My Darling Boys is the story of a New Mexico farm family whose three sons were sent to fight in World War II. All flew combat aircraft in the Army Air Forces. In 1973 one of the boys, Oscar Allison, a B-24 top turret gunner and flight engineer, wrote a memoir of his World War II experiences. On a mission to Regensburg, Germany, his bomber, ravaged by German fighters, was shot down. He was captured and spent fifteen months in German stalag prisons. His memoir, the core of this unique book, details his training, combat, and prisoner-of-war experience in a truthful, introspective, and compelling manner. Fred H. Allison, the author and Oscar’s nephew, gained access to family letters that supplement Oscar’s story and bring to light the experiences of Oscar’s brothers. Harold Allison, the author’s father, was sidelined from combat as a bomber copilot due to a health condition. The letters also tell of the brother who did not come home, Wiley Grizzle Jr., a P-51 fighter pilot. Wiley’s last mission brought his squadron of Mustangs into a pitched battle with German fighters bound for the front to attack American troops. The letters also introduce the boys’ family, who fought …

In Music from the Hilltop, Benjamin A. Kolodziej studies three significant academic musical figures to weave a narrative that not only details the role musical studies played in the development of Southern Methodist University but also relates a history of church music and pipe organs in Dallas, Texas. Bertha Stevens Cassidy (1876–1959), the first organ professor and the only woman on the faculty of the new university, established herself as a leader and veritable dean of the church music community, managing a career of significant performances and teaching. Her student and protégé, Dora Poteet Barclay (1903–1961), broadened the pedagogical horizons for her students. Many of her own students achieved great professional heights as performers and church musicians. Robert Theodore Anderson (1934–2009) was intellectually able to bridge the gap between the theologians of the Methodist seminary and the performers at the Meadows School of the Arts. He consulted with the Dallas Symphony to prepare for the installation of an organ in the new Meyerson Symphony Center—an organ that would influence concert hall instruments in subsequent decades.

On November 22, 1963, the author of Behind the Scenes was a young Dallas Times Herald reporter who sprinted from his newspaper desk to Dealey Plaza minutes after shots were fired at President John F. Kennedy. Thus began Darwin Payne’s close involvement in covering one shocking event after another on this history-making weekend. Eyewitnesses he found at Dealey Plaza included Abraham Zapruder, who insisted from the first moments that the president could not have survived the serious wounds he had seen so clearly through his camera viewfinder. Payne interviewed detectives outside the School Book Depository that early afternoon as they brought down evidence of the shooter’s location, as well as his rifle, and he was among several journalists taken to the assassin’s sixth-floor window from where fatal shots had been fired. Before the day ended, Payne was in the Oak Cliff rooming house where the suspect had been living briefly apart from his Russian wife, Marina. Payne learned that the alleged assassin, now in police custody after being charged with the murder of officer J. D. Tippit, was known as O. H. Lee instead of Lee Harvey Oswald. On Payne’s regular Saturday night police-beat duty, he was among the growing …

Although in 2000 he became the first sideman inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “King Curtis” Ousley never lived to accept his award. Tragically, he was murdered outside his New York City home in 1971. At that moment, thirty-seven-year-old King Curtis was widely regarded as the greatest R & B saxophone player of all time. He also may have been the most prolific, having recorded with well over two hundred artists during an eighteen-year span. Soul Serenade is the definitive biography of one of the most influential musicians of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. Timothy R. Hoover chronicles King Curtis’s meteoric rise from a humble Texas farm to the recording studios of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and New York City as well as to some of the world’s greatest music stages, including the Apollo Theatre, Fillmore West, and Montreux Jazz Festival. Curtis’s “chicken-scratch” solos on the Coasters’ Yakety Yak changed the role of the saxophone in rock & roll forever. His band opened for the Beatles at their famous Shea Stadium concert in 1965. He also backed his “little sister” and close friend Aretha Franklin on nearly all of her tours and Atlantic Records productions from 1967 …

