Name: Dodgers to Damascus
Brand: Catherine Nixon Cooke
Price: 29.95 USD
Availability: InStock

Catherine Nixon Cooke

Dodgers to Damascus

$29.95

David Lesch is a modern-day Renaissance man whose work has spanned continents and allowed him to explore cultures near and far. An acclaimed scholar, educator, author, and conflict resolution specialist, he has advised five U.S. presidential administrations at the highest levels about the head-spinning political, religious, and cultural complexities of the Middle East. He is the author or editor of seventeen books, including The History of the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, Syria: A Modern History, and The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History.

Long before, as the number one draft pick for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1980, Lesch followed his American dream, playing with many baseball greats until a shoulder injury sidelined him. He later became a distinguished professor of Middle East studies at Trinity University in San Antonio and was soon tapped by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and policy centers and governments internationally.

Dodgers to Damascus documents a part of the world that has been shrouded in mystery and plagued by conflict, power struggles, and warfare, and offers a firsthand glimpse inside modern Syria, its neighboring countries, and their connections to the rest of the world.
Lesch’s work in Syria resulted in a tenuous relationship with President Bashar al-Assad and many tense situations, including a poisoned meal that almost cost him his life. His encounters with elected officials, diplomats, spies, and conflict resolution specialists have all the elements of a Hollywood thriller and parallel his personal story of loss, crisis, and redemption.

Cover image for Dodgers to Damascus, isbn: 9781595343239

Kathy Sosa

Mestizaje

$47.95

Derived from the words miscere and genus in Latin, mestizaje refers to a mixing of the races. In the book bilingual book Mestizaje, internationally acclaimed artist Kathy Sosa presents a cross-sectional view of Mexican American culture as it is practiced in the centuries-old blended culture of the Texas-Mexico borderlands. She documents and projects the effects across generations of peoples and cultures meeting, overlapping, and organically blending into something new. The richness and beauty of mestizaje come from a place where people speak Spanglish, eat Tex-Mex food, and dance to Willie Nelson and Flaco Jimenez—sometimes all at once. Sosa foretells what much of the United States has become or will be like before long.

The imagery and symbolism of puro mestizaje (total mix) figure prominently in Sosa’s work, and it is a mix unique to the borderlands’ historical traditions and myriad cultures. Sosa derives inspiration from and reflects a bold palette of strong female figures. Celebrating what the women of these borderlands think, feel, and revere culturally, she explores the roles of indigenous traditions, colors, and textiles. Family, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances—real and imagined—participate in the spirit of mexicanidad, though most were not born in Mexico and some have never visited. Supplemented with dual-language essays in English and Spanish by art critics, collectors, and historians, Mestizaje rejoices in feminist notions of blended cultures and opens readers’ eyes to the lessons they offer and what they tell us about America today.

Jenny Browne

Texas, Being

$18.95

Texas, Being: A State of Poems collects more than forty-five poems from a beautiful and brutal state. Some are about the music of their languages. Some speak to the dead, some to the sun, and others to omissions of history. One concerns a hedgehog cactus, and another a roller rink. From “Happy, Texas” to “Palestine, TX,” from seashores to skeletons to Selena, all are in one way or another about Texas, but good poems are always about more than one thing.

Selected by Jenny Browne, 2017 poet laureate of Texas, these poems draw a picture of one of America’s vastly sublime yet most audaciously independent corners. In these diverse voices, the state is a lovely and painful contradiction of space and meaning. Texas is a place “where blind catfish cruise” and wild asters grow. It’s a frame of mind where Jenny Boully writes “the history is unending” and Mexican American studies professor Christopher Carmona can “feel the slowness of time.” Jorge Luis Borges wrote of it as “an endless plain / Where a man’s cry dies a lonely death.” Victoria Chang writes that “there is so / much sky that even birds / get lost."

Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson describes her hometown as a “fiercely loving city tougher on the outside / but smooth as pecan shells,” and Naomi Shihab Nye reminds us to “be patient, sure there’s lots of bad around, / but more room for good too, with all this empty.” Whether it is Joshua Edwards imagining his photographer father or Primo Feliciano Marín’s declaration “Hail Texas, fraught with charms unknown,” these voices, past and present, give us a glimpse into the poetic soul of the nation’s most willful state.

Poets include Robert A. Ayres, Curtis Bauer, Jan Beatty, Layla Benitez-James, Jorge Luis Borges, Jenny Boully, Catherine Bowman, Susan Briante, Bobby Byrd, Christopher Carmona, Aline B. Carter, Rosemary Catacalos, Victoria Chang, Hayan Charara, Joshua Edwards, Tarfia Faizullah, Carrie Fountain, Vievee Francis, Mag Gabbert, Miriam Bird Greenberg, Lucy Griffith, Aaron Hand, Fady Joudah, Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Emma Lazarus, J. Estanislao Lopez, Primo Feliciano Marín, Pablo Miguel Martínez, Walter McDonald, Jasminne Mendez, Townsend Miller, Ange Mlinko, Naomi Shihab Nye, Shin Yu Pai, Cecily Parks, Emmy Pérez, Octavio Quintanilla, Iliana Rocha, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, ire’ne lara silva, Jeff Sirkin, Margo Tamez, Lao Yang, Loretta Diane Walker, Emily Winakur, and Matthew Zapruder.

Toby Jurovics

From Here to the Horizon

$44.95

From Here to the Horizon presents the work of fifty of America’s leading contemporary landscape photographers in honor of the life and influence of Barry Lopez (1945–2020), one of our most revered writers about the landscape and our place within it. Work by each photographer was selected in relation to, and accompanied by, an excerpt from the best-selling book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape, a reader’s A-to-Z guide to American landscape terms, edited by Lopez and Debra Gwartney. With images reflecting landforms or locations and others that are more evocative, the collection creates a portrait of the beauty, diversity, and abundance found in our shared North American topography.

For Lopez, the land was never simply a background for human activity but reflected our aspirations and desires, both as individuals and communities. He had a particular affinity with photographers, and some have compared his precise, crystalline language to the artistry found in photography. As Virginia Beahan noted, “What impressed me so much about Barry’s writing was the slow-moving attention to detail . . . as he tried to make sense of the world.

