historians, and the continued insistence on high academic standards. And, from the beginning, the Association has established a tradition for publishing in the Quarterly, in addition to the Anglo story, the stories of the Indians, the Spanish, and the French. According to author Richard B. McCaslin, "It may be that the Association survived where its predecessors had not because Garrison, who was as much a Progressive historian as any of his contemporaries, understood the value of inclusiveness." The text is organized in chronological chapters by the tenures of the seven directors, George Garrison to Ron Tyler, all of whom were professors in the UT history department. Within the larger framework of the directors, the programs, and the publications, McCaslin gives shape to the unique interaction of forces—university, political, and the academic/lay membership—that has accorded the Association a character and suppleness that continues to ensure its long endurance. The book is profusely illustrated, and sidebars culled from past issues of the Quarterly complement the text. Winner of the Award of Merit from the Philosophical Socierty of Texas

A Guide to Special Collections in the OCLC Database
A Guide to Special Collections in the OCLC Database

Author: OCLC.

Publisher: Dublin, Ohio : OCLC Online Computer Library Center

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13:

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This guide begins by describing the OCLC database, including ways in which it is used by librarians and library patrons; countries reached by OCLC; programs intended to enrich the database, e.g. retrospective conversion projects; cataloging formats (books, serials, sound recordings, musical scores, audiovisual media, maps, archives and manuscripts, and machine-readable data files); and vignettes of the database (OCLC coverage of Shakespeare and Bach, the top 100 authors and the top 25 composers in the database, and a brief discussion of special collections). An annotated listing of the special collections of OCLC member libraries that are cataloged in the OCLC database is then presented. This list is arranged alphabetically by state, then alphabetically by institution within each state, and a subject index to these entries (which constitute only a fraction of the database) is provided. Four appendixes include lists of languages in the database, Title II-C "Strengthening Research Library Resources Program" projects, and major microforms projects in member libraries. A brief description of the OCLC online union catalog concludes the guide, and a brief questionnaire inviting reader comments and suggestions is attached. (CGD)

Bluffing Texas Style
Bluffing Texas Style

Author: Michael Vinson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2020-03-26

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0806166231

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In 1989 a woman fishing in Texas on a quiet stretch of the Colorado River snagged a body. Her “catch” was the corpse of Johnny Jenkins, shot in the head. His death was as dramatic as the rare book dealer’s life, which read, as the Austin American-Statesman declared, “like a bestseller.” In 1975 Jenkins had staged the largest rare book coup of the twentieth century—the purchase, for more than two million dollars, of the legendary Eberstadt inventory of rare Americana, a feat noted in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His undercover work for the FBI, recovering rare books stolen by mafia figures, had also earned him headlines coast to coast, as had his exploits as “Austin Squatty,” playing high stakes poker in Las Vegas. But beneath such public triumphs lay darker secrets. At the time of his death, Jenkins was about to be indicted by the ATF for the arson of his rare books, warehouse, and offices. Another investigation implicated Jenkins in forgeries of historical documents, including the Texas Declaration of Independence. Rumors of million-dollar gambling debts at mob-connected casinos circulated, along with the rumblings of irate mafia figures he’d fingered and eccentric Texas collectors he’d cheated. Had he been murdered? Or was his death a suicide, staged to look like a murder? How Jenkins, a onetime president of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America, came to such an unseemly end is one of the mysteries Michael Vinson pursues in this spirited account of a tragic American life. Entrepreneur, con man, connoisseur, forger, and self-made hero, Jenkins was a Texan who knew how to bluff but not when to fold.