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A career spanning nearly a half century of work with large animals is distilled in these entertaining vignettes, ranging from fighting an epidemic in Mexico, work with exotic game on Texas ranches, calls to the zoo and one late-night emergency at a local theater.

The Kronkosky Foundation Story provides a broad review of the twenty-five-year history of the Albert and Bessie Mae Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. Albert and Bessie Mae Kronkosky were committed to creating a legacy of “profound good” through charitable giving across four Texas counties that were dear to their hearts. The private foundation, formed in 1995 with a mission focused on health and human services (especially for children and the elderly), arts, and culture, has had a significant impact on San Antonio and the surrounding area.

The book recounts the Kronkosky family’s history and how they came into the wealth that eventually led to the foundation’s creation. The nonprofit organization’s story is one of exemplary management and wide-ranging positive impact on a community, and an examination of how local giving has changed in recent decades.

The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation exists in perpetuity, and their story stands as a testament to philanthropic commitment to a community.

The Kronkosky Foundation Story provides a broad review of the twenty-five-year history of the Albert and Bessie Mae Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. Albert and Bessie Mae Kronkosky were committed to creating a legacy of “profound good” through charitable giving across four Texas counties that were dear to their hearts. The private foundation, formed in 1995 with a mission focused on health and human services (especially for children and the elderly), arts, and culture, has had a significant impact on San Antonio and the surrounding area.

The book recounts the Kronkosky family’s history and how they came into the wealth that eventually led to the foundation’s creation. The nonprofit organization’s story is one of exemplary management and wide-ranging positive impact on a community, and an examination of how local giving has changed in recent decades.

The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation exists in perpetuity, and their story stands as a testament to philanthropic commitment to a community.

Braiding strands of earthen insight with uproarious storytelling, Texas Hill Country legendary author Becky Patterson recreates the history of the Steiler Hill Ranch in twenty-four anecdotal chapters interspersed with original artwork. The result is a mixture of memoir and montage, treasure chest and tableau vivant of a world that’s beautiful, brash, and wonderfully heartbreaking. Patterson -- the daughter of Texas folk hero and self-proclaimed mayor of Luckenbach, Hondo Crouch -- has big shoes to fill and she does so successfully in this colorful collection of Hill Country and Texas ranch vignettes.

Foreman and general cowboy guru Raymond Kuhlmann tells stories of the Goat King and German drinking songs, the buzzard traps and Mexican corridos that filled the nighttime pastures. First-person accounts and vivid historical narratives evoke the ranch’s past, overlaid with Patterson’s breathless personal histories of afternoons spent rescuing a doe in a nightgown, or saving a porcupine from a pack of dogs.

This is a book that will connect you to whatever patch of earth you hold dear. It is poignant reminder of the landscapes we’ve forgotten to keep close, of the land that does not belong to us but simply is who we are. The Ranch That Was Us is an affectionate reminder to go outside and touch the earth that is you.

This is the first book on the extensive Spanish-era acequia system that supplied water to San Antonio for nearly two centuries. Using techniques brought to Spain from North Africa by the Moors, this 50-mile system of acequias—irrigation ditches—used a variety of ingenious techniques such as hollowed logs, diversion dams and stone aqueducts to coax water from San Pedro Springs and the San Antonio River to homes and fields. It was perhaps the most extensive such network within the presentday United States. Just south of San Antonio, the Espada Mission acequia and its 1740s aqueduct have remained in continuous use.

This concise and lavishly illustrated account balances the significant history of the San Antonio’s missions’ founding and their original function with the stories of their subsequent decay and eventual restoration. New drawings depict all five mission compounds as they first appeared. Built in the eighteenth century by Franciscan friars and Native American converts, San Antonio’s five missions form the largest such cluster in the United States. One is preserved as the Alamo, the others make up San Antonio Missions National Historical Park.

Since its founding in 1869 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Trinity University has been engaged in realizing the dreams of its founders to become “a University of the highest order.” In Trinity University: A Tale of Three Cities, R. Douglas Brackenridge, professor emeritus of religion at Trinity, brings a wealth of scholarship and knowledge to this institutional history.

Brackenridge traces Trinity’s unique heritage from its founding in Tehuacana and growth in Waxahachie to its emergence in San Antonio as a top private university for the study of liberal arts and sciences. He draws on historical records and reports, oral histories, newspaper accounts, books, correspondence, and archives to document the university’s challenges and successes. He describes Trinity’s development within the broader context of private, church-related universities in America, while profiling the administrators, faculty, staff, and students who have contributed to Trinity’s rich heritage.

The result is a well-researched story of the founding and the progression of one of the nation’s exceptional institutions for higher learning. Illustrations picture Trinity’s campuses in three cities and include black-and-white photographs.

Trinity University: Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future showcases the stories, moments, and people of the Trinity community’s 150-year journey. From its beginnings in a lone building in Tehuacana to its roots today in the heart of San Antonio, Trinity’s story is one of resilience, ambition, and success. Founded with the vision to create a new university of the highest order, Trinity’s commitment to innovative learning and enterprise have transformed challenge into opportunity and shaped the university into the esteemed private liberal arts and sciences institution it is today.