The collection includes leading photographers such as Virginia Beahan, Barbara Bosworth, Frank Gohlke, Lois Conner, Emmet Gowin, Mark Klett, David Maisel, Laura McPhee, Andrew Moore, Mark Ruwedel, and essays by Debra Gwartney, Robert Macfarlane, and Toby Jurovics. From Here to the Horizon serves as a marker of the admiration of and affection for Lopez and will spark the imagination of places we already know, or hope to one day visit, or may never see but carry with us because of the life-affirming work of writers like Lopez.

Photographers: Robert Adams, Virginia Beahan, Marion Belanger, Michael Berman, Andrew Borowiec, Barbara Bosworth, Joann Brennan, Gregory Conniff, Linda Connor, Lois Conner , Thomas Joshua Cooper, Robert Dawson, Peter de Lory, Lucinda Devlin, Rick Dingus, Terry Evans, Lukas Felzmann, Steve Fitch, Frank Gohlke, Peter Goin, Emmet Gowin, Wayne Gudmundson, Owen Gump, David T. Hanson, Alex Harris, Allen Hess, Ron Jude, Robert Glenn Ketchum, Mark Klett, Stuart Klipper, Peter Latner, David Maisel, Laura McPhee, Andrew Moore, Eric Paddock, Mary Peck, Edward Ranney, Jeff Rich, Meghann Riepenhoff, Mark Ruwedel, Mike Smith, Joel Sternfeld, Martin Stupich, Willy Sutton, Bob Thall , Terry Toedtemeier, Geoff Winningham, Dennis Witmer, and William Wylie

Writers: Jeffery Renard Allen, Kim Barnes, Conger Beasley Jr., Lan Samantha Chang, Michael Collier, Elizabeth Cox, William deBuys, Pamela Frierson, Robert Hass, Patricia Hampl, Emily Hiestand, Linda Hogan, Barbara Kingsolver, William Kittredge, Gretchen Legler, Ellen Meloy, Robert Morgan, Antonya Nelson, Pattiann Rogers, Scott Russell Sanders, Eva Saulitis, Donna Seaman, Carolyn Servid, Kim Stafford, Arthur Sze, D. J. Waldie, Joy Williams, Terry Tempest Williams, and Larry Woiwod

Barry Lopez

Syntax of the River

$19.95

Barry Lopez had no illusions about the seriousness of our global crisis, yet he also felt a deep conviction about the power of hope and the sources of renewal in the living world. Syntax of the River is an extended conversation spanning three days between Lopez and Julia Martin in which he explores what this juxtaposition means for him as a writer.

On the first day Lopez reflects on years watching the McKenzie River near his home in Oregon. He describes the quality of attention he learned from intimacy with the place itself: a very fine distinction between silence and stillness, the rich complexities of the present moment, and the syntax of interrelationships between living things. The second day is concerned with craft: the work of making sentences and books. Lopez shares his practical strategies for writing and revising a manuscript and goes on to speak about vulnerability. He says he often experienced a deep sense of doubt about his capacity to achieve whatever he was trying to do in a particular project. Over time, though, this characteristic experience of not-knowing became a kind of fuel for his work, and even a weapon at times.

On the final day, Lopez ponders the idea of writing as a praxis, a way of life, even a prayer for the earth, while concurrently being terrified by the portents of its destruction. Here, the experience of being an attentive participant emerges as his core teaching. Over the decades he developed a practice of attention that was endlessly curious and enthralled by the living world, what he calls its pattern or syntax. Despite acclaim as a celebrated writer, throughout his career Lopez humbly tasked himself with making a combination of wonder and horror work together to effectively communicate a life journey of contemplation, exploration, and discovery.

David Ladensohn

Fly-Fishing with Leonardo da Vinci

$27.95

Leonardo da Vinci was obsessed with water. The famed Italian Renaissance artist meticulously drew every aspect of rivers, from the nature of water drops to the ways currents create and destroy the earth’s surface. His obsession led him to become a professional hydraulic engineer and an expert on the physics of water. He disproved Aristotle’s 1,800-year-old theory of the water cycle and developed the one we use today. He discovered the nature of erosion and heretically disproved the biblical flood. He created beautiful maps and drawings of river currents and of his audacious plans to reroute the Arno River for war and peace.

It is obvious to David Ladensohn, who has been fly-fishing for forty years, that Leonardo would have made the perfect fishing guide. The artist’s keen sense of humor and winning personality would have made him a wonderful companion. He knew more about how rivers work than any person before him and would have been outstanding at reading the water to figure out where the fish are. Beginning with Leonardo’s remarkable biography—from underprivileged child to celebrity whose company was sought by competing rulers in Italy and France—and taking readers through the inspirations that led him to fall in love with waterways, Ladensohn makes the connection between the artist’s life and his own deep knowledge of the art of fly-fishing. His adventures have led him to seek out the most unique, storied, and traveled fly-fishing locales in the world, including Argentina, Mexico, Cuba, Bhutan, Italy, Slovenia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, Costa Rica, Bahamas, Ireland, England, and Mongolia.

Ladensohn’s research on Leonardo led him to native rivers in Italy to scholars at Oxford and the inside of Windsor Castle, where he studied the finest of Leonardo’s original water drawings. The illustrations, which remain little known even today, are reproduced here in color, many for the first time. Fly-Fishing with Leonardo da Vinci is meant to inform and entertain anyone interested in the artist or fly-fishing and their unlikely intersection.

Susan Toomey Frost

Witness to War

$34.95

Witness to War presents a compelling visual record of a young American man’s venture in Mexico as the country veered into revolution in the early 1900s. Walter Elias Hadsell, a skilled photographer who had recently graduated as a mining engineer, documented a critical period of foreign investment in Mexico’s mining industry and, in the process, captured scenes of Mexican life in other cities.

Susan Toomey Frost draws from an extensive collection of Hadsell’s original photographic prints to narrate his ten years in Mexico. The images in Witness to War follow him from his time as a mining engineer in Mexico to his 1917 return to mining in Arizona, his home state.

Planning for a future career in photography, Hadsell soon acquired the Kodak franchise for Veracruz, Mexico’s most important port since colonial times. He documented the damage done in Mexico City during a ten-day uprising in 1913 that led to the assassination of Mexican president Francisco Madero.

