The nine stories in Mike Alberti’s debut collection shine a sharp light on small-town American life —not the Arcadian small towns of yesteryear, but the old mill towns hanging on after the mill has stopped running, the deserted agricultural communities in the middle of vast industrial farms, places where bad luck has become part of the weather. But even in these blighted, neglected landscapes, the possibility of renewal always presents itself: there is hope for these places and the characters who inhabit them. In these fresh, innovative stories, some people let you down, but some people don’t.

Texas has one of the world’s largest prison systems, in operation for more than 170 years and currently employing more than 28,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people have been involved in the prison business in Texas: inmates, correctional officers, public officials, private industry representatives, and volunteers have all entered the secure facilities and experienced a different world. Previous books on Texas prisons have focused either on records and data of the prisons, personal memoirs by both inmates and correctional officers, or accounts of prison breaks. Tall Walls and High Fences is the first comprehensive history of Texas prisons, written by a former law enforcement officer and an officer of the Texas prisons. Bob Alexander and Richard K. Alford chronicle the significant events and transformation of the Texas prison system from its earliest times to the present day, paying special attention to the human side of the story. Incarceration policy evolved from isolation to hard labor to rodeo and educational opportunities, with reform measures becoming an ever-evolving quest. The complex job of the correctional officer has evolved as well—they must ensure custody and control over the inmate population at all times, in order to provide a proper environment conducive to …

With the reliability requirements of automobile microelectronics pushing towards near 0 ppb levels of failure control, halide induced corrosion issues in wire bonded devices have to be tightly controlled to achieve such a high reliability goal. With real-time corrosion monitoring, for the first time we demonstrated that the explosive H2 evolution coupled with the oxygen reduction reaction, occurring at the critical Al/Cu interfaces, is the key driving force for the observed aggressive corrosion. Several types of passivation coating on Cu wire surfaces to effectively block the cathodic H2 evolution were explored with an aim to disrupt this explosive corrosion cycle. The properties of the protective coating were evaluated using various analytical techniques. The surface coating exhibited high thermal stability up to 260 °C (evaluated using TGA analysis). A uniform, highly hydrophobic coating (surface contact angle of >130° with water), was achieved by carefully controlling CVD parameters such as time of deposition, surface control of Cu metal, amount of inhibitor compound loading, temperature of coating process etc. FTIR spectroscopy combined with corrosion screening was used to optimize the CVD passivated coating with strong chemisorption. SEM and EDX, XPS were carried out on various coated surfaces to understand the composition and selectivity …

Interview with Nan (Barbara) Alexander, a former model and executive at Neiman Marcus. Alexander discusses her background, beginning work in the fashion industry as a store model, her education, working as a sample model and "Girl Friday" at Howard Wolf Inc. in Fair Park, being a sportswear model at Neiman Marcus, the layout of the store, the apparel market, and the history of fashion in the DFW area.

Interview with Ignaz Gorischek, a fashion consultant from the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Gorischek discusses his forty years of work in the department store industry, specifically in luxury retail, opening stores and putting on exhibits with Neiman Marcus, leaving Neiman's to work at a design firm in Dallas, and working with students at the University of North Texas.

Interview with Tracy Hayes, former writer and editor for the Dallas Morning News from Dallas, Texas. Hayes discusses her background and family, change in the fashion industry over time, being hired at the Dallas Morning News, becoming the founding editor of FD Luxe, a monthly fashion magazine, covering fashion shows, and her current life and interest in fashion.

Interview with Susan Huston, a career freelancer from Dallas, Texas. Huston discusses her background, initial involvement in the Dallas fashion industry, life as a freelancer, starting her own company, writing a book, teaching, preparations for fashion shows, modeling, and how the fashion industry has changed over the decades.

Interview with Ruth Ann Johnston, a former trimmer from El Paso, Texas. Johnston describes her background and journey to becoming involved in the Dallas fashion industry, education at Texas Tech and the University of North Texas, work as a trimmer in the display department in several stores, including Neiman Marcus, the "NM Way," the AIDS epidemic and its impact on the fashion industry, her shoe collection, and the importance of developing relationships in the industry.

Interview with Larry Leathers, former Visual Manager at Neiman Marcus from Dallas, Texas. Leathers describes his background in theater and dance, fascination with the "frozen theater" of display mannequins, entry into the fashion industry, promotion from display creator to manager of a department to manager of a whole store, stories about working with clients, family, change over time, and the importance of remembering the heart of the fashion industry.

Interview with Naomi Rudelson, a former department store executive from New Orleans, Louisiana. Rudelson discusses involvement with the fashion industry in Dallas, starting with work as an assistant to a personal shopper and eventually becoming vice president of several different department stores. Rudelson also describes designing a curriculum for students at the University of North Texas, and the work environment at Dalton's department store, Sanger-Harris, Winkleman's in Detroit, and May Company Los Angeles.