Early entrepreneurs such as the Munger brothers and Marrs McLean paved the way for the current entrepreneurship program and Stumberg competitions. Forward-thinking programs such as the Office of Experiential Learning, the Student Success Center, and the Collaborative for Learning and Teaching also supplement Trinity’s twenty-five academic departments. Trinity University reflects on all these stories and documents the institution’s vision for what a liberal arts education can become.

Trinity University: Honoring the Past, Shaping the Future showcases the stories, moments, and people of the Trinity community’s 150-year journey. From its beginnings in a lone building in Tehuacana to its roots today in the heart of San Antonio, Trinity’s story is one of resilience, ambition, and success. Founded with the vision to create a new university of the highest order, Trinity’s commitment to innovative learning and enterprise have transformed challenge into opportunity and shaped the university into the esteemed private liberal arts and sciences institution it is today.

Early entrepreneurs such as the Munger brothers and Marrs McLean paved the way for the current entrepreneurship program and Stumberg competitions. Forward-thinking programs such as the Office of Experiential Learning, the Student Success Center, and the Collaborative for Learning and Teaching also supplement Trinity’s twenty-five academic departments. Trinity University reflects on all these stories and documents the institution’s vision for what a liberal arts education can become.

At the start of the twentieth century, South Texas was a melting of troops training for deployment in World War I and thousands of refugees fleeing the Mexican Revolution. With the influx of immigrants and injured veterans returning from the war, the area was in desperate need of a charity hospital to serve the burgeoning community. The city of San Antonio and Bexar County each contributed half the funding to build the Robert B. Green Memorial Hospital, named for a socially conscious county judge and Texas state senator.

The Green hospital filled a critical need and was completed just in time to care for victims of the 1918 flu epidemic. One hundred years later, the hospital is one of many in the University Health System, which continues to fulfill the diverse health care needs of South Texas.University Health System at 100 chronicles the compelling history of a nationally recognized teaching hospital and its network of outpatient healthcare centers with archival photographs and extended captions. Highlights include the 1955 creation of the property tax funded Bexar County Hospital District; the 1968 founding of the University of Texas Medical School at San Antonio; now called UT Health San Antonio; and the 1999 opening of the Texas Diabetes Institute. The book also looks ahead to the next one hundred years as medical advancements and concerns and the needs of the South Texas region continue to evolve. Whatever the future of health care holds, the University Health System aims to continue the mission that has guided it from the beginning—to treat all those in need in the community with compassion, respect and skill.

Thirty-five classic stories fill this book about San Antonio’s seamier side, from the days of the Old West when Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson came by, Rowdy Joe Lowe ran a saloon on Main Plaza and Butch Cassidy got away from Madame Fanny Porter’s in time to escape the fate of fellow train robber Deaf Charley, who found himself at the business end of a lawman’s six-shooter. A map of the 22-block red-light district west of San Pedro Creek shows more than 100 houses of ill repute, inhabitants listed.

On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city’s Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city’s North Side, wreaking considerable damage.

The city’s response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation.

Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America’s poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS’s emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city’s diverse population.

West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio’s enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio’s long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.

On September 9, 1921, a tropical depression stalled just north of San Antonio and within hours overwhelmed its winding network of creeks and rivers. Floodwaters ripped through the city’s Latino West Side neighborhoods, killing more than eighty people. Meanwhile a wall of water crashed into the central business district on the city’s North Side, wreaking considerable damage.

The city’s response to this disaster shaped its environmental policies for the next fifty years, carving new channels of power. Decisions about which communities would be rehabilitated and how thoroughly were made in the political arena, where the Anglo elite largely ignored the interlocking problems on the impoverished West Side that flowed from poor drainage, bad housing, and inadequate sanitation.

Instead the elite pushed for the $1.6 million construction of the Olmos Dam, whose creation depended on a skewed distribution of public benefits in one of America’s poorest big cities. The discriminatory consequences, channeled along ethnic and class lines, continually resurfaced until the mid-1970s, when Communities Organized for Public Services, a West Side grassroots organization, launched a successful protest that brought much-needed flood control to often inundated neighborhoods. This upheaval, along with COPS’s emergence as a power broker, disrupted Anglo domination of the political landscape to more accurately reflect the city’s diverse population.

West Side Rising is the first book focused squarely on San Antonio’s enduring relationship to floods, which have had severe consequences for its communities of color in particular. Examining environmental, social, and political histories, Char Miller demonstrates that disasters can expose systems of racism, injustice, and erasure and, over time, can impel activists to dismantle these inequities. He draws clear lines between the environmental injustices embedded in San Antonio’s long history and the emergence of grassroots organizations that combated the devastating impact floods could have on the West Side.

In the spirit of Eat, Pray, Love, Carol Wright Folbre’s story is of a young suburban Texas woman’s path to self-discovery in the early 1980s. Newly married, she embarked with her husband on a journey that morphed into an eighteen-month reassessment and discovery of her core skills, values, and presumptions.