Veracruz became a vortex for U.S. interference in the Mexican Revolution when President Woodrow Wilson invaded the country in 1914 in an attempt to thwart Mexico's successor president and to favor opposing forces. Hadsell, as a resident American citizen, had immediate access to the military operation as it unfolded. His images are essential historical records of Wilson’s intervention in Mexican affairs.

Hadsell’s camera recorded images of a defenseless city disrupted by the landing of thousands of American troops. With no exit plan, U.S. forces remained for seven months before abruptly departing. Hadsell’s personal life took a tragic turn with the death of his wife, who left him with three young children, all born in Mexico. He endured another tragedy with the loss of his Veracruz studio during a period of anti-Americanism, though he ultimately left a rich legacy documenting U.S.-Mexico relations at a critical time.

Barbara Ras

You Can't Have It All

$16.95

Poetry and painting have enjoyed a long life together, with artists like Cy Twombly and Joan Mitchell using poetry in their works and poets like John Ashbery and Ron Padgett working closely with visual artists. The tradition of artists and poets collaborating continues in You Can’t Have It All.

This elegant and intimate book presents Ras’s poem “You Can’t Have It All,” which has enjoyed a long life of appreciation by many fans worldwide. Enthusiastic readers, writers, workshop leaders, Buddhist practitioners, and poetry therapists have used the poem to mark occasions, teach classes, and inspire students.

Paintings by Terrell James elevate the lines of the poem to a new level of resonance. She often turns to poetry for inspiration in her studio. For James, a poem reflects the knowledge from the entire life of the poet, and she often uses lines from poems as titles for artworks.

Given the wide appeal and the insightful depth of the work by both of these artists, it’s no wonder they found one another for this radiant collaboration.

Cover image for You Can't Have It All, isbn: 9781595343277

Ryan Murdock

A Sunny Place for Shady People

$28.95

The car bomb assassination of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 shocked the European Union and put the world’s spotlight on an island so small that few knew it was an independent country and even fewer could find it on the map. But Caruana Galizia’s death didn’t come as a surprise to those who lived there.

Ryan Murdock had visions of living a slow-paced island life on the Mediterranean while writing about his experiences, so in 2011 he moved from Canada to Malta. To the casual visitor, Malta is a sleepy place with sun-soaked shorelines and ancient fortified harbors. Murdock imagined it to be an archipelago island of warm weather, gorgeous views, busy cafes, and grilled fish dinners. On the surface, it was.

The six years Murdock spent in Malta revealed an insular culture whose fundamental baseline is amoral familism, a worldview in which any action taken to benefit one’s family or oneself is justifiable, regardless of whether it is legal or ethical. In such a place murder may or may not be wrong, depending on what one thinks of another’s politics. This pervasive perspective created a culture of corruption that rose all the way to the top of the island nation. The office of the prime minister was implicated in Caruana Galizia’s murder, and the investigation continues to reveal a government mired in money laundering, human trafficking, fuel smuggling, and the sale of EU passports to Russian and Middle Eastern oligarchs.

Interspersed with personal narrative, Murdock delves into Malta’s unique geopolitical, cultural, ethnic, and religious history—one that transformed it from a hub of prehistoric rule into a modern society where a powerful cabal of political and business leaders nearly got away with murder.

David R. Johnson

In the Loop

$34.95

In the Loop: A Political and Economic History of San Antonio, is the culmination of urban historian David Johnson’s extensive research into the development of Texas’s oldest city. Beginning with San Antonio’s formation more than three hundred years ago, Johnson lays out the factors that drove the largely uneven and unplanned distribution of resources and amenities and analyzes the demographics that transformed the city from a frontier settlement into a diverse and complex modern metropolis.

Following the shift from military interests to more diverse industries and punctuated by evocative descriptions and historical quotations, this urban biography reveals how city mayors balanced constituents’ push for amenities with the pull of business interests such as tourism and the military. Deep dives into city archives fuel the story and round out portraits of Sam Maverick, Henry B. Gonzales, Lila Cockrell, and other political figures.

Johnson reveals the interplay of business interests, economic attractiveness, and political goals that spurred San Antonio’s historic tenacity and continuing growth and highlights individual agendas that influenced its development. He focuses on the crucial link between urban development and booster coalitions, outlining how politicians and business owners everywhere work side by side, although not necessarily together, to shape the future of any metropolitan area, including geographical disparities. Three photo galleries illustrate boosterism’s impact on San Antonio’s public and private space and highlight its tangible results.

In the Loop recounts each stage of San Antonio’s economic development with logic and care, building a rich story to contextualize our understanding of the current state of the city and our notions of how an American city can form.

Gretchen Daily

The Power of Trees

$12.95

Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful gift book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically sparse scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Alongside photographs by Chuck Katz, the text and images form a quiet and moving meditation on The Power of Trees.

Twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks were formed, what tree rings tell us about human societies, and how trees define the future of humanity. Pictures of trees threading through the landscape - dotting mountainsides, braiding along the sides of glassine rivers - bear witness to the lyrical force and clarity of Daily's observations.

Recreating the authors’ hike together through the landscape of the Skagit River in Washington State, the balletic movement between Daily’s commentary and Katz’s vision reaches out to readers, inviting them to enjoy the landscape through a scientific understanding of trees. At once emotional and intellectual, The Power of Trees is the first collection of nature photographs that invites the reader to not only delight in the gorgeous play between light and shadow, but also the fascinating natural mechanisms that create such striking natural beauty.

An ecologist by training, Gretchen Daily is an internationally acclaimed conservancy advocate and scholar. Her role as a National Trustee for The Nature Conservancy will feature prominently in the national marketing campaign to bridge the gap between scientific educators and the general nature reader.

Carol Wright Folbre

Wishbone

$27.95

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.

Cover image for Wishbone, isbn: 9781595342812

Lewis F. Fisher

Brackenridge

$37.95

Brackenridge Park began its life as a heavily wooded, bucolic driving park at the turn of the twentieth century. Over the next 120 years it evolved into the sprawling, multifaceted jewel San Antonians enjoy today, home to the San Antonio Zoo, the state’s first public golf course, the Japanese Tea Garden, the Sunken Garden Theater, and the Witte Museum.

The land that Brackenridge Park occupies, near the San Antonio River headwaters, has been reinvented many times over. People have gathered there since prehistoric times. Following the city’s founding in 1718, the land was used to channel river water into town via a system of acequias; its limestone cliffs were quarried for building materials; and it was the site of a Civil War tannery, headquarters for two military camps, a plant nursery, and a racetrack.

