Lincecum's experiences of following the frontier in the early 1800s, all the way from Georgia to Texas, were not so unusual in themselves, but the intellect and wit that inform his memoirs make them unique. His scientific articles and collections of specimens, his correspondence with leading scientists of the time, and his six years among the colony of ex-Confederates in Tuxpan, Mexico, offer still other insights into the age. Lincecum portrays many aspects of frontier social life, including marriage and divorce, slavery as practiced by the small slaveholder, education, religion as critiqued...

Lincecum's experiences of following the frontier in the early 1800s, all the way from Georgia to Texas, were not so unusual in themselves, but the intellect and wit that inform his memoirs make them unique. His scientific articles and collections of specimens, his correspondence with leading scientists of the time, and his six years among the colony of ex-Confederates in Tuxpan, Mexico, offer still other insights into the age. Lincecum portrays many aspects of frontier social life, including marriage and divorce, slavery as practiced by the small slaveholder, education, religion as critiqued...

When veteran columnist A. C. Greene turns his eyes on Texas, he sees a variety of experiences and a scope of history that fascinate the rest of us. Under its annexation terms, Texas is allowed to divide itself into as many as six states. While that is not ever likely to happen, Greene masterfully shows that several cultural states "do" exist within the one political entity of Texas--and have throughout the state's history.
Greene has a wide-ranging curiosity about the "facts" of Texas history: what lies behind them, what quirks of human nature they reveal, how the people who lived them...

I and Claudie is a delightful and captivating novel about a couple of bungling but good-hearted con men who (barely) make their way across Texas over a two-year period in the 1930s. Their adventures, Anderson said, were in no sense autobiographical, but sometimes I am sorry they are not. The charming con men outwit lumbermen, oil men, and others, but are sometimes the victims themselves. Clint Hightower (the I in the title) is a smooth- talking maker of deals; Claudie Hughes, all 6'6" of him, is his slower-of-mind sidekick who does all the real work and, often unwittingly, saves the day.The...

"In the town where I was born and raised, everyone drove a few miles south to cut a tree. In that dry, windy country few of the cedars grew straight and full, so the major problem was to find the one least lopsided and wind-whipped."

Thus A. C. Greene, in "The Too-Big Christmas Tree," tells of a Christmas in the 1920s when his father cut a too-big tree and almost broke up the family. Long out-of-print and a collector's item, this story is now coupled with "Christmas Shopping," in which a small boy sets out with his grandmother on his first shopping trip to buy Christmas presents for the...

Expecting paradise but finding a tourist trap, stodgy 62-year-old academic Charles Martyn, author of a dull but ubiquitous book about the American novel, can't help but be disappointed by his return to the Mediterranean island of Ibiza after a 20-year absence. He has come back to Ibiza with his 36-year-old second wife, Susan, to search for his estranged son, Ledyard, who has been eking a living selling paintings to tourists. Ledyard keeps evading them, however, while insecure Charles behaves so boorishly toward the lively, beautiful Susan that their marriage quickly becomes a cringingly...

Master storyteller A. C. Greene re-creates one of America s most bizarre holdupsone that began as a lark. On Christmas Eve 1927, four men set off to rob the First National Bank of Cisco, Texas. Soon the lark turned into a tragedyand at times a comedyof errors. The robbers did not realize the car they had stolen for their getaway was running on empty. The leader did not anticipate the attention his disguise would draw, even though it was a bright red Santa Claus suit. And they could not have known that all of Cisco would have guns at hand because the Bankers Association had offered a reward of...