The Association currently has approximately one hundred books in print, including these recent and upcoming titles:

New in Paper Road, River, and Ol' Boy Politics: A Texas County's Path from Farm to Supersuburb by Linda Scarbrough The Texas State Historical Association is pleased to announce that the award-winning Road, River, and Ol' Boy Politics: A Texas County's Path from Farm to Supersuburb by Linda Scarbrough is soon to be available in paper. Winner of the 2006 National Council on Public History Book Award for the best work published about or growing out of public history, the book, originally released in 2005, has quickly established its reputation as the definitive source on the subject of the growth of supersuburbs. It is a central Texas tale pertinent to all of America’s "oasis" cities across the Dry Sun Belt, a repeating story that has come to define American patterns of suburban development. Available November 2008

New in Paper Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, Texas, in 1901 by Jo Ann Stiles, Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, Texas, in 1901 by Jo Ann Stiles, Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra is soon to be available in paper. This exhaustively researched book focuses on the Lucas Gusher in Beaumont in 1901, as well as the events leading up to it and the immediate aftermath. It’s all here—the challenge and frustration of the search, the excitement of the discovery, the euphoric chaos of the boom, and the genesis of the giant companies. After the gusher came in, life would never be the same. In this scholarly work firmly rooted in the narrative tradition, and using material collected over decades, the authors bring to life the efforts of Pattillo Higgins, Anthony Lucas, Al and Curt Hamill, and Peck Byrd to master the Spindletop salt dome—efforts that culminated in the discovery of the great Lucas Gusher. Their find subsequently transformed not only the state of Texas but the entire oil industry. Available November 2008

John Charles Beales's Rio Grande Colony: Letters by Eduard Ludecus, a German Colonist, to Friends in Germany in 1833–1834, Recounting His Journey, Trials, and Observations in Early Texas translated and edited by Louis E. Brister This collection of letters, written by a young German colonist in Dr. John Charles Beales’s ill-fated colony Dolores, provides an almost daily account of the colonists’ journey to the Rio Grande from New York City harbor and their labors to establish a settlement there on Las Moras Creek. Eduard Ludecus’s letters are also an important source of valuable information about life and culture in pre-revolutionary Texas. His letters are but one of a handful of eyewitness reports about the early Texas frontier. His observations are those of a young, well-educated German merchant who had traveled from the urbane environment of Weimar, the center of art and literature in Germany in the early nineteenth century, to the raw, hostile environment of Texas. As a result, many of his remarks seem to have been recorded in wide-eyed awe of his new environment. Ludecus’s letters are written with a vivid directness often lacking in the recollections of such well-known narrators as John C. Duval, Noah Smithwick, and John Holland Jenkins. Ludecus’s narrative style is so vivid, so lively that the reader often feels as if he were sharing the narrator’s experiences and observations not as a reader, but as a companion. Available May 2008

General Vicente Filisola's Analysis of Jose Urrea's Military Diary: A Forgotten 1838 Publication by an Eyewitness to the Texas Revolution by Gregg J. Dimmick and translated by John Wheat This long-forgotten eyewitness account of the Texas Revolution has been translated into English for the first time. Gen. Vicente Filisola was second in command of the Mexican army in Texas during the Revolution and became the scapegoat for all that went wrong in the campaign in Texas. His chief accuser in this disastrous action was Gen. José Cosme Urrea, commander of one of the Mexican divisions in the campaign. The true jewels of this work are the multiple details that Filisola gives in making his verbose case against General Urrea—from descriptions of Goliad, Victoria, and Madam Powell's to interesting comments on the Deleons, Phillip Dimmitt, and José María Carbajal. After reading this fascinating account of the Mexican army in Texas the reader may well need to reevaluate his opinions of the Mexican army's generals. Available Now

The Reminiscences of Major General Zenas R. Bliss, 1854-1876: From the Texas Frontier to the Civil War and Back Again edited by Thomas T. Smith, Jerry D. Thompson, Robert Wooster, and Ben E. Pingenot The "Reminiscences" of Maj. Gen. Zenas R. Bliss are a remarkably detailed account of his army service in Texas before and after the Civil War. Many scholars consider Bliss's recollections to be one of the best from a soldier of the "Old Army." It has become a staple primary resource for Texas frontier research for the last three decades. Bliss served in Texas longer than any other army officer (twenty-three years) and rose in rank from second lieutenant to departmental commander. Possessing a keen sense of humor, an eye for detail, and a boisterous social nature, his lively account of the people and places of the antebellum and post-Civil War Texas frontier is among the very best of Texas history. Available Now