The park continues to be a site of national acclaim even while major sections have fallen into disrepair. The more than 400 acres that constitute San Antonio’s flagship urban park are made up of half a dozen parcels stitched together over time to create an uncommon varied landscape. Uniquely San Antonian, Brackenridge is full of romantic wooded walks and whimsical public spaces drawing tourists, locals, wildlife, and waterfowl.

Extensively researched and illustrated with some two hundred archival photographs and vintage postcards, Brackenridge: San Antonio’s Acclaimed Urban Park is the first comprehensive look at the fascinating story of this unique park and how its diverse layers evolved to create one of the city’s foremost gathering places.

W. B. Thompson

San Antonio in Color

$19.95

Flamboyant hues and a bold mixed-media style make for a stunning visual tribute to the city of San Antonio. Quotes and captions accompany over 80 color reproductions of paintings by W. B. Thompson, whose influences include Vincent van Gogh and fauvist Raoul Dufy. San Antonio's loveliest attractions are portrayed, including the old Catholic missions, cobblestone lined Paseo del Rio, and the Governor's Palace, labeled "the most beautiful building in San Antonio" by National Geographic. Renditions of a local rodeo and a taqueria on the historic West Side assure that the full flavors and authenticity of this laid-back city come through. An appendix provides additional background on each painting.

Mary Carolyn Hollers George

The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Giles

$60.00

From the 1870s to the 1920s, British-born architect Alfred Giles designed everything from simple domestic residences and showy mansions to county courthouses and commercial structures throughout Texas and northern Mexico. He was highly regarded at the time for adapting and combining stylistic elements with sobriety and simplicity. The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Gilesbook highlights his restored buildings, with an appendix devoted to his work in Mexico. Included are color photographs of these restorations taken by architect Eugene George, along with illuminating black-and-white historical images.

The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Giles

Chris Wilson

The Plazas of New Mexico

$45.00

The Plazas of New Mexico documents the rich heritage of New Mexico’s plazas and the everyday life and community celebrations that help sustain them. It traces three distinct design traditions the Native American center place with kiva and terraced residential blocks, the Hispanic plaza with church and courtyard houses, and the Anglo square with courthouse and business blocks. This landmark volume has resulted from a multi-year research project involving 50 students, a half dozen faculty members, and outside experts working through the Historic Preservation and Regionalism program at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning. New Mexico's plazas, like urban spaces everywhere, are gaining renewed attention in this time when the challenges of sustainability have sparked the Smart Growth movement, urban revitalization and intensified historic preservation. Detailing the success of restoration projects, this book shows how to encourage heritage tourism in the service of, rather than at the expense of, local quality of life and community sustainability.

Catherine Nixon Cooke

Juan O'Gorman

$29.95

To create the "Confluence of Civilizations" mural commissioned for the 1968 World's Fair in San Antonio, Texas, Juan O'Gorman collected natural stones from all over Mexicotwelve colors in allfield stones that the artist knew would never fade or change their hue. Juan O'Gorman: A Confluence of Civilizations follows the life of Juan O'Gorman and covers the creation of this spectacular piece of midcentury public art that stands the test of time not just in vibrancy but as one of the most influential works created by a storied Mexican artist.

Juan O'Gorman was a not only a painter and a muralist, a mosaic artist, a critic, and a professor, but he was also an architect and a revolutionary; possibly most famous for his close friendship with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and as designer of their infamous two-house studio in Mexico CityCasa Azullinked by a symbolic bridge.

To celebrate San Antonio's "HemisFair" Exposition in 1968, Juan created the giant mosaic mural that still adorns one wall of the Lila Cockrell Theater along San Antonio's famed River Walk. The design plans for the five ton mosaic measured 2600 square feet and consisted of 540 numbered panels, each weighting about 90 pounds.

Lewis F. Fisher

American Venice

$42.95

In American Venice: The Epic Story of San Antonio’s River, Lewis F. Fisher uncovers the evolution of San Antonio’s beloved River Walk. He shares how San Antonians refused to give up on the vital water source that provided for them from before the city’s beginnings. In 1941 neglect, civic uprisings, and bursts of creativity culminated in the completion of a Works Projects Administration project designed by Robert H. H. Hugman.

The resulting River Walk languished for years but enjoyed renewed interest during the 1968 World’s Fair, held in San Antonio, and has since become the center of the city’s cultural and historical narrative.

The real story [of the River Walk] is a bit less Hollywood but far more interesting . . . With a growing number of cities facing issues of water supply, urban runoff, flooding, and ways of rebuilding better after a disaster, the San Antonio River Walk remains a great example of getting it right,” writes Irby Hightower, co-chair of the San Antonio River Oversight Committee.

In this updated and expanded edition of River Walk: The Epic Story of San Antonio’s River, Fisher offers more fascinating stories about the River Walk’s evolution, bringing to light new facts and sharing historical images that he has since discovered. The update includes information about the Museum and Mission Reaches, two expansions of the River Walk that are vital to San Antonio’s continued growth as the seventh largest city in the country.

Fisher starts his story with the first written records of the river, in the 1690s, and continues through the 1800s and the flood of 1921, to debates over transforming the river and its eventual role as the crown jewel of Texas, and finally to its recent expansion. More than a community attraction, the River Walk’s banks are also a giant botanical garden full of plants and trees. Indeed, the American Society for Horticulture has named the River Walk a Horticultural Landmark. As Fisher says, the River Walk remains a work in progress, one forever precarious and unfinished yet standing before the world as a triumph of enterprise and human imagination.”

Al Rendón

Mi Cultura

$39.95

Internationally acclaimed photographer Al Rendón has been documenting the extended culture of south-central Texas for more than five decades. From his early teenage escapades weaseling his way backstage to shoot photos at shows by the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Rod Stewart, and others to having his photos grace the covers of Variety and Newsweek, he has given the world a glimpse into Tejano culture and so much more. Featured widely in international media, Al Rendón’s work has appeared in fourteen books and has been exhibited throughout the United States and Latin America and in China.

