Within the Yangtze River Basin of Central China are nearly twenty thousand miles of navigable waterways. Historically, overland transportation has been difficult, if not impossible, in many areas, and the Yangtze alone has long carried more boat traffic than any other of the world's great rivers. The collection of thirty-one model junks at Texas A&M University, twenty-nine of which are pictured in this book, is a major nucleus of junk types acquired by Dr. Spencer in China between 1934 and 1936. Representing one of the largest known collections of Chinese watercraft, it is also the only known...

The changing seasons make grandly visible not only nature's recurring miracle of life, death, and rebirth which enfolds and nurtures us all but also the special character of a particular region observed over time, its secret beauties and sudden terrors, the coursing life of the place itself. Jim Bones' magnificent photographic record of a year in the Texas Hill Country chronicles that sequence of natural details which mark the year's passing in a part of Texas many Texans have come to revere as a kind of heartland. Complementing the photographs, John Graves's essay on the region tells the...