“The American cowboy is a mythical character who refuses to die,” says author John R. Erickson. On the one hand he is a common man: a laborer, a hired hand who works for wages. Yet in his lonely struggle against nature and animal cunning, he becomes larger than life. Who is this cowboy? Where did he come from and where is he today? Erickson addresses these questions based on firsthand observation and experience in Texas and Oklahoma. And in the process of describing and defining the modern working cowboy—his work, his tools and equipment, his horse, his roping technique, his style of dress, his relationships with his wife and his employer—Erickson gives a thorough description of modern ranching, the economic milieu in which the cowboy operates. The first edition of this book was published in 1981. For this second edition Erickson has thoroughly revised and expanded the book to discuss recent developments in cowboy culture, making The Modern Cowboy the most up-to-date source on cowboy and ranch life today. “We meet the modern cowboy (his dress depends on weather, chores, and vanity) and follow him through the year: spring roundup, branding and ‘working’ the calves; spotting problem animals and cutting …

Award-winner Jean Andrews has been called “the first lady of chili peppers” and her own registered trademark, “The Pepper Lady.” She now follows up on the success of her earlier books, Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums and The Pepper Trail , with a new collection of more than two hundred recipes for pepper lovers everywhere. Andrews begins with how to select peppers (with an illustrated glossary provided), how to store and peel them, and how to utilize various cooking techniques to unlock their flavors. A chapter on some typical ingredients that are used in pepper recipes will be a boon for the harried cook. The Peppers Cookbook also features a section on nutrition and two indexes, one by recipe and one by pepper type, for those searching for a recipe to use specific peppers found in the market. The majority of the book contains new recipes along with the best recipes from her award-winning Pepper Trail book. The mouth-watering recipes herein range from appetizers to main courses, sauces, and desserts, including Roasted Red Pepper Dip, Creamy Pepper and Tomato Soup, Jicama and Pepper Salad, Chipotle-Portabella Tartlets, Green Corn Tamale Pie, Anatolian Stew, South Texas Turkey with Tamale Dressing, Shrimp Amal, Couscous-Stuffed …

Captain Bill McDonald (1852-1918) is the most prominent of the “Four Great Captains” of Texas Ranger history. His career straddled the changing scene from the nineteenth to the twentieth centuries. In 1891 McDonald became captain of Company B of the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers. “Captain Bill” and the Rangers under his command took part in a number of incidents from the Panhandle region to South Texas: the Fitzsimmons-Maher prizefight in El Paso, the Wichita Falls bank robbery, the murders by the San Saba Mob, the Reese-Townsend feud at Columbus, the lynching of the Humphries clan, the Conditt family murders near Edna, the Brownsville Raid of 1906, and the shootout with Mexican Americans near Rio Grande City. In all these endeavors, only one Ranger lost his life under McDonald’s command. McDonald’s reputation as a gunman rested upon his easily demonstrated markmanship, a flair for using his weapons to intimidate opponents, and the publicity given his numerous exploits. His ability to handle mobs resulted in a classic tale told around campfires: one riot, one Ranger. His admirers rank him as one of the great captains of Texas Ranger history. His detractors see him as an irresponsible lawman who accepted questionable …

John Wesley Hardin! His name spread terror in much of Texas in the years following the Civil War as the most wanted fugitive with a $4000 reward on his head. A Texas Ranger wrote that he killed men just to see them kick. Hardin began his killing career in the late 1860s and remained a wanted man until his capture in 1877 by Texas Rangers and Florida law officials. He certainly killed twenty men; some credited him with killing forty or more. After sixteen years in Huntsville prison he was pardoned by Governor Hogg. For a short while he avoided trouble and roamed westward, eventually establishing a home of sorts in wild and woolly El Paso as an attorney. He became embroiled in the dark side of that city and eventually lost his final gunfight to an El Paso constable, John Selman. Hardin was forty-two years old. Besides his reputation as the deadliest man with a six-gun, he left an autobiography in which he detailed many of the troubles of his life. In A Lawless Breed, Chuck Parsons and Norman Wayne Brown have meticulously examined his claims against available records to determine how much of his life story is true, …

Few names in the lore of western gunmen are as recognizable. Few lives of the most notorious are as little known. Romanticized and made legendary, John Ringo fought and killed for what he believed was right. As a teenager, Ringo was rushed into sudden adulthood when his father was killed tragically in the midst of the family's overland trek to California. As a young man he became embroiled in the blood feud turbulence of post-Reconstruction Texas. The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War in Texas began as a war over range rights, but it swiftly deteriorated into blood vengeance and spiraled out of control as the body count rose. In this charnel house Ringo gained a reputation as a dangerous gunfighter and man killer. He was proclaimed throughout the state as a daring leader, a desperate man, and a champion of the feud. Following incarceration for his role in the feud, Ringo was elected as a lawman in Mason County, the epicenter of the feud’s origin. The reputation he earned in Texas, further inflated by his willingness to shoot it out with Victorio’s raiders during a deadly confrontation in New Mexico, preceded him to Tombstone in territorial Arizona. Ringo became immersed …