Mi Cultura captures a wide array of commercial and art photography ranging from charreadas, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and rock and roll and conjunto to immigrant food culture, the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, and the impacts of COVID-19 on already challenged communities. Included is an extensive selection of retratos, or portraits, work Al Rendón is best known for—most notably his photographs of Selena (several of her are in the National Portrait Gallery). Taken as a whole, the collection reflects a timely cross section of historical and contemporary life in south-central Texas by one of the country’s most important photographers.

Corky Parker

La Finca

$29.95

At age forty, Parker surrendered to her Swept Away meets Swiss Family Robinson fantasy of running an inn far from her home in the Pacific Northwest. For the next twenty-plus years Parker ran La Finca Caribe, an eco-lodge in Vieques, Puerto Rico. What started as a rough-and-tumble dream grew into a paradise enjoyed by guests from around the world. Sketchbook in hand, Parker chronicled her daily adventures living with the land. La Finca is a lively graphic memoir about a woman creating a new life amid countless challenges, including hurricanes that led her to reconsider everything. It is a story about trusting oneself, self-discovery, accepting disappointment and loss, and falling in love with a place.

Susan Toomey Frost

Colors on Clay

$45.00

Equal parts art, biography, and history, Colors on Clay brings to life the artistry, designers, and styles that brought the San José Workshops’ distinctive art pottery to international prominence. Author Susan Toomey Frost tells the story of how two colorful characters, Ethel Wilson Harris and her talented designer Fernando Ramos, revived a dying Mexican art and eventually became the driving forces behind three San Antonio art tile factories, known collectively as the San José Workshops. Produced from 1931 through 1977, the factories’ tiles and wares became celebrated throughout the world and prized in San Antonio for both public and private installations. In addition to historical and biographical information, Frost provides detailed information on authentic tiles, helping collectors steer clear of the many reproductions on the market. Featuring 300 full-color illustrations, including never-before-seen drawings, this exhaustively researched and eminently readable book is an important addition to any collector’s library.

Vaughn Sills

Places for the Spirit

$29.95

Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of over 80 documentary photographs of African American folk gardens and their creators in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina). These landscapes have a unique historical significance due to the design elements and spiritual meanings that have been traced to the yards and gardens of American slaves and further back to their prior African heritage. These deceptively casual or whimsical foliage arrangements are subtle and symbolic reminders of the divine in everyday life, the cycles of nature, and implied right and wrong ways to live. In the spirit of outsider” art traditions, blues musical roots, and other such folk manifestations, these gardens have a unique aesthetic and cultural significance. Over 20 years in the making, this is the first collection of fine art photography to document this subject and, as such, it adds greatly to our understanding and appreciation of this disappearing element of African American culture.

San Antonio Express-News

Spurs Nation

$29.95

From the Memorial Day Miracle to coach Gregg Popovich's legendary leadership to winning five NBA championships, the San Antonio Spurs have brought excitement to the Alamo City and the greater NBA family since 1976. As the team with the most rabid and loyal fan base in basketball history, Spurs Nation captures the unforgettable plays and crucial junctures in thirty years of playing hoops. Spurs Nation is THE collectible book for Spurs fans filled with silver and black and moments. This full-color photography, hardcover collection encompasses three decades of the Spurs including favorite past and current players from George Gervin to Tim Duncan, as seen through the eyes and words of the sportswriters and photographers who've covered their monumental rise for the San Antonio Express-News.

Cappy Lawton

Enchiladas

$34.95

Enchiladas: Aztec to Tex-Mex is an in-depth exploration of one of Mexico’s most historic and popular foods. Illustrated with sumptuous photography, the book showcases more than sixty traditional and contemporary recipes for enchiladas, as well as recipes for the salsas, salads, and sides that accompany them.

The enchilada is more than an everyday Mexican food. It is the history of a people--rolled, folded, and flat--that embodies thousands of years of Mexican life. The evolving ingredients in enchiladas from pre-Columbian to modern times reveal the internal and external forces that have shaped the cuisine and culture of a nation. In this definitive cookbook, you’ll explore every aspect of this iconic food, as well as gain insights into many popular Mexican ingredients, including herbs, spices, cheeses, and chiles. You’ll learn the basic techniques for making many staples of the Mexican cocina, such as homemade tortillas, queso fresco, crema Mexicana, and chorizo. With Enchiladas: Aztec to Tex-Mex, you can prepare enchiladas in the traditional Mexican way--with loving hands.

With this book, you'll learn to make corn tortillas from scratch, including colorful flavor-infused versions; fire roast fresh chiles and prepare dried chiles for enchilada sauces and moles; dry roast tomatoes, onions, garlic, and chiles using a traditional comal (griddle); make your own homemade queso fresco, crema Mexicana, and chorizo; prepare tender pot beans and savory refried beans
Cook perfect Mexican rice--six ways; prepare chicken, pork, beef, seafood, and vegetables for fillings.

Enchiladas: Aztec to Tex-Mex is also packed with information about many other key ingredients of Mexican cuisine, including avocados, tomatoes, tomatillos, and nopales (cactus). A section on Mexican cheeses describes their flavors, textures, melting properties, and possible substitutes. Fresh and dried chiles used in enchilada cookery are presented, along with a description of their flavor profiles, heat levels, and specific uses. Experience the history of Mexico through its most delicious ambassador, the enchilada!

William Stafford

The Osage Orange Tree

$14.95

The Osage Orange Tree, a never-before-published story by beloved poet William Stafford, is about young love complicated by misunderstanding and the insecurity of adolescence, set against the backdrop of poverty brought on by the Great Depression. The narrator recalls a girl he once knew. He and Evangeline, both shy, never find the courage to speak to each other in high school. Every evening, however, Evangeline meets him at the Osage orange tree on the edge of her property. He delivers a newspaper to her, and they talkand as the year progresses a secret friendship blossoms. This magical coming-of-age tale is brought to life through linocut illustrations by Oregon artist Dennis Cunningham, with an afterword by poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a personal friend of Stafford’s.

In the tradition of the work of great fiction writers like Steinbeck, O’Connor, and Welty, The Osage Orange Tree stands the test of time, not just as an ode to a place and a generation but as a testament to the resilience of a nation and the strength of the human heart.

Ron Nirenberg

Nirenberg

$32.95

Janisse Ray

Wild Spectacle

$25.95

Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness.

Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change.

In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change.

Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

Ingrid Friese Petty

The Kronkosky Foundation Story

$29.95

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.

