One- and two-room schools represent a time in Texas history when a child's school term was based on the local crop season and family duties received priority. They were the center of educational, social, political, and religious activity, where children were taught reading and math, couples were united in marriage, funerals were preached, and Friday night socials were held.
The rise and fall of the rural school mimicked the rise and fall of population patterns. As more people moved into and settled an area, more schools were necessary. Because of transportation limitations, schools were...

In the early days of Texas, the work of the cowhand was essential to the newly arrived settlers building a life on the frontier. The story of the Anglo cowboys who worked the ranches of Texas is well known, but much more remains to be discovered about the African American cowhands who worked side-by-side with the vaqueros and Anglo cowboys. The cowboy learned his craft from the vaqueros of New Spain and Texas when it was the northern territory of Mexico, as well as from the stock raisers of the south. Such a life was hardly glamorous. Poorly fed, underpaid, overworked, deprived of sleep, and...

Lawrence Sullivan Ross, born in Iowa Territory, served Texas with a zeal unmatched by many of its native sons, devoting most of his life to the Lone Star State as Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, Confederate soldier, sheriff, constitution framer, state senator, governor, and president of Texas A&M College.
In this first full-scale biography of Ross, Judith Benner engrossingly narrates the story of his life, from a sturdy child of the Texas frontier to a venerable college president credited with revitalizing a nearly defunct institution. Using such unpublished material as military records,...

The music of Texas and the American Southwest is as diverse and distinctive as the many different groups who have lived in the region over the past several centuries," writes Gary Hartman in his introduction to this refreshingly different look at various genres of Texas music. Roots of Texas Music celebrates the diverse sources of the music of the Lone Star State by gathering chapters by specialists on each of them-specialists whose views may not have dominated the perception of Texas music to date. Editor Lawrence Clayton conceived this project as one that would not simply repeat the common...

Patricia Bernstein, who holds a degree in American studies from Smith College, has managed her own public relations firm in Houston for the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in Smithsonian Magazine, Texas Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines. The First Waco Horror is her second book.

Until Los Mestenos was published in 1986, the history of cattle ranching in Texas focused almost exclusively on the nineteenth-century era of the great cattle drives. But even before the birth of George III or George Washington, the king's mensubjects of the Spanish crownhad established a vast cattle kingdom in Texas.
Jack Jackson chronicles in rich detail the hundred years of Spanish ranching, beginning a century before Mexico, and subsequently Texas, gained independence. From the introduction of livestock into the province by various early entradas (expeditions), to...

Carrier "Lexington," one of the most famous and formidable of the U.S. Navy warships, lies permanently berthed at Corpus Christi, Texas, her decks and cabins having been converted into a museum that pays tribute to her illustrious war and peacetime record and to the history of naval aviation. The last of the World War II-era aircraft carriers to retire from active duty, "Lexington" was decommissioned on November 8, 1991, after forty-eight years of service.
Entering World War II as the second of the great "Essex-"class carriers to be commissioned, "Lexington" destroyed more than one...

Battleship "Texas," visited by thousands of tourists each year at its berth at San Jacinto, is the lone survivor of the first generation of dreadnoughts, the world's most complex and dominating weapon of the early twentieth century. The ship, the only intact vessel of any nation to have survived both world wars, houses the largest surviving reciprocating engines. When the ship was commissioned in 1914, its class of ship was the most powerful in the world--the most complex product of an industrial nation just beginning to become a force in global events. Over the years the ship underwent a...