This history of the Lipan Apaches, from archeological evidence to the present, tells the story of some of the least known, least understood people in the Southwest. These plains buffalo hunters and traders were one of the first groups to acquire horses, and with this advantage they expanded from the Panhandle across Texas and into Coahuila, coming into conflict with the Comanches. With a knack for making friends and forging alliances, they survived against all odds, and were still free long after their worst enemies were corralled on reservations. In the most thorough account yet published, Sherry Robinson tracks the Lipans from their earliest interactions with Spaniards and kindred Apache groups through later alliances and to their love-hate relationships with Mexicans, Texas colonists, Texas Rangers, and the U.S. Army. For the first time we hear of the Eastern Apache confederacy of allied but autonomous groups that joined for war, defense, and trade. Among their confederates, and led by chiefs with a diplomatic bent, Lipans drew closer to the Spanish, Mexicans, and Texans. By the 1880s, with their numbers dwindling and ground lost to Mexican campaigns and Mackenzie’s raids, the Lipans roamed with Mescalero Apaches, some with Victorio. Many remained in …

In Command Culture, Jörg Muth examines the different paths the United States Army and the German Armed Forces traveled to select, educate, and promote their officers in the crucial time before World War II. Muth demonstrates that the military education system in Germany represented an organized effort where each school and examination provided the stepping stone for the next. But in the United States, there existed no communication about teaching contents or didactical matters among the various schools and academies, and they existed in a self chosen insular environment. American officers who finally made their way through an erratic selection process and past West Point to the important Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, found themselves usually deeply disappointed, because they were faced again with a rather below average faculty who forced them after every exercise to accept the approved “school solution.” Command Culture explores the paradox that in Germany officers came from a closed authoritarian society but received an extremely open minded military education, whereas their counterparts in the United States came from one of the most democratic societies but received an outdated military education that harnessed their minds and limited their initiative. On the other …

On a chilly October afternoon in 1881, two brothers named Tom and Frank McLaury were gunned down on the streets of Tombstone, Arizona, by the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. The deadly event became known as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and in a quirk of fate, the brothers’ names became well-known, but only as bad men and outlaws. Did they deserve that reputation? The McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona: An O.K. Corral Obituary explores this question, revealing details of their family background and the context of their lives on the frontier. Paul Lee Johnson begins their story with the McLaury brothers’ decision to go into the cattle business with an ambition to have their own ranch. When they moved to Arizona, they finally achieved that goal, but along the way they became enmeshed with the cross-border black market that was thriving there. As “honest ranchers” they were in business with both the criminal element as well as the legitimate businesses in Tombstone. Another principal in this story was an older brother, William, who set aside his law practice in Fort Worth to settle his brothers’ affairs, and associated himself with the prosecution of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday. …

Civil War Heavy Explosive Ordnance is the definitive reference book on Union and Confederate large caliber artillery projectiles, torpedoes, and mines. Some of these projectiles are from the most famous battles of the Civil War, such as those at Fort Sumter, Charleston, Vicksburg, and Richmond. Others were fired from famous cannon, such as the “Swamp Angel” of Charleston and “Whistling Dick” of Vicksburg. And some were involved in torpedo attacks against major warships. Jack Bell covers more than 360 projectiles from public and private collections in smoothbore calibers of 32-pounder and up, rifled projectiles of 4-inch caliber and larger, and twenty-one Union and Confederate torpedoes and mines. Each data sheet shows multiple views of the projectile or torpedo (using more than 1,000 photos) with data including diameter, weight, gun used to fire it, rarity index, and provenance. This comprehensive volume will be of great interest to Civil War historians, museum curators, field archaeologists, private collectors, dealers, and consultants on unexploded ordnance. “This will become a required reference guide at every Civil War site and related museum.”--Wayne E. Stark, Civil War artillery historian

From the days of Z. N. Morrell and James Huckins to Bill Pinson and Charles Wade, Baptists have played and continue to play an important role in the religious, secular, and political life of Texas. Over the previous one hundred and fifty years several Texas Baptist histories have been written, but not until now have the documents used in the development of these texts been made available in one resource. In A Texas Baptist History Sourcebook, Joseph E. Early, Jr., has provided the most complete collection of Texas Baptist sources ever issued in one volume. This work consists of church minutes, state and association convention records, denominational newspaper articles, records of Baptist universities, and myriads of other resources. Included in this work are George Washington Truett's sermon Baptists and Religious Liberty delivered on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., James Milton Carroll's Trail of Blood, J. Frank Norriss railings against the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and countless other sources depicting the many years of Texas Baptist history. This book is designed as a complementary work to Harry Leon McBeth's Texas Baptists: A Sesquicentennial History. Students can follow McBeth's chapter divisions, headings, and subheadings for greater ease …