Lewis F. Fisher

Greetings from San Antonio

$29.95

At the dawn of the twentieth century, just as color postcards were becoming a worldwide sensation, San Antonio bypassed Dallas as the largest city in Texas. Idyllic postcard images of San Antonio began landing in mailboxes across the country, displaying recently gained wealth and prosperity. Greetings from San Antonio: Historic Postcards of the Alamo City is a collection of more than six hundred color and black-and-white photo postcards, many of them quite rare, that yield a compelling visual narrative of the city during this pivotal period.

Large buildings like Joske’s department store and the Milam Building, railroad stations, mansions on paved streets, the 343-acre Brackenridge Park, and plush hotels such as the Saint Anthony Hotel and the Gunter Hotel replaced dusty frontier streetscapes at the turn of the century. This delighted postcard publishers, who gave proud residents and curious visitors alike the opportunity to mail images of a modern city worldwide. As the midcentury approached, postcards’ peak in popularity faded, along with San Antonio’s title as the largest city in the state.

Greetings from San Antonio presents a portrait essential to understanding the modern origins of this distinctive American city. Daily life is captured through seldom-seen images of downtown⁠, including the Alamo⁠, and early suburban neighborhoods, churches and schools, and entertainment venues and festivals like the annual citywide celebration Fiesta. Special attention is given to San Antonio’s emerging reputation as a military city, with images of early army and air bases—Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Camp Bullis, and Brooks, Kelly, and Randolph Fields. Highlights include postcards showing the San Antonio–based pursuit of Pancho Villa and the city’s role as a hub for military preparations for World Wars I and II. Taken as a whole, Greetings from San Antonio is a captivating and unique portrayal of the city during the early years of its transformation into the multicultural mecca it is today.

Katie Shepherd Christiansen

The Artist's Field Guide to Yellowstone

$24.95

The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone introduces readers to the wildlife of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem through the works of fifty of the region’s distinguished writers and artists. This robust anthology of eclectic artwork and inspiring storytelling offers an enlivened take on the traditional field guide and argues for the intrinsic value of this world-renowned ecosystem.

Yellowstone naturalist and artist Katie Shepherd Christiansen has compiled this sensible field guide and elegant art book to highlight the unique biodiversity of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, organized across four habitat strata: sky, earth, soil, and water. Writers and artists pair up to reveal new ways of understanding key species through prose, poetry, and artwork. The addition of scientific descriptions provides a natural history frame, and Christiansen’s illustrations of ecologically connected species bring life to every page.

Contributors hail from the Greater Yellowstone area. Writers are Elise Atchison, Rick Bass, Todd Burritt, Tom Campbell, Lyn Dalebout, Matt Daly, Joanne Dornan, Gary Ferguson, Matt Hart, Geneen Marie Haugen, Susan Marsh, Craig Mathews, Arthur Middleton, Doug Peacock, Karen Reinhart, Kelsey Sather, Jack Turner, Rebecca Watters, Tina Welling, Marylee White, Connie Wieneke, Todd Wilkinson, and Terry Tempest Williams. Artists are Kalon Baughan, Tamara Callens, Meredith Campbell, Sue Cedarholm, Derek DeYoung, Loretta Domaszewski, Katy Ann Fox, Dave Hall, Dwayne Harty, Laney Hicks, DG House, Will Hunter, S. J. Karikó, Laney, Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Mimi Matsuda, James Prosek, Robert Schlenker, Jocelyn Slack, Tucker Smith, Kay Stratman, Kara Tripp, Shannon Troxler, Kathryn Mapes Turner, John Wasson, Carrie Wild, and Monte Yellow Bird Sr.

Cover image for The Artist's Field Guide to Yellowstone, isbn: 9781595349491

Beth Peterson

Dispatches from the End of Ice

$27.95

The future of the world’s ice is at a critical juncture marked by international debate about climate change and almost daily reports about glaciers and ice shelves breaking, oceans rising, and temperatures spiking across the globe. These changing landscapes and the public discourse surrounding them are changing fast. It is science wrought with mystery, and for Beth Peterson it became personal.

A few months after Peterson moved to a tiny village on the edge of Europe’s largest glacier, things began to disappear. The glacier was melting at breakneck pace, and people she knew vanished: her professor went missing while summiting a volcano in Japan, and a friend wandered off a mountain trail in Norway. Finally, Peterson took a harrowing forty-foot fall while ice climbing.

Peterson’s effort to make sense of these losses led to travels across Scandinavia, Italy, England and back to the United States. She visited a cryonics institute, an ice core lab, a wunderkammer, Wittgenstein’s cabin, and other museums and libraries. She spoke with historians, guides, and scientists in search of answers. Her search for a noted glacier museum in Norway led to news that the renowned building had set on fire in the middle of the night before and burned to the ground.

Dispatches from the End of Ice is part science, part lyric essay, and part research reportage—all structured around a series of found artifacts (a map, a museum, an inventory, a book) in an attempt to understand the idea of disappearance. It is a brilliant synthesis of science, storytelling, and research in the spirit of essayists like Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and Joni Tevis. Peterson’s work veers into numerous terrains, orbiting the idea of vanishing and the taxonomies of loss both in an unstable world and in our individual lives.

John Langmore

Fault Lines

$29.95

East Austin, just across Interstate 35 from Austin, Texas’s capital city, is a historically working-class neighborhood that in recent years has become an arts district and hotbed for real estate developers targeting a young urban population. The shops and restaurants that for decades served Latino and African American residents are being crowded out by coffee shops, cocktail bars, and upscale bakeries hoping to attract newer residents. The resulting tensions, part of a trend debated in cities across the country, have received national media attention.

After years of observing the fragmentation of east Austin’s Latino and African American communities, photographer John Langmore began to chronicle the historic neighborhood and its residents. His aim was to capture the gentrifying neighborhood’s unique nature and to make Texans aware of the people and places negatively affected by the state’s growth.

Fault Lines features more than a hundred color and black-and-white photographs taken between 2006 and 2010, during which time Langmore was fully aware that the window for capturing the east Austin community was rapidly closing. Indeed today many of the neighborhood places, and even the people, have been lost to development and increasing rents and property taxes.

The book features a foreword by Michael King, a longtime political reporter for the Austin Chronicle; essays by east Austin resident Wilhelmina Delco, Austin’s first African American elected official and a ten-term member of the Texas House of Representatives, and Johnny Limón, a sixty-six-year resident of east Austin and a prominent member of the neighborhood’s Latino community; and an epilogue by Langmore.

