Star of Destiny: The Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston (open access)

Star of Destiny: The Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston

This biography of Sam and Margaret Houston draws on surviving personal letters and writings to describe their lives together. The book roughly covers the time from their meeting to their deaths in 1863 and 1867, respectively. Index starts on page 419.
Date: 1993
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall, 1929-
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 2: 1846-1848 (open access)

The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 2: 1846-1848

This book is the second in a series of four volumes and contains collected correspondence to and from Sam Houston, primarily between Houston and his wife. The letters include footnotes that give clarification and context. The volume also has a bibliography and index (which starts on page 391).
Date: 1998
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Best of Texas Folk and Folklore: 1916-1954 (open access)

The Best of Texas Folk and Folklore: 1916-1954

This volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society contains information about folklore in Texas and Mexico, including folk songs and ballads, ghost stories, Mexican animal tales, sermons, stories about games and celebrations, folklore of Texas plants, and information about folk remedies. The index begins on page 349.
Date: 1998
Creator: Texas Folklore Society
System: The Portal to Texas History
The LH7 Ranch in Houston's Shadow: The E.H. Marks' Legacy From Longhorns to the Salt Grass Trail (open access)

The LH7 Ranch in Houston's Shadow: The E.H. Marks' Legacy From Longhorns to the Salt Grass Trail

This book gives an overview of the history of the LH7 ranch, near Houston, Texas starting with the father of Emil Henry Marks, who founded the ranch. The chapters include biographical information of people in the Marks family and other people connected to the ranch as well as historical aspects of the ranch and the community. Index starts on page 217.
Date: 1991
Creator: Sizemore, Deborah Lightfoot
System: The UNT Digital Library

Lost in Victory: Reflections of American War Orphans of World War II

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In 1990, Ann Mix began her search to find out about her father who had been killed in World War II. She discovered that, of the servicemen who died in that war, 183,000 were fathers. During her search, Mix met others whose fathers had been killed and few of them had much information about their fathers. As a result, Ann founded the American WWII Orphans Network to locate war orphans and become a depository for sources of information about WWII servicemen who were fathers. Senator Robert Dole, who had fought in the 10th Mountain Division with Mix’s father, assisted the network as a National Advisor until 1995, helping it to become a true humanitarian organization. War orphan Susan Johnson Hadler, a psychologist, began a collaboration with Ann to collect the stories of the orphans when she discovered there were no statistics on the number of children and no studies on the effects of their fathers’ deaths on their lives. Records which could have helped sociologists, psychologists, and historians were simply nonexistent. Mix and Hadler began to interview war orphans, who nearly all reported having felt the awkwardness with which America treated the subject of their fathers. At a young age, …
Date: January 1998
Creator: Hadler, Susan Johnson; Mix, Anna Bennett & Christman, Calvin
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 4: 1852-1863 (open access)

The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 4: 1852-1863

This book is the fourth in a series of four volumes and contains collected correspondence to and from Sam Houston. The letters include footnotes that give clarification and context. The volume also has an appendix, addenda, bibliography, and an index (which starts on page 523).
Date: 2001
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall
System: The UNT Digital Library
Out of Dallas: 14 Stories (open access)

Out of Dallas: 14 Stories

Compilation of short stories submitted by faculty and staff of the Dallas County Community College District.
Date: 1989
Creator: Wood, Jane Roberts, 1929-
System: The UNT Digital Library
Gideon Lincecum's Sword: Civil War Letters From the Texas Home Front (open access)

Gideon Lincecum's Sword: Civil War Letters From the Texas Home Front

Compilation of letters written by Gideon Lincecum, a natural scientist and philosopher living in Texas, discussing various events and his experiences during the Civil War as a proponent of the Confederacy. The collection includes editorial notes and commentary. Index starts on page 373.
Date: 2001
Creator: Lincecum, Jerry Bryan; Phillips, Edward Hake & Redshaw, Peggy A.
System: The UNT Digital Library

Last Words of the Holy Ghost

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Funny, heartbreaking, and real--these twelve stories showcase a dynamic range of voices belonging to characters who can't stop confessing. They are obsessive storytellers, disturbed professors, depressed auctioneers, gambling clergy. A fourteen-year-old boy gets baptized and speaks in tongues to win the love of a girl who ushers him into adulthood; a troubled insomniac searches the woods behind his mother's house for the "awful pretty" singing that begins each midnight; a school-system employee plans a year-end party at the site of a child's drowning; a burned-out health-care administrator retires from New England to coastal Georgia and stumbles upon a life-changing moment inside Walmart. These big-hearted people--tethered to the places that shape them--survive their daily sorrows and absurdities with well-timed laughter; they slouch toward forgiveness, and they point their ears toward the Holy Ghost's last words. "In its precise prose and spooky intelligence and sharp-eyed examination of the condemned kind we are, Last Words of the Holy Ghost is an original. Listen: if you can find a collection of stories more cohesive, more ambitious in reach, more generous in its passion, and fancier in its footwork, I will buy it for you and deliver it in person. In the meantime, put some …
Date: November 2015
Creator: Cashion, Matthew Deshe
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 1: 1839-1845 (open access)

