West Texas
West Texas

Author: Paul H. Carlson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0806145242

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Texas is as well known for its diversity of landscape and culture as it is for its enormity. But West Texas, despite being popularized in film and song, has largely been ignored by historians as a distinct and cultural geographic space. In West Texas: A History of the Giant Side of the State, Paul H. Carlson and Bruce A. Glasrud rectify that oversight. This volume assembles a diverse set of essays covering the grand sweep of West Texas history from the ancient to the contemporary. In four parts—comprehending the place, people, politics and economic life, and society and culture—Carlson and Glasrud and their contributors survey the confluence of life and landscape shaping the West Texas of today. Early chapters define the region. The “giant side of Texas” is a nineteenth-century geographical description of a vast area that includes the Panhandle, Llano Estacado, Permian Basin, and Big Bend–Trans-Pecos country. It is an arid, windblown environment that connects intimately with the history of Texas culture. Carlson and Glasrud take a nonlinear approach to exploring the many cultural influences on West Texas, including the Tejanos, the oil and gas economy, and the major cities. Readers can sample topics in whichever order they please, whether they are interested in learning about ranching, recreation, or turn-of-the-century education. Throughout, familiar western themes arise: the urban growth of El Paso is contrasted with the mid-century decline of small towns and the social shifting that followed. Well-known Texas scholars explore popular perceptions of West Texas as sparsely populated and rife with social contradiction and rugged individualism. West Texas comes into yet clearer view through essays on West Texas women, poets, Native peoples, and musicians. Gathered here is a long overdue consideration of the landscape, culture, and everyday lives of one of America’s most iconic and understudied regions.

Wings over the Great Plains: Bird Migrations in the Central Flyway
Wings over the Great Plains: Bird Migrations in the Central Flyway

Author: Paul Johnsgard

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2012-11-19

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1609620283

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"The Central Flyway has been recognized as a collective North-South migratory pathway centered on the North American Great Plains for nearly a century, but it has never been analyzed as the species that most closely follow it, or the major stopping points used by those species on their journeys between their northern breeding and southern wintering grounds. A total of 114 U.S. and 21 Canadian localities of special importance to birds migrating within the Central Flyway are identified and described in detail. Judging from available regional, state and local information, nearly 400 species of 50 avian families regularly use the Central Flyway during their migrations. Nearly 90 Central Flyway species have wintering areas parly extending variably far into the Neotropic zoogeographic realm, and at least 50 of these winter entirely within the Neotropic realm. A few of these species undertake some of the longest known migrations of all birds, in excess of 8,000 miles in each direction. Seven maps, 49 figures and over 100 literature citations are included."--Abstract.

Wings over the Mexican Border
Wings over the Mexican Border

Author: Kenneth B. Ragsdale

Publisher: Univ of TX + ORM

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 029275759X

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A Texas historian reveals how a borderland ranch became the proving ground for American combat aviation and a flashpoint for US-Mexico relations. Against a backdrop of revolution, border banditry, freewheeling aerial dramatics, and World War II, Kenneth B. Ragsdale tells the story of Elmo Johnson’s Big Bend ranch in southwestern Texas. This remote airfield is where hundreds of young Army Air Corps pilots demonstrated the US military’s reconnaissance and emergency response capabilities and, in so doing, dramatized the changing role of the airplane as an instrument of war and peace. Ragsdale vividly portrays the development of the US aerial strike force; the men who would go on to become combat leaders; and especially Elmo Johnson himself, the Big Bend rancher, trader, and rural sage who emerges as the dominant figure at one of the most unusual facilities in the annals of the Air Corps. Ragsdale also examines how these aerial escapades effected border tensions. He provides a reflective look at US–Mexican relations from the 1920s through the 1940s, paying special attention to the tense days during and after the Escobar Rebellion of 1929. Wings over the Mexican Border tells a stirring story of the American frontier juxtaposed with the new age of aerial technology.

Wings over the Mexican Border
Wings over the Mexican Border

Author: Kenneth B. Ragsdale

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-07-05

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0292787812

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A Texas historian reveals how a borderland ranch became the proving ground for American combat aviation and a flashpoint for US-Mexico relations. Against a backdrop of revolution, border banditry, freewheeling aerial dramatics, and World War II, Kenneth B. Ragsdale tells the story of Elmo Johnson’s Big Bend ranch in southwestern Texas. This remote airfield is where hundreds of young Army Air Corps pilots demonstrated the US military’s reconnaissance and emergency response capabilities and, in so doing, dramatized the changing role of the airplane as an instrument of war and peace. Ragsdale vividly portrays the development of the US aerial strike force; the men who would go on to become combat leaders; and especially Elmo Johnson himself, the Big Bend rancher, trader, and rural sage who emerges as the dominant figure at one of the most unusual facilities in the annals of the Air Corps. Ragsdale also examines how these aerial escapades effected border tensions. He provides a reflective look at US–Mexican relations from the 1920s through the 1940s, paying special attention to the tense days during and after the Escobar Rebellion of 1929. Wings over the Mexican Border tells a stirring story of the American frontier juxtaposed with the new age of aerial technology.

On Wings Of The Morning
On Wings Of The Morning

Author: Marie Bostwick

Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.

Published: 2010-04-23

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0758265492

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Marie Bostwick delivers a captivating novel of soul mates discovering each other as the country faces its greatest challenge. . . Morgan Glennon's destiny points straight up into Oklahoma's clear, blue sky. It's been that way since he was four years old, imagining the famous flier father he's never met. Morgan leaves college to enlist as a Navy pilot, and his whole world suddenly changes when America goes to war. Watching his friends fall in battle, robs Morgan of the joy he always felt in the air. It will take one very unusual woman to help him get it back. . . Georgia Jean Carter learned early never to rely on a man for anything but trouble. Airplanes are different: they take a girl places most boyfriends can't. Remarkably, the war makes it possible for Georgia to do her part as a pilot. Flying with the WASPs brings a special sense of belonging--yet there's something missing that Georgia doesn't recognize until a brief encounter sets her dreaming about a young flyboy she barely knows. . . Praise for Marie Bostwick and Fields of Gold "A touching story." --Patricia Gaffney "Captivating and hauntingly beautiful. . .a true gem." --Romantic Times, 4 1⁄2 stars "A gripping, heartwarming story." --Dorothy Garlock on Fields of Gold

Wings of Honor
Wings of Honor

Author: Tom Willard

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2000-08-15

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780812564778

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After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Augustus Sharps, Jr., of the Sabre Ranch in Arizona, makes his way to Tuskegee, Alabama, where for the first time in history, black men are being trained as combat pilots to fight the war in Europe and the Pacific. Augustus's family has been fighting America's wars since his grandfather rode with Buffalo Soldiers against the Apaches, and since his father fought in Cuba 1898 and in the trenches of the Western Front in World War I, and he is determined to follow their footsteps. Wings of Honor is the poignant and exciting story of a young man battling the odds to fly with the "Red-Tail Angels," the 99th U.S. Pursuit Squadron, and how he added to his family's honor in battles over North Africa, Sicily, and France, in the fury of the Second World War.