For decades the Horrell brothers of Lampasas, Texas, have been portrayed as ruthless killers and outlaws, but author David Johnson paints a different picture of these controversial men. The Horrells were ranchers, but some thought that they built their herds by rustling. Their initial confrontation with the State Police at Lampasas in 1873 marked the most disastrous shootout in Reconstruction history. The brothers and loyal friends then fled to New Mexico, where they became entangled in what would later evolve into the violent Lincoln County War. The brothers returned to Texas, where in time they became involved in the Horrell-Higgins War. The family was nearly wiped out following the feud when two of the brothers were killed by a mob. Only one member of the family, Sam, Jr., lived to old age and died of natural causes.

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."

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: McCrummen, “An American Void” (1st place); Goffard, “Fleeing Syria: The Choice” (2nd place); Schweitzer, “The Life and Times of Strider Wolf” (3rd place), and runners up, Hubert, “Genny’s World”; Phillips, “Inside an FBI Hostage Crisis”; Johnson, “Patient, Surgeon Work Together”; Reich, “Norman Malone’s Quest”; Cox, “Telling JJ”; Cramer, “The Boy Who Burned Inside”; and Barton, “Unsolved: A Murdered Teen, a 40-year Mystery."

Biographical account of Nashville Franklyn “Buckskin Frank” Leslie, a deadly gunfighter, describing where Leslie came from and how he died. Chapters describe his life in Arizona, including gun fights and people that he killed, his marriages, and other notable events. Index starts on page 233.

This anthology collects the winners of the 2019 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Eli Saslow, “It Was My Job, and I Didn’t Find Him” (The Washington Post), narrates the life of a former officer at the Parkland high school shooting. Second place: Elizabeth Bruenig, “What Do We Owe Her Now?” (The Washington Post), is the story of a high school rape victim who received no justice. Third place: Hannah Dreier, “The Disappeared” (ProPublica), follows a mother who lost her teenage son to gang violence. Runners-up include Jamie Thompson, “Standoff” (The Dallas Morning News); Lane DeGregory, “Lincoln’s Shot” (Tampa Bay Times); Jenna Russell, “The World, the Stage, the Way Ahead” (The Boston Globe); Evan Allen, “Under a Dark Sky, a Baby is Born” (The Boston Globe); Lisa Gartner, “She’s Taught at the Parkland High School for 14 Years. Can She Go Back?” (Tampa Bay Times); Claire McNeill, “So You Remember the Student Who Was Shot at FSU? He’s Pretty Sure We’ve All Moved On” (Tampa Bay Times); and Bethany Barnes, “Targeted” (The Oregonian).

This anthology collects the eleven winners of the 2018 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, an event hosted by the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at the University of North Texas. First place winner: Kale Williams, “The Loneliest Polar Bear” (The Oregonian), relates the tale of Nora, a baby polar bear raised by humans in a zoo after being abandoned by her mother. Second place: Patricia Callahan, “Doomed by Delay” (Chicago Tribune), reveals the experiences of Illinois families with children diagnosed with Krabbe—a deadly disease that healthcare professionals could have screened for at birth, and ultimately treated, if it weren’t for government bureaucracy. Third place: Christopher Goffard, “Dirty John” (Los Angeles Times), is an investigative story that explores the dynamics of domestic violence with a nuanced, psychologically complex narrative of family and survival. Runners-up include John Woodrow Cox, “Twelve Seconds of Gunfire” (The Washington Post); Tom Hallman Jr., “His Heart, Her Hands” (The Oregonian); Jenna Russell, “The Last Refugee” (The Boston Globe); Lisa Gartner and Zachary T. Sampson, “Wrong Way” (Tampa Bay Times); Casey Parks, “About a Boy” (The Oregonian); Jennifer Emily, “Hope for the Rest of Us” (The Dallas Morning News); …

Anthology of the previously-published newspaper articles by the eleven winners of the 2018 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. The pieces are published in order of places awarded: Williams, “The Loneliest Polar Bear” (1st place); Callahan, “Doomed by Delay” (2nd place); Goffard, “Dirty John” (3rd place); and runners-up: Cox, “Twelve Seconds of Gunfire”; Hallman “His Heart, Her Hands”; Russell, “The Last Refugee”; Gartner and Sampson, “Wrong Way”; Parks, “About a Boy”; Emily, “Hope for the Rest of Us”; Babb, “There’s Nowhere to Run”; and DeGregory, “The House on the Corner.”

