Today, half of Texas’s expanding population, including the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston, depends on the Trinity River, a river that has shaped the state’s politics, economy, and environment for centuries. From the prairies of North Texas to the Gulf of Mexico, the Trinity established Native nations, foiled Spanish and French imperialism, stood at the center of the Texas plantation system, and fueled the growth of the state’s largest cities.In the first history of this ...

Texas history is often recounted through tales of revolution, oil booms, and cattle drives. But what if we considered a different lens—one shaped by wind and wildfire, rivers and drought, grasslands and pine forests?Nature and Place in Texas reimagines the Lone Star story by centering its ecosystems. This collection of essays by leading environmental historians reveals how the state’s natural features—its plains, deserts, rivers, forests, and coastlines—have shaped and bee...

**Winner of the American Book AwardPEN Literary Award FinalistThese essays blending memoir, history, and landscape “will create seismic shifts in readers’ perspectives on race, gender, and nature” as they explore how America’s ideas of ‘race’ have marked its people and the land (BuzzFeed).**Sand and stone are Earth’s fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life–defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl ...

Learn about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with this revised edition of the popular Random House Step Up(TM) Biography of the great civil-rights leader and advocate for peaceful resistance --includes new text and additional dynamic photos. Perfect for reading level: 2.2.When Martin Luther King Jr., was growing up, he wasn't allowed to use the water fountains the white children drank from--and he didn't understand why. As he grew older, he studied hard and p...

**Instant BestsellerWinner of the 2024 Willie Morris Award for Southern Nonfiction • A Chicago Public Library Must-Read Book of 2024 • A Booklist Editors' ChoiceA sweeping history of the Mississippi River—and the centuries of human meddling that have transformed both it and America.**The Mississippi River lies at the heart of America, an undeniable life force that is intertwined with the nation’s culture and history. Its watershed spans almost half the coun...

A history of independent African American settlements in Texas during the Jim Crow era, featuring historical and contemporary photographs.In the decades following the Civil War, nearly a quarter of African Americans achieved a remarkable victory—they got their own land. While other ex-slaves and many poor whites became trapped in the exploitative sharecropping system, these independence-seeking individuals settled on pockets of unclaimed land that had been deemed to...

The "meticulous" (The New Yorker) and "ground-breaking" (The Los Angeles Times) story of a cotton magnate whose voracious appetite for land drove him to create the first big agricultural empire of the Central Valley of California, and shaped the landscape for decades to come.J. G. Boswell was the biggest farmer in America. He built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions, and every journalist who ever tried to ...

In this sweeping social history Dorceta E. Taylor examines the emergence and rise of the multifaceted U.S. conservation movement from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. She shows how race, class, and gender influenced every aspect of the movement, including the establishment of parks; campaigns to protect wild game, birds, and fish; forest conservation; outdoor recreation; and the movement's links to nineteenth-century ideologies. Initially led by white urban elites—whose e...

"A commanding and inspiring biography of a river that gave rise to an art movement, progressive social quests, [and] landmark environmental cases." — Booklist (starred review)Includes maps, photos, and illustrationsFrances F. Dunwell presents a rich portrait of the Hudson and of the visionary people whose deep relationship with the river inspired changes in American history and culture. Lavishly illustrated with color plates of Hudson Rive...

The Hudson River has always played a vital role in American culture. Flowing through a valley of sublime scenery, the great river uniquely connects America’s past with its present and future. This book traces the course of the river through four centuries, recounting the stories of explorers and traders, artists and writers, entrepreneurs and industrialists, ecologists and preservationists-those who have been shaped by the river as well as those who have helped shape it. Their compelling...

Interweaving social, political, environmental, economic, and popular history, John Alexander Williams chronicles four and a half centuries of the Appalachian past. Along the way, he explores Appalachia's long-contested boundaries and the numerous, often contradictory images that have shaped perceptions of the region as both the essence of America and a place apart.Williams begins his story in the colonial era and describes the half-century of bloody warfare as migrants from Europe ...

A colorful history of the island city on Texas's Gulf Coast and its survival through times of piracy, plague, civil war, and devastating natural disaster.On the Gulf edge of Texas between land and sea stands Galveston Island. Shaped continually by wind and water, it is one of earth's ongoing creations, where time is forever new. Here, on the shoreline, embraced by the waves, a person can still feel the heartbeat of nature. And yet, for all the idyllic possibilities...