Finalist, 2019 Outstanding Publications Award, sponsored by the Texas Chapter of the Wildlife SocietyDama gazelles, the largest of the gazelles, were once a common sight in Northern Africa, with a habitat ranging from the Atlantic Ocean east almost to the Nile River. Today, these animals are critically endangered as their populations have dropped precipitously due to the effects of expanding agrarian practices, overhunting, violent human conflict, and climate change on their native...

In the early morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove into downtown Oklahoma City in a rented Ryder truck containing a deadly fertilizer bomb that he and his army buddy Terry Nichols had made the previous day. He parked in a handicapped-parking zone, hopped out of the truck, and walked away into a series of alleys and streets. Shortly after 9:00 A.M., the bomb obliterated one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 infants and toddlers. McVe...

Arizona never experienced a summer like this, as snipers Dale Hausner and Sam Dieteman took aim at anything?and everything?in their path. Phoenix was a city in terror as the deadly spree ultimately claimed 37 vicitims, people and pets? until one detective began to put the pieces together to nail the murderous duo.

Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS"Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience."-Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize--winning Lonesome Dove"This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexic...

At 3:17 p.m. on March 18, 1937, a natural gas leak beneath the London Junior-Senior High School in the oil boomtown of New London, Texas, created a lethal mixture of gas and oxygen in the schools basement. The odorless, colorless gas went undetected until the flip of an electrical switch triggered a colossal blast. The two-story school, one of the nations most modern, disintegrated, burying everyone under a vast pile of rubble and debris. More than 300 students and teachers were killed, and h...

New Mexico is �The Land of Enchantment,� offering a fascinating blend of Native American, Spanish Colonial, and Western American cultures. The travelers from the East knew they had arrived in the great Southwest when they entered New Mexico�the towns along Route 66 were ablaze in neon, and the motels lured travelers with Western themes, Pueblo Revival architecture, and Native American trading posts. An adventure still awaits the traveler today who takes the time to exit I-40 and leave the ...

Franklin Henry Little (1878–1917), an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fought in some of the early twentieth century’s most contentious labor and free-speech struggles. Following his lynching in Butte, Montana, his life and legacy became shrouded in tragedy and family secrets. In Frank Little and the IWW, author Jane Little Botkin chronicles her great-granduncle’s fascinating life and reveals its connections to the histo...

Joining the U.S.’ war effort in 1942, Mexican President Manuel Ávila Camacho ordered the dislocation of Japanese Mexican communities and approved the creation of internment camps and zones of confinement. Under this relocation program, a new pro-American nationalism developed in Mexico that scripted Japanese Mexicans as an internal racial enemy. In spite of the broad resistance presented by the communities wherein they were valued members, Japanese Mexicans lost their freedom, property, an...

With the outbreak of World War II, British Royal Air Force (RAF) officials sought to train aircrews outside of England, safe from enemy attack and poor weather. In the United States six civilian flight schools dedicated themselves to instructing RAF pilots; the first, No. 1 British Flying Training School (BFTS), was located in Terrell, Texas, east of Dallas. Tom Killebrew explores the history of the Terrell Aviation School and its program with RAF pilots. Most of the early British students...

Every ten years, the Texas legislature redistricts itself and the state’s congressional districts in an attempt to ensure equality in representation. With a richly textured cultural fabric, Texas often experiences redistricting battles that are heated enough to gain national attention. Collecting a variety of voices, including legislators themselves, in addition to lawyers, community organizers, political historians, and political scientists, Rotten Boroughs, Political Thickets, and Le...

Among the many difficulties the newly formed Confederate States of America endured in the summer of 1861 was the failure of its post office department to provide sufficient numbers of that item most crucial to its service: the postage stamp. Faced with the resulting din of customer complaints, a handful of industrious Texas postmasters solved the problem by simply making their own homemade stamps.In this thoroughly researched history of these rare and highly coveted stamps, The...

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission celebrated its centennial in 2009. To honor that milestone, former State Archivist David Gracy has taken a retrospective look at the agency's colorful and sometimes contentious history as Texas's official information provider and record keeper. In this book, he chronicles more than a century of efforts by dedicated librarians and archivists to deliver the essential, nonpartisan library and archival functions of government within a political e...