The book, Journeys: All Ages is a collection of non-fiction and fiction stories of individuals facing life's dilemmas and conflicts. It deals with being different, religion, losses of family and friends, growing up, and learning to get a long with each other. In the non-fiction part of the book, Mary Ellen shares her experiences of her life. Whether it is the loss of family or friend. An illness, such as ovarian cancer, in which there are feelings of emptiness as a woman. Mary Ellen expresses personal feelings, such as religion, losing parents and friends, intolerance, left-handedness, children of different religions. In the fiction part of this book, the stories are written about children from eight to fifteen years old. The stories deal with issues such as: friendship, respecting one another, caring, sharing one's religion, getting along with a brother and sister, dealing with losses of a friend. The views and opinions expressed by Mary Ellen are her perception of the world.
In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other. The White Scourge describes a unique borderlands region, where the cultures of the South, West, and Mexico overlap, to provide a deeper understanding of the process of identity formation and to challenge the binary opposition between "black" and "white" that often dominates discussions of American race relations. In Texas, which by 1890 had become the nation's leading cotton-producing state, the presence of Mexican sharecroppers and farm workers complicated the black-white dyad that shaped rural labor relations in the South. With the transformation of agrarian society into corporate agribusiness, white racial identity began to fracture along class lines, further complicating categories of identity. Foley explores the "fringe of whiteness," an ethno-racial borderlands comprising Mexicans, African Americans, and poor whites, to trace shifting ideologies and power relations. By showing how many different ethnic groups are defined in relation to "whiteness," Foley redefines white racial identity as not simply a pinnacle of status but the complex racial, social, and economic matrix in which power and privilege are shared. Foley skillfully weaves archival material with oral history interviews, providing a richly detailed view of everyday life in the Texas cotton culture. Addressing the ways in which historical categories affect the lives of ordinary people, The White Scourge tells the broader story of racial identity in America; at the same time it paints an evocative picture of a unique American region. This truly multiracial narrative touches on many issues central to our understanding of American history: labor and the role of unions, gender roles and their relation to ethnicity, the demise of agrarian whiteness, and the Mexican-American experience.
This sign was hanging on the main street intersection of downtown, from the 1920s to the late 1960s, two blocks from where I lived. My hometown is Greenville, Texas. Greenville is known throughout the nation for two things: its unique slogan, "The Blackest Land - The Whitest People" and its famous 1908 lynching. The famous sign hung on the main street between our train station and our bus station. As soldiers and civilian passengers passed through our town, it provided a very conspicuous view. This book is about what it was like being black and growing up in Greenville, Texas. It is also in remembrance of all those before us who went through struggles to help people free themselves from undesirables which had previously enslaved us. Although we obtained certain rights, I give you a background and the history of why things were the way they were. Even a more valuable history is of why things are still the way they are, especially between blacks. Is it because of a single, powerful, twisted-minded genius 292 years ago, whose theory is still a powerful affront in the black race today? My hope is to help break this chain of enslavement of blacks against blacks in my hometown. History was not always pretty; but to say, "Forget the past," is saying Black History doesn't matter. Black history is American history, and it has been missing from the history books for a long time.
Located on the rolling Blackland Prairies of Northeast Texas, Greenville was founded in January 1847 as the county seat of Hunt County. Through the years, it became not only the seat of local and county government, but the economic, social, and cultural center of much of the area. With the arrival of the railroads in 1880, Greenville became a market center for cotton, livestock, and other agricultural products, and a vast assortment of goods were available to discerning shoppers. Paved roads, a professional theater, baseball, football, and the North Texas Fair brought visitors to Greenville from the surrounding areas. Merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs worked diligently to create a community of modern conveniences, beautiful homes, churches, and schools. One of the first municipally owned power plants opened in Greenville in the late 19th century. Though they do keep up with the times, Greenville residents continue to honor their town's remarkable history.
In Giant Country Don Graham brings together a collection of lively, absorbing essays written over the past two decades. The collection begins with a twist on book introductions that sets the tone for the essays to come—a self-interview conducted poolside at an eccentric Houston motel favored by regional rock bands. Over piña coladas the author works on his tan and discusses timeless Texas themes: the transition of the state from a rural to an urban world, the sense of a vanishing era, and the way that artists in literature and film represent a state both infectiously grand and too big for its britches. In “Fildelphia Story,” Graham remembers his Ivy League professorial stint in a city the small-town Texan who rented him a moving van looked up under “F.” In “Doing England” the Lone Star Yankee courts Oxford University and returns with a veddy British education. In “The Ground Sense Necessary” a native son journeys inward to explore the dry ceremonies of frontier Protestantism and to recount movingly his father's funeral in Collin County. With his wide-ranging knowledge of classic regional works, Graham unerringly traces the style and substance of local literary giants and offers a sometimes irreverent but always entertaining look at the Texas triumvirate of Dobie, Webb and Bedichek. Other essays look at such Texas greats as Katherine Anne Porter, George Sessions Perry, William Humphrey and John Graves. In a section he calls “Polemics,” Graham includes his best known essays, “Palefaces vs. Redskins,” a sardonic survey of the Texas literary landscape, and “Anything for Larry,” a tour de force that has already become a minor classic. The essay weighs the puny financial achievements of Graham against those of mega-author Larry McMurtry and never fails to bring down the house when Graham gives a public reading. A recognized authority on celluloid Texas, Graham provides a rich sampling of his knowledge of Texas movies in pieces that blanket the territory from moo-cow cattle-drive epics to soggy Alamo sagas to urban cowboy melodramas. In the larger-than-life state that is Texas, nobody sizes up the Lone-Star mythos, its interpreters, boosters and detractors better than Don Graham.
In the early 1880s, proponents of what came to be called “the social gospel” founded what is now known as social ethics. This ambitious and magisterial book describes the tradition of social ethics: one that began with the distinctly modern idea that Christianity has a social-ethical mission to transform the structures of society in the direction of social justice. Charts the story of social ethics - the idea that Christianity has a social-ethical mission to transform society - from its roots in the nineteenth century through to the present day Discusses and analyzes how different traditions of social ethics evolved in the realms of the academy, church, and general public Looks at the wide variety of individuals who have been prominent exponents of social ethics from academics and self-styled “public intellectuals” through to pastors and activists Set to become the definitive reference guide to the history and development of social ethics Recipient of a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 award
Presents an overview of the history of the NFL's Dallas Cowboy football team under coach Tom Landry, providing interviews and first-hand accounts from players, coaches, and front-office personal who created the Cowboy's legacy.