The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 1: 1839-1845

This book is the first in a series of four volumes and contains collected correspondence to and from Sam Houston. According to information on the inside front cover, it includes letters "between Sam Houston and his wife, and their letters to other family members, family physicians, and close personal friends." The letters include footnotes that give clarification and context. The volume also has a bibliography, appendix, and index (which starts on page 377).
Date: 1996
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall
System: The UNT Digital Library

Hope for Justice and Power: Broad-based Community Organizing in the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation

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Book is a history of the Industrial Areas Foundation branch in Texas. The Industrial Areas Foundation was founded by Saul Alinsky in Chicago in 1940 and is currently an international advocacy group. The Texas branch has many affiliates throughout the state. This book describes the evolution of those affiliates and their cooperative activities with other advocacy groups.
Date: March 2020
Creator: Staudt, Kathleen
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 3

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Anthology of writing by the ten winners of the 2016 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. The pieces are published in order of places awarded: Barry, “The Boys in the Bunkhouse,” (1st place); Goffard, “The Favor,” (2nd place); McCrummen, “A Father’s Scars,” (3rd place), and runners-up, Bomey, Gallagher and Stryker, “How Detroit was Reborn”; Hesse, “Love and Fire”; Schweitzer, “Chasing Bayla”; Varble, “Then the Walls Closed In”; Kimberlin and Bryant, “Dangerous Minds”; Harbarger, “Fred Nelligan”; and Johnson, “Murray's Problem."
Date: June 2016
Creator: Reaves, Gayle
System: The UNT Digital Library
From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston (open access)

From Slave to Statesman: The Legacy of Joshua Houston, Servant to Sam Houston

This biography discusses the life of Joshua Houston starting at around twelve years of age until his death in 1902. The text includes commentary on the historical context of his life and anecdotal accounts. Index starts on page 259.
Date: 1993
Creator: Prather, Patricia Smith, 1943- & Monday, Jane Clements, 1941-
System: The UNT Digital Library

Archive Activism: Memoir of a "Uniquely Nasty" Journey

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Archive Activism is a memoir of activism rooted in a new way to converse with history—by rescuing it. Archive activists discover documents and other important materials often classified, “gone missing,” or sealed that somehow escaped the fireplace or shredder. It is an approach to LGBTQ advocacy and policy activism based on citizen archivery and original archival research to effect social change. Research=Activism is the formula growing out of Charles Francis’s personal story as a gay Texan born and raised during the 1950s and 1960s in Dallas. The rescues range in time and place from Francis’s first encounter with a raucous, near-violent religious demonstration in Fort Worth to attics loaded with forgotten historic treasures of LGBTQ pioneers. Archive Activism tells how Francis helped Governor George W. Bush achieve his dream of becoming president in 2000 by reaching out to gay and lesbian supporters, the first time a Republican candidate for president formally met with gay and lesbian Americans. This inspired Francis to engage with deleted LGBTQ history by forming a historical society with an edge, a new Mattachine Society of Washington, DC. For the first time, Archive Activism reveals how LGBTQ secrets were held for decades at the LBJ Presidential Library …
Date: August 2023
Creator: Francis, Charles C.
System: The UNT Digital Library
My Remembers: A Black Sharecropper's Recollections of the Depression (open access)

My Remembers: A Black Sharecropper's Recollections of the Depression

Eddie Stimpson Jr.'s personal memoirs from his childhood. He recalls sharecropping life, the ways he and his family got by financially, his faith, African-American culture at the time, and The Great Depression. Includes photographs and illustrations to accompany the story. Index starts on page 163.
Date: 1996
Creator: Stimpson, Eddie, Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Best American Newspaper Narratives, Volume 9

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This anthology collects the nine winners of the 2021 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First-place winner: Greg Jaffe and his three-part series on the pandemic, beginning with “The Pandemic Hit and This Car Became Home for a Family of Four” (The Washington Post). Second place: Hannah Dreier with “The Worst- Case Scenario” (The Washington Post). Third place: Leonora LaPeter Anton, Kavitha Surana, and Kathryn Varn with “Death at Freedom Square” (Tampa Bay Times). Runners-up include Rory Linnane, “Maricella’s Last Breath” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Hannah Dreier, “Tatiana’s Luck” (The Washington Post); Deborah Vankin, “This 81-Year-Old was L.A.’s Most Devoted Museum-Goer until COVID-19” (Los Angeles Times); Lauren Caruba, “Night Shift” (San Antonio Express News); Mark Johnson, “Saving Raynah’s Brain” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); and John Woodrow Cox, “They Depended on Their Parents for Everything” (The Washington Post).
Date: September 2022
Creator: Reaves, Gayle
System: The UNT Digital Library