Book is a collection of poems that won our annual Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry. Themes include exile from one's native country and sexual identity

U.S. Marine George Burlage was part of the largest surrender in American history at Bataan and Corregidor in the spring of 1942, where the Japanese captured more than 85,000 troops. More than forty percent would not survive World War II. His prisoner-of-war ordeal began at Cabanatuan near Manila, where the death rate in the early months of World War II was fifty men a day. Sensing that Cabanatuan was a death trap, he managed to get transferred to the isolated island of Palawan to help build an airfield for his captors. Malaria and other tropical diseases caused him to be sent to Manila for treatment in 1943 (a year later, 139 of his fellow POWs were massacred on Palawan). After another year of building airfields, Burlage survived a 38-day voyage in the hull of a Japanese hell ship and ended the war as a miner for Mitsubishi in northern Japan. By sheer luck, strength, and a bit of sabotage, he survived and was freed in September 1945 after the Japanese surrendered. He had endured starvation and torture and lost half of his prewar weight, but no one had killed him. After the war Burlage became a journalist and wrote about …

Most readers of the Wild West know Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, and Morgan Earp for the famous shootout on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona. But few know the later years of the close-knit Earp family, which revolved around patriarch Nicholas Earp, and their last push at a major monetary coup in Los Angeles. By 1900 a newly established Old Soldiers’ Home was in place at Sawtelle (between Santa Monica and Los Angeles), with thousands of veterans earning monthly pensions, but in an environment where alcohol was prohibited. Enter the Earps and their “blind pig” (illicit alcohol sales) scheme. Two of the Earps, Nicholas and son Newton, were enrolled in the Soldiers’ Home, and Newton’s far more famous half-brothers Wyatt and Virgil showed up from time to time, but the star of the operation was older brother James. Booze would flow, the pension money would be “dispersed about,” and jails were sometimes filled, as the Earps and several other men on the make competed for the veterans’ money. We are also reintroduced to Old West figures such as “Gunfighter Surgeon” Dr. George Goodfellow, “Silver Tongued Orator” Thomas Fitch, millionaire George Hearst, detective J.V. Brighton, Lucky Baldwin, and many other well-known westerners …

Jazz concert performed at the UNT College of Music Lab West.

Dataset of American English words collected from spoken language, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts; the individual files include concordance information, parts-of-speech, and other arrangements of the data.

From their founding in the 1820s up to the modern age, the Texas Rangers have shown the ability to adapt and survive. Part of that survival depended on their use of firearms. The evolving technology of these weapons often determined the effectiveness of these early day Rangers. John Coffee “Jack” Hays and Samuel Walker would leave their mark on the Rangers by incorporating new technology which allowed them to alter tactics when confronting their adversaries. The Frontier Battalion was created at about the same time as the Colt Peacemaker and the Winchester 73—these were the guns that “won the West.” Firearms of the Texas Rangers, with more than 180 photographs, tells the history of the Texas Rangers primarily through the use of their firearms. Author Doug Dukes narrates famous episodes in Ranger history, including Jack Hays and the Paterson, the Walker Colt, the McCulloch Colt Revolver (smuggled through the Union blockade during the Civil War), and the Frontier Battalion and their use of the Colt Peacemaker and Winchester and Sharps carbines. Readers will delight in learning of Frank Hamer’s marksmanship with his Colt Single Action Army and his Remington, along with Captain J.W. McCormick and his two .45 Colt pistols, …

Work of art of Inkjet Print by artist Chris Wright Evans, as part of a 2020 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Brachaid".

Brachaid is a collection of photographs that explore the blindness of our perspective that is informed by images. By photographing peripheral landscapes like wastewater processing facilities, the edges of temporary streams, and stormwater basins, the project uses the landscape and its perceived neutrality to foreground how the production of images constructs our perception. The work in Brachaid emphasizes the production of images, from subject and framing choices to the use of imaging software, to demonstrate that such production is regularly and radically obscured in most of the images we consume, and that this same structure exists in our lived reality.

Work of art of Inkjet Print by artist Chris Wright Evans, as part of a 2020 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Brachaid". Wrapped in Plastic.

Work of art of Inkjet Print by artist Chris Wright Evans, as part of a 2020 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Brachaid".

Work of art of Inkjet Print by artist Chris Wright Evans, as part of a 2020 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Brachaid".

Work of art of Inkjet Print by artist Chris Wright Evans, as part of a 2020 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Brachaid". Wrapped in Plastic.

Presentation on the life and career of Willis Conover for the Willis Conover Centennial Symposium held virtually on December 11, 2020.

Notes to accompany a presentation on the life and career of Willis Conover for the Willis Conover Centennial Symposium held virtually on December 11, 2020.