Felicia Graham

Rollergirls

$32.50

Flat track roller derby is one of the country’s fastest growing sports. What started as a single league in Austin, Texas, a couple of decades ago has grown into an international phenomenon, with nearly two thousand leagues around the world.

Rollergirls captures the spirit of the game, which is poised to become an Olympic sport, and highlights the women who have become known as the godmothers of modern-day roller derby. Documentary photographer Felicia Graham takes readers on a visual tour of more than 160 black-and-white images, showcasing the confidence it takes to become a rollergirl and the camaraderie that develops among the players. Focusing on the Texas League, where it all began, Graham celebrates the culture and personality of flat track derby everywhere.

Despite their different reasons for joining the sport, women of varying professions, ages, and lifestyles have made roller derby uniquely their own. With tongue-in-cheek team names like the Hotrod Honeys and personas like Sparkle Plenty and Buckshot Betty, the players use their brains and brawn to master the strategic game while also expanding the sport internationally. It’s all done with bravado and a brash sense of humor unique to full-contact sports.

Graham has been photographing the Texas Rollergirls on and off the track, in Texas and on the international circuit, for more than a decade. Spending untold hours with the league and collecting thousands of photographs of pivots and blockers, adoring crowds, and the sweat of the bench, she has created a visual narrative of women who embody the freedom of flying around the track. In these pages, readers learn how regular girls become rollergirls--determined, athletic, intimidating, and powerful, all on their own terms.

Trinity University

$32.50

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.

Michael Nye

My Heart Is Not Blind

$35.00

My Heart Is Not Blind: On Blindness and Perception is a collection of stunning portraits of blind and visually impaired people taken by photographer Michael Nye. Each image is accompanied by an intimate story told by the subject concerning his or her experiences and unique perspective.

The causes of vision loss range from genetic predispositions (retinitis pigmentosa) or disease (glaucoma) to external circumstances such as accidents (struck by a train) or violence (gunshot wound). The people in this diverse group differ not only in their particular conditions and losses but also in their cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Taken as a whole, however, the accounts of adapting to changing modes of perception are bound by a common theme of resilience, revealed in shared reactions and unexpected insights.

The subjects depicted in My Heart Is Not Blind share their experiences and unique perspectives in a personal narratives that accompany their respective portraits. Most speak of the transition from sight to vision loss, and how that has changed—and not changed—their ability to perceive the surrounding world. Some question the classification of blindness as a disability. One participant proposes that blindness may, in some ways, even aid in perception, musing, “if you can always see the sun, you can never discover the stars.”

My Heart Is Not Blind offers a window into the world of the blind and visually impaired, revealing surprising similarities and fascinating differences alongside compelling accounts of survival, adaptation, and heightened understanding. The collection invites us to reconsider what we think we know about blindness in order to gain a deeper understanding of vision and perception.

Gretchen C. Daily

One Tree

$19.95

Through words and photographs, environmental scientist Gretchen C. Daily and photographer Charles J. Katz describe how one relict tree—the magnificent Ceiba pentandra in Sabalito, Costa Rica—carries physical and spiritual importance. The people in the town of Sabalito call the tree la ceiba, a term said to be derived from a Taíno word referring to a type of wood used for making canoes in the West Indies.

Ceiba evokes times and places where people hollowed out the great cylindrical trunks and glided along languid rivers winding through lush tropical forest. Today the tree is known by different names in regions ranging from southern Mexico and the Caribbean to the southern edge of the Amazon Basin and in western Africa. The ceiba has survived what is probably the highest rate of tropical deforestation in the world. It is a legendary and vital tree in centuries-old forests in places like Costa Rica that were once almost completely forested (98 percent in the mid-twentieth century) and decades later have suffered devastating deforestation (34 percent by 1980).

One Tree grew out of a conversation between photographer Chuck Katz and acclaimed ecologist Gretchen Daily about the relict tree—a single tree that remains standing in a pasture, for example, after the forest has been cleared from the land, and takes on iconic importance for the animals, plants, and people in the ecosystem. During a trip the authors took to Costa Rica, Katz focused his lens on the ceiba and a story was born. In descriptive language interwoven with scientific fact, Daily discusses the tree's historical and natural history and the ceiba species in general. She touches on the science of the Costa Rican rainforest and its deforestation and the cultural traditions, legends, and folklore of forests and relict trees. Katz's photographs of the massive tree and the village that takes care of it create an intimate work celebrating the visual and biological intricacies of trees.

Marion Oettinger Jr.

San Antonio 1718

$32.50

Three hundred years ago San Antonio was founded as a strategic outpost of presidios and missions on the edge of northern New Spain, imposing Spanish political and religious principles on this contested, often hostile region. The city’s many Catholic missions bear architectural witness to the time of their founding, but few have walked these sites without wondering who once lived there and what they saw, valued, and thought.

San Antonio 1718 presents a wealth of art that depicts a rich blending of sometimes conflicted cultures -- explorers, colonialists, and indigenous Native Americans -- and places the city’s founding in context. The book is organized into three sections, accompanied by five discussions by internationally recognized scholars with expertise in key aspects of eighteenth-century northern New Spain. The first section, “People and Places,” features art depicting the lives of ordinary people. Such art is rare since most painting and sculpture from this period was made in service to the church, the crown, or wealthy families. They provide compelling insight into how those living in the Spanish Colonies viewed gender, social organization, ethnicity, occupation, dress, home and workplace furnishings, and architecture. Since portraiture was the most popular genre of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Mexican painting, the second section, “Cycle of Life,” includes a selection of individual and family portraits representing people during different stages of life. The third and largest section is devoted to the church.

Throughout the colonial period, Catholic evangelization of New Spain went hand in hand with military, economic, and political expansion. All the major religious orders—the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and the Augustinians—played significant roles in proselytizing indigenous populations of northern New Spain, establishing monasteries and convents to support these efforts.

In San Antonio 1718, more than 100 portraits, landscapes, religious paintings, and devotional and secular objects reveal the visual culture that reflected and supported this region’s evolving world view, signaling how New Spain saw itself, its vast colonial and religious ambitions, in an age prior to the emergence of an independent Mexico and, subsequently, the state of Texas.