Biracial Unions on Galveston's Waterfront, 1865-1925 by Clifford Farrington In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a tradition of biracial unionism sprang up among waterfront workers along the Gulf Coast. Galveston's waterfront workers formed some of Texas's earliest and strongest labor organizations in an era when the city was a leading seaport and the most important commercial center in Texas. This history of a particular laboring community studies black and white workers' consciousness and how the conflicts between race and class were worked out in practice, adding to our knowledge of race and the labor movement, the course of biracial unionism in the South, and Texas labor history. Available Now

Watt Matthews of Lambshead, With a new Afterword by Laura Wilson The TSHA is pleased to announce the return of a classic in this second edition of Watt Matthews of Lambshead by renowned photographer Laura Wilson. In this new edition, Wilson adds an afterword to her original award-winning photographic essay, published in 1989 when Watt Matthews was ninety years old and the vital force behind a vast West Texas ranch. Watt was the ninth and last child of pioneering parents who had established the ranch on the banks of the Clear Fork of the Brazos in 1858, and, in the words of historian David McCullough, "created a family kingdom so large and still so true to its traditional way of life that visitors sometimes have to remind themselves that it is all real." Except for four years at Princeton, Watt spent his entire life on the ranch, which had remained its own separate world into the late twentieth century. Those days are beautifully chronicled in Wilson's photographs and, in this new edition, she brings the story of Lambshead Ranch up to the present by writing of Watt's funeral and what has happened to the ranch since Watt's death in 1997. Available Now

Back in Print On the Border with Mackenzie; or, Winning West Texas from the Comanches by Capt. Robert G. Carter When first published in 1935, On the Border with Mackenzie; or, Winning West Texas from the Comanches, quickly became known as the most complete account of the Indian wars on the Texas frontier during the 1870s. And even today it still stands as one of the most exhaustive histories ever written by an actual participant in the Texas Indian wars. L. F. Sheffy refers to On the Border with Mackenzie as "a splendid contribution to the early frontier history of West Texas . . . . It is a story filled with humor and pathos, tragedies and triumphs, hunger and thirst, war and adventure." Available Now

At the Heart of Texas: One Hundred Years of the Texas State Historical Association, 1897–1997 by Richard B. McCaslin with foreword by J. P. Bryan, Jr. Founded in 1897, when the state of Texas was just half a century old, the Texas State Historical Association soon became known as the nation's most dynamic regional history organization. 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. 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. Available Now

New Texas History Movies by the late Jack Jackson New Texas History Movies is not your father’s Texas History Movies. This is a totally revised edition with new cartoon strips and text by award-winning scholar and illustrator Jack Jackson. Jackson gained fame as an underground cartoonist in the 1960s and, later, as an independent scholar who specialized in the history of the Spanish presence in Texas. A special Educator's Edition with additional content by Jana Magruder is available to help teachers incorporate this book into the seventh-grade curriculum. The TEKS-based guide contains activities and TAKS-based assessments for each chapter. It is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary connections between history and language arts teachers while building student skills in reading, writing, and social studies. Included in this special Educator's Edition is a CD Rom containing the materials necessary for easy classroom use. Available Now

Back in Print The Texas Republic: A Social and Economic History by William Ransom Hogan with foreword by Gregg Cantrell This Texas history classic is available once again. In an era when scholarly writing on Texas history still gave disproportionate emphasis to military and political history and “great men,” this book emphasized the lives of ordinary people as well as of the legendary figures of the Republic period. Hogan was that rarest of characters in the world of scholarly writing, then or now. He knew how to be a “revisionist” in the best sense of the term, offering up fresh interpretations that, as he put it, challenged the “pleasant myth” of “heroic” Texas history. Yet he also managed to balance his revisionism with an acknowledgment that the Republic era did indeed embody much that was heroic, even legendary. Ahead of its time in many ways, the book was written in an engaging, entertaining style that still seems surprisingly fresh to the modern reader, sixty years after its publication. Available Now

For a catalog of all TSHA publications, check out our web site at www.TSHAonline. org or call 1-800-687-8132 for more information.