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...

Road congestion imposes major financial, social, and environmental costs. One solution is the operation of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. This book outlines a method for dynamic pricing for HOT lanes based on non-linear programming (NLP) techniques, finite difference stochastic approximation, genetic algorithms, and simulated annealing stochastic algorithms, working within a cell transmission framework. The result is a solution for optimal flow and optimal toll to minimize total travel t...

This book addresses the use of existing and emerging electronic payment technologies within a smart city in the context of the clear and proven value these systems have demonstrated in improving transportation. It addresses such question as How does the toll gantry work? How does it read the transponder tag and deduct the correct amount? How do cities harness the transaction data from mass transit to better meet the demand during peak hours? What can city planners do to make trip sched...

John Steinbeck once famously wrote that "Texas is a state of mind." For those who know it well, however, the Lone Star State is more than one mind-set, more than a collection of clichés, more than a static stereotype. There are minds in Texas, Don Graham asserts, and some of the most important are the writers and filmmakers whose words and images have helped define the state to the nation, the world, and the people of Texas themselves. For many years, Graham has been critiquing Texas write...

A larger-than-life narrative of the making of the classic film, marking the rise of America as a superpower, the ascent of Hollywood celebrity, and the flowering of Texas culture as mythology.Featuring James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor, Giant is an epic film of fame and materialism, based around the discovery of oil at Spindletop and the establishment of the King Ranch of south Texas. Isolating his star cast in the wilds of West Texas, director ...

In Giant Country Don Graham brings together a collection of lively, absorbing essays written over the past two decades.The collection begins with a twist on book introductions that sets the tone for the essays to come—a self-interview conducted poolside at an eccentric Houston motel favored by regional rock bands. Over piña coladas the author works on his tan and discusses timeless Texas themes: the transition of the state from a rural to an urban world, the sense of a van...

Jack Nicholson is one of the longest-lasting and most recognized sex symbols of our time. This sizzling biography goes deep in-depth, relating exclusive interviews with past flames and flings, to shed light on the unique charisma and magnetism of one of America's most respected and desired movie stars.Among the startling revelations:A longtime girlfriend who describes Jack's reaction when he at last discovered the long-buried, dark secret of his childhoodJac...

Would you like to have a new passive income stream that makes money while you sleep?Most people haven't realized the global economy shifting power that cryptocurrencies have, while smart investors have been following them closely for a while now.We've all heard about how Bitcoin shocked the world by skyrocketing in value over a short period of time.Making safe digital investments has never been so approachable.You don't have to be a financial expert and it d...

One of the movies' greatest actors and most colorful characters, a real-life tough guy with the prison record to prove it, Robert Mitchum was a movie icon for an almost unprecedented half-century, the cool, sleepy-eyed star of such classics as The Night of the Hunter; Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison; Cape Fear; The Longest Day; Farewell, My Lovely; and The Winds of War. Mitchum's powerful presence and simmering violence combined with hard-boiled humor and existential detachment to create a new s...

A remarkable look at how the growth, technology, and politics of high-frequency trading have altered global financial marketsIn today’s financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions. Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of this epic transformation. Donald MacKenzie shows how in...

A powerful portrait of four boarding school graduates who died too young—JFK, Jr. among them—by their fellow classmate, a New York Times–bestselling author."A wrenching, beautifully woven story about fate, friendship and the shattered dreams of once-golden privileged men. I couldn't put it down." —Jonathan Alter, New York Times–bestselling author of The Center HoldsIn his masterful pieces for Vanity Fair an...

Would you like to have a new passive income stream that makes money while you sleep?Most people haven't realized the global economy shifting power that cryptocurrencies have, while smart investors have been following them closely for a while now.We've all heard about how Bitcoin shocked the world by skyrocketing in value over a short period of time. Now people are looking at Ethereum.Making safe digital investments has never been so approachable.You don't ha...