Joel Salcido

The Spirit of Tequila

$29.95

Agave dates back to the Aztec civilization as an important crop in Mexico. Since the 1600s, the people of western Mexico have cultivated blue agave from the red volcanic soil that blankets the region, to make what we know as tequila. The Spirit of Tequila celebrates the tradition, culture, and myth of this iconic drink. Joel Salcido traveled across the state of Jalisco capturing images of distilleries and artisanal tequileras, including blue agave fields at sunset, the agave's pineapple-like centers (piñas), elegantly shadowed barrel rooms (añejos), and, of course, the agave farmers themselves.

Nearly ninety photographs, taken with a medium format camera—some in full-color, some in duotone—reveal not only the tequila making process but also the region’s traditions of culture and religion. Haunting and beautiful, a church spire is juxtaposed with a firework celebration in honor of the Virgen de Guadalupe. A Mexican charro rides through the streets of Arandas. Near Atotonilco, a horse pulls a traditional plow through the fields to irrigate. Exploring the rooms and techniques hidden in the distilleries of legendary tequilas Herradura, Sauza, Jose Cuervo, Don Julio, and others, The Spirit of Tequila celebrates a craft that is rooted deep in the culture of Mexico.

Helen Kleberg Groves

Bob and Helen Kleberg of King Ranch

$45.00

King Ranch. The name is embroidered in the tapestry of Texas, rising from the sunbaked coastal plains in the infancy of the state itself. King Ranch is the inspiration of legends and speculation, tradition and history. Rawhide-tough through drought, Indian attacks, Civil War, and the Great Depression, among other trials, King Ranch is the star of Texas.

Now the memoirs of Helen King Kleberg Alexander-Groves, the only child of Bob and Helen Kleberg, give a personal glimpse of life on the storied ranch of the Kings and the Klebergs. This intimate and compelling book chronicles not only the history of the ranch but also the life of Bob and Helen Kleberg, the first family of cattle ranching. From the Santa Gertrudis, the first cattle breed developed in America and the first breed recognized worldwide in over a century, to the Triple Crown–winning Thoroughbred Assault, Bob and Helen Kleberg changed the ranching industry. The memoirs of “Helenita” open the door to the romance of Southwest cattle ranching, as well as the grit, glory, and inner workings of King Ranch in Texas and its ranches around the world.

With over 200 photographs, some by Toni Frissell and many by her close friend and fellow photographer Helen Kleberg herself, this lavishly illustrated portrait includes accounts of the Klebergs’ famous hospitality, extended not only to the celebrities who were entertained regularly but also to the Kineños, the loyal ranch hands first brought to King Ranch by Captain King. Hemingwayesque photos depict hunting adventures in the Texas brush country—for which the ranch is still famous.

Bob and Helen Kleberg of King Ranch is a view from the center of the King Ranch legacy, perpetuated now for some 150 years. Bob and Helen Kleberg of King Ranch is a requisite addition to the library of any ranching, history, or Texana aficionado.

Daniel M. Olsen

Ranch Gates of the Southwest

$45.00

In Ranch Gates of the Southwest, Daniel Olsen and Henk van Assen present more than 100 full-color photographs of ranch gates taken across Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. From rugged and functional to stylized and adorned, ranches with names such as F. V. Cuahope Ranch, High Lonesome, Felix River Ranch, and Rancho Quatro Hermanas reveal cultural history, landscape features, and individualism through language and design. Lucy R. Lippard’s introduction offers historical and cultural context of ranches and their gates. Landscape architecture professor Kenneth I. Helphand explains the environmental history of ranches from land appropriation and naming to the impact of gates on the landscape. In their own essays, Olsen and van Assen tell the behind-the-scenes story of making the book and describe type design and language from their perspectives as designers and photographers. Ranch Gates of the Southwestis both a sumptuous documentary record and a tribute to a quintessentially American symbol.

Mary A. Maverick

Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick

$24.95

Re-edited, reformatted, thoroughly annotated, with new illustrations and, at last, an index, these memoirs are in a hardcover edition worthy of this classic, first published in 1921. As the young wife of Samuel A. Maverick, a Yale-educated landholder whose name has entered the English language, Mary Adams Maverick came to Texas less than two years after the fall of the Alamo. She records her unique eyewitness views of the tumultuous decades that followed, as she raises a family in the shadow of Indian raids, invasions and deadly diseases.

Lewis F. Fisher

No Cause of Offence

$24.95

Despite the image of a Solid South,” many southerners stayed loyal to the Union during the Civil War and coexisted uneasily with their Confederate neighbors. In Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, the Lewises gave no cause of offense” but did not hide their beliefs, made clear to Stonewall Jackson as he made their home his headquarters. One family member, a delegate who refused to sign the Secession Ordinance, ran an iron furnace that kept dozens of Loyalists out of the Confederate Army.

W. S. Merwin

Unchopping a Tree

$14.95

There’s no mystery to chopping down a tree. But how do you put back together a tree that’s been felled? Mystical instructions are required, and that’s what W. S. Merwin provides in his prose piece Unchopping a Tree,” appearing for the first time in a self-contained volume. Written with a poet’s grace, an ecologist’s insights, and a Buddhist’s reverence for life, this elegant work describes the difficult, sacred job of reconstructing a tree. Step by step, page by page, with Merwin’s humble authority, secrets are revealed, and the destroyed tree rises from the forest floor. Unchopping a Tree opens with simplicity and grace: Start with the leaves, the small twigs, and the nest that have been shaken, ripped, or broken off by the fall; these must be gathered and attached once again to their respective places.” W. S. Merwin, like many conservationists, is quick to say: When we destroy the so-called natural world around us we’re simply destroying ourselves. And I think it’s irreversible.” Thus the tree takes on a scale that begs the reader’s compassion, and one tree is a parable for the restoration of all nature.

Lewis F. Fisher

San Antonio's Spanish Missions

$39.95

This elegant coffee-table volume displays more than 100 color photographs by architectural photographer Mike Osborne, providing a distinctive contemporary portrait of the five mission complexes, now partly restored, partly still in ruins. One, better known as the Alamo, is a memorial to its defenders in 1836. The four others comprise San Antonio Missions National Historical Park. Each section begins with a dramatic 19th-century image. Osborne’s color photographs range from interior views of the Alamo to a mariachi mass at San José to