Folbre’s travels across India, Nepal, China, and Russia were replete with challenge and adventure. Travel by foot, plane, passenger and industrial rail, bus rooftop, riverboat, bicycle, camelback, and donkey cart landed her in places she had never imagined and introduced her to centuries- and millennia-old cultures she had only read about in books. Staying in yurts, hostels, monasteries, and teahouses along the way, she met many people who captivated her. 

What started as a headstrong journey driven by a Western tourist’s curiosity became a progression of discovery as Folbre learned the value of getting lost and embracing surprises, listening deeply, and finding strength in the unknown. Throughout her travels, she journaled and illustrated her encounters. What emerged was a framework for her to rethink her worldview and adopt a journey-over-destination and process-over-outcome perspective, recognizing a way of living that holds as many questions as answers and can be genuinely beautiful.

"This soulful collection is perfect for fans of The Moth or Humans of New York." — Publishers Weekly

People in San Antonio love to tell stories. Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories is a collection of forty true tales, epic adventures, and intimate revelations from the heart of one of America’s fastest growing and most culturally diverse cities.

There is the hilarious chronicle of being crowned Turkey Queen of Cuero, as well as stories of finding one’s place as an immigrant or refugee, the heartbreak of being on the AIDS epidemic’s front lines, and the redemption in writing My Little Pony fan fiction. From the birth of a Freedom Rider to the origins of a literary legend, from the search for a murdered mother’s memories to passing our abilities and disabilities along to our children, the pieces here are as varied and nuanced as the city its authors have called home at one time or another.

They might not all take place in Texas, but every story has roots in its streets, suburbs, and history. Whether it’s an account of being stranded in Uganda, growing up in a Mexican border barrio, catching swine flu in Thailand, being among Harvard University’s first Black architecture students, growing up in Iran, or leaving India for a new life in Texas, each story has a soul that is puro San Antonio. From last chances to first tries, all of these personal narratives were originally performed in front of an audience at Worth Repeating, Texas Public Radio’s live storytelling series.

Writers include Heather Armstrong, Tanveer Arora, Jennie Badger, Kiran Kaur Bains, Marion Barth, Sheila Black, Barbara Bowie, Norma Elia Cantú, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Cary Clack, Jess Elizarraras, Georgia Erck, Tiffany Farias-Sokoloski, Elizabeth Fauerso, Everett L. Fly, Larry Garza, Lorenzo Gomez III, Mike Knoop, David W. Lesch, Rey Lopez, Vanessa Martinez, Collin McGrath, Joaquin Muerte, Sanford Nowlin, Tori Pool, Wendy Rigby, Alex Rubio, Jonathan Ryan, Yara Samman, John Phillip Santos, Burgin Streetman, Whitley Strieber, Barbara S. Taylor, Michael Taylor, Kirsten Thompson, Clay Utley, Cristina Van Dusen, Eddie Vega, Ayon Wen-Waldron, and Bria Woods.

"This soulful collection is perfect for fans of The Moth or Humans of New York." — Publishers Weekly

People in San Antonio love to tell stories. Worth Repeating: San Antonio Stories is a collection of forty true tales, epic adventures, and intimate revelations from the heart of one of America’s fastest growing and most culturally diverse cities.

There is the hilarious chronicle of being crowned Turkey Queen of Cuero, as well as stories of finding one’s place as an immigrant or refugee, the heartbreak of being on the AIDS epidemic’s front lines, and the redemption in writing My Little Pony fan fiction. From the birth of a Freedom Rider to the origins of a literary legend, from the search for a murdered mother’s memories to passing our abilities and disabilities along to our children, the pieces here are as varied and nuanced as the city its authors have called home at one time or another.

They might not all take place in Texas, but every story has roots in its streets, suburbs, and history. Whether it’s an account of being stranded in Uganda, growing up in a Mexican border barrio, catching swine flu in Thailand, being among Harvard University’s first Black architecture students, growing up in Iran, or leaving India for a new life in Texas, each story has a soul that is puro San Antonio. From last chances to first tries, all of these personal narratives were originally performed in front of an audience at Worth Repeating, Texas Public Radio’s live storytelling series.

Writers include Heather Armstrong, Tanveer Arora, Jennie Badger, Kiran Kaur Bains, Marion Barth, Sheila Black, Barbara Bowie, Norma Elia Cantú, Kelly Grey Carlisle, Cary Clack, Jess Elizarraras, Georgia Erck, Tiffany Farias-Sokoloski, Elizabeth Fauerso, Everett L. Fly, Larry Garza, Lorenzo Gomez III, Mike Knoop, David W. Lesch, Rey Lopez, Vanessa Martinez, Collin McGrath, Joaquin Muerte, Sanford Nowlin, Tori Pool, Wendy Rigby, Alex Rubio, Jonathan Ryan, Yara Samman, John Phillip Santos, Burgin Streetman, Whitley Strieber, Barbara S. Taylor, Michael Taylor, Kirsten Thompson, Clay Utley, Cristina Van Dusen, Eddie Vega, Ayon Wen-Waldron, and Bria Woods.