Risk, Courage, and Women Contemporary Voices in Prose and Poetry

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This unique collection of narratives, essays, and poems includes an original interview with Maya Angelou and pieces by Naomi Shihab Nye, Pat Mora, Rosemary Catacalos, and many others. Each work relates how women have demonstrated courage by taking a risk that has changed their lives. The Introduction explores courage not as a battlefield quality, but as the result of thoughtful choices demonstrating integrity and self-awareness. Each section opens with a description of its organization and the significance of individual pieces. Themes include sustenance for living, faith in the unknown, the courage of choice, the seams of our lives, and crossing borders. The book begins with a conversation with Dr. Maya Angelou, the embodiment of a courageous woman. She urges readers to "Envision" and concludes the book with the wish "Good morning," inviting all to join her in a new day reflecting "The Power of One." Voices of racial and ethnic diversity speak throughout the work, underscoring both difference and unity in the female experience. Including role models for university audiences and powerful reflections of life experiences for older readers, this work serves many purposes: a textbook in Literature or Women's/Gender Studies classes, a focus for book study groups, and a …
Date: August 15, 2007
Creator: Waldron, Karen A.; Labatt, Laura M. & Brazil, Janice H.
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 3: 1848-1852 (open access)

The Personal Correspondence of Sam Houston, Volume 3: 1848-1852

This book is the third in a series of four volumes and contains collected correspondence to and from Sam Houston. The letters include footnotes that give clarification and context. The volume also has appendices, a bibliography, and an index (which starts on page 493).
Date: 1999
Creator: Roberts, Madge Thornall
System: The UNT Digital Library

Behind the Walls: a Guide for Family and Friends of Texas Prison Inmates

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Texas holds one in every nine U.S. inmates. Behind the Walls is a detailed description of one of the world's largest prison systems by a long-time convict trained as an observer and reporter. It spotlights the day-to-day workings of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice-what's good, what's bad, which programs work and which ones do not, and examines if practice really follows official policy. Written to inform about the processes, services, activities, issues, and problems of being incarcerated, this book is invaluable to anyone who has a relative or friend incarcerated in Texas, or for those who want to understand how prisoners live, eat, work, play, and die in a contemporary U.S. prison. Containing a short history of Texas prisons and advice on how to help inmates get out and stay out of prison, this book is the only one of its kind-written by a convict still incarcerated and dedicated to dispelling the ignorance and fear that shroud Texas prisons. Renaud discusses living quarters, food, and clothing, along with how prisoners handle money, mail, visits, and phone calls. He explores the issues of drugs, racism, gangs, and violence as well as what an inmate can learn about his parole, custody …
Date: December 15, 2002
Creator: Renaud, Jorge Antonio
System: The UNT Digital Library

Cold Anger: a Story of Faith and Power Politics

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"Cold Anger is an important book about the empowerment of working-class communities through church-based social activism. Such activism is certainly not new, but the conscious merger of community organizing tactics with religious beliefs may be. The organizing approach comes from Aul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundations (IAF). . . . The book is structured around the political life of Ernesto Cortes, Jr., the lead IAF organizer who has earned recognition as one of the most powerful individuals in Texas (and who has been featured on Bill Moyers' "World of Ideas"). . . . Cortes fashioned a hard-ball Alinsky approach onto the natural organizing ground of church-based communities. The experiment began in San Antonio . . . and was successful in the transformation of San Antonio politics. Such dramatic success . . . led to similar efforts in Houston, Fort Worth, El Paso, the Rio Grande Valley, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and New York, to mention only a few sites. Expansion beyond San Antonio meant organizing among Protestant churches, among African American and white, and among middle-class communities. In short, these organizing efforts have transcended the particularistic limits of religion, ethnicity, and class while maintaining a church base and sense of …
Date: January 15, 1990
Creator: Rogers, Mary Beth
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Roy Bedichek Family Letters (open access)

The Roy Bedichek Family Letters

This book is a collection of letters written by Roy Bedichek and letters written to him from other family members. Annotations and notes about the letters have been added as footnotes. Biographical information based on interviews of family members as well as genealogical charts of the Bedichek and Greer families are also included. Index starts on page 447.
Date: 1998
Creator: Bedichek, Jane Gracy, 1918- & Bedichek, Roy, 1878-1959
System: The UNT Digital Library

Obstinate Heroism: The Confederate Surrenders After Appomattox

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Book describes the three surrenders by Confederate armies that occurred after Robert E. Lee surrendered to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865. They included Joseph Johnston's to William Tecumseh Sherman; Richard Taylor's to Edward Canby; and the dissolution of the Trans-Mississippi Department under Edmund Kirby-Smith.
Date: March 2020
Creator: Ramold, Steven J.
System: The UNT Digital Library

In Hostile Skies: an American B-24 Pilot in World War II

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James M. Davis is a retired businessman who lives in Midland, Texas, with his wife of over six decades, Jean. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army Air Forces for more than two and a half years during World War II, and then in the Air Force reserves until 1961. David L. Snead, the editor, is an associate professor of history at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia and is the author of The Gaither Committee, Eisenhower, and the Cold War and George E. Browne: An American Doughboy in World War I.
Date: April 15, 2006
Creator: Davis, James M.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Folklore in Motion: Texas Travel Lore (open access)

Folklore in Motion: Texas Travel Lore

Collection of folklore stories and personal anecdotes that relate to travel in Texas, grouped into broad topics that include historic and modern modes of transportation. Index starts on page 281.
Date: December 15, 2007
Creator: Untiedt, Kenneth L.
System: The UNT Digital Library