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: Saslow, "Into the Lonely Quiet" (1st place); Moskowitz, "Marathon Carjacking" (2nd place); Johnson, "The Course of Their Lives" (3rd place), and runners up, Goffard, "The Manhunt"; McCrummen, "Wait—You Described It as a Cloudy Feeling?"; Phillips, "The Lobotomy Files"; Applegate, "Taken Under"; Kissinger, "A Mother, at Her Wits' End"; Kruse, "The Last Voyage of the Bounty"; McKinnon, "Alone on the Hill" ; Newall, "Almost Justice"; and Schweitzer, "Together, Despite All."

Luke Short perfected his skills as a gambler in locations that included Leadville, Tombstone, Dodge City, and Fort Worth. In 1883, in what became known as the "Dodge City War," he banded together with Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and others to protect his ownership interests in the Long Branch Saloon—an event commemorated by the famous "Dodge City Peace Commission" photograph. During his lifetime, Luke Short became one of the best known sporting men in the United States, and one of the wealthiest. The irony is that Luke Short is best remembered for being the winning gunfighter in two of the most celebrated showdowns in Old West history: the shootout with Charlie Storms in Tombstone, Arizona, and the showdown against Jim Courtright in Fort Worth, Texas. He would have hated that. The contents include: -The cowboy by birth -- Tall tales and short facts -- The gambler by choice -- Get out of Dodge! -- A plain statement & shots from Short -- The Dodge City peace commission -- The White Elephant in Panther City -- Sporting men of Fort Worth -- Dead man in a shooting gallery -- Mrs. Luke Short -- The war on the gambling fraternity -- State …

After he died, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged throughout his short life despite the release of sixteen brilliant albums. Since his death, numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles published, in addition to several books (including Robert Hardy’s A Deeper Blue by UNT Press). For the Sake of the Song collects ten essays on Townes Van Zandt from a variety of approaches. Contributors examine his legacy; his use of the minor key; his reception in the Austin music scene; and an exploration of his relationship with Richard Dobson, with whom he toured as part of the Hemmer Ridge Mountain Boys. An introduction by editors Ann Norton Holbrook and Dan Beller- McKenna provides an overview of Van Zandt’s literary excellence and philosophical wisdom, rare among even the best songwriters.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Harmonic Theory is the first comprehensive study of his concept of harmony that also traces the history of tonal relationships. Larisa P. Jackson describes and examines Rimsky-Korsakov’s distinctive harmonic theory using his Practical Manual of Harmony as a basis, and places it in historical context of nineteenth-century music theory. She explores in great detail a concept of tonal relationships, fundamental to Rimsky-Korsakov’s view of harmony, and relates this to ideas by German theorists of the period and the Russian theoretical tradition. Jackson examines the concept of modulation and of the relationship of keys and presents a model of his tonal space/map extrapolated from his harmonic system. She identifies specific treatises that help to trace ties between German theoretical ideas and Rimsky-Korsakov’s work.

Book contains about 400 images of the fronts and backs of real photo postcards from about 1900-1920. These were postcards created by ordinary people from their own photographs and mailed with their messages on the back. Book also describes history of photography that resulted in people being able to create their own photos without a dark room, and explains known information about the specific cards, including who sent and received them and what they depict

A descendant of one of the pioneering boarding house families, Wanda Landrey searched the Big Thicket to find survivors of the boarding house era and to collect their stories and recipes.

his anthology collects the ten winners of the 2020 Best American Newspaper Narrative Writing Contest at UNT’s Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. First place winner: Christopher Goffard, “Detective Trapp” (Los Angeles Times) is about a complicated murder investigation and its human impact. Second place: Annie Gowen, “Left Behind: American Farm Families in Crisis during Trump’s Trade War” (The Washington Post) tells about a despairing farmer’s suicide and aftermath. Third place: Jennifer Berry Hawes and Stephen Hobbs, “It’s Time for You to Die” (Post & Courier) presents a gut-wrenching drama of America’s deadliest episode of prison violence. Runners-up include Peter Jamison, “The Confession” (The Washington Post); Mark Johnson, “House Calls and Rarest of Diseases” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel); Nestor Ramos, “At the Edge of a Warming World” (Boston Globe); Noelle Crombie, Kale Williams, and Beth Nakamura, “No Mercy” (The Oregonian); Tara Duggan and Jason Fagone, “The Fisherman’s Tale” (San Francisco Chronicle); Jenna Russell, “Brilliant, Faithful, Undaunted” (Boston Globe); and Charles Scudder, “Guardians: When Evil Came Through the Door” (Dallas Morning News).