During World War II, tens of thousands of African Americans served in segregated combat units in U.S. armed forces. The majority of these units were found in the U.S. Army, and African Americans served in every one of the combat arms. They found opportunities for leadership unparalleled in the rest of American society at the time. Several reached the field grade officer ranks, and one officer reached the rank of brigadier general. Beyond the Army, the Marine Corps refused to enlist African Americans until ordered to do so by the president in June 1942, and two African American combat units were formed and did see service during the war. While the U.S. Navy initially resisted extending the role of African American sailors beyond kitchens, eventually the crew of two ships was composed exclusively of African Americans. The Coast Guard became the first service to integrate—initially with two shipboard experiments and then with the integration of most of their fleet. Finally, the famous Tuskegee airmen are covered in the chapter on air warfare. Proud Warriors makes the case that the wartime experiences of combat units such as the Tank Battalions and the Tuskegee Airmen ultimately convinced President Truman to desegregate the …

Denton County and the City of Denton are named for pioneer preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter John B. Denton, but little has been known about him. He was an orphan in frontier Arkansas who became a circuit-riding Methodist preacher and an important member of a movement of early settlers bringing civilization to North Texas. After becoming a ranger on the frontier, he ultimately was killed in the Tarrant Expedition, a Texas Ranger raid on a series of villages inhabited by various Caddoan and other tribes near Village Creek on May 24, 1841. Denton’s true story has been lost or obscured by the persistent mythologizing by publicists for Texas, especially by pulp western writer Alfred W. Arrington. Cochran separates the truth from the myth in this meticulous biography, which also contains a detailed discussion of the controversy surrounding the burial of John B. Denton and offers some alternative scenarios for what happened to his body after his death on the frontier.

The State Library Administrative Agencies Survey: Fiscal Year 2016 report provides highlights of the Fiscal Year 2016 State Library Administrative Agencies (SLAA) Survey, which collects financial, staffing, and service information from every SLAA in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Interest in digital preservation training and professional development opportunities is extensive, however, a common understanding of the open materials – ones that are freely available for use online – and how they might be used most effectively is still limited. The digital preservation community, those who shepherd digital collections through the lifecycle for a variety of organizations, would benefit from a common understanding of freely available open training materials. Digital preservation continuing education is valuable to a number of organization types, from small to large, as well as a wide range of practitioners at various points in their careers. Museums, libraries, and archives of all sizes benefit greatly from freely available continuing educational materials on digital preservation topics, as do many other organizations with an interest in preserving digital content for future use. Frequently, learners new to the profession are uncertain as to where to acquire specific digital preservation knowledge, issues, and skills. Similarly, working professionals may need to expand their roles or desire to broaden their knowledge and skill-set. Training to meet these needs necessarily occurs outside of formal educational settings, relying on the learner’s ability to locate resources that are relevant to their goals. It is the purpose …

The report provides recommendations to help ensure the physical and intellectual well-being of materials created and managed in digital form ("born digital") that are transferred from donors to archival repositories. The report is presented in four sections, each of which provides an overview of a key area of concern: initial collection review, privacy and intellectual property, key stages in acquiring digital materials, and post-acquisition review by the repository. Each section concludes with two lists of recommendations: one for donors and dealers, and a second for repository staff. Appendixes provide more specific information about possible staffing activities, as well as a list of resources and ready-to-use checklists that incorporate recommendations from throughout the report. Ten archivists and curators from institutions in the United States and United Kingdom collaborated on the report.

This book of proceedings includes seventeen papers from a symposium held at Emory University. The symposium papers discuss subjects relating to free culture in digital libraries.

This book is a reproduction of the original 1952 publication, which is the only bound copy of the history of Winnsboro, Texas. It includes information about the original settlers, the general organization of the city, the railroad system, the original schools, churches and businesses in Winnsboro, as well as information about agriculture and farming.

The purpose of this study is "to identify significant issues affecting water quality" within the Trinity River watershed, located in the eastern half of Texas, "and to provide sufficient information for the Commission, river authorities, and other local government bodies to take appropriate corrective action necessary to maintain and improve the quality of [the] state's water resources" (p. [1]).

This meeting summary report presents the major findings and discussion from the IPCC Expert Meeting on "Industrial Technology Development, Transfer and Diffusion."

Document describes the origins and history of the Soil Survey with an emphasis on the time periods of 1899-1912, 1912-1920, 1920-1933, and 1933-1952. "For each of the four chronological periods, a brief introductory chapter describes the general political and administrative environment then prevailing, and a summary of the progress of the Soil Survey achieved under such an environment." (p. 36) Also provides information on early soil sampling, typing, mapping, and interpretation. Also tells about the coordination of the National Cooperative Soil Survey and developments in the National Cooperative Soil Survey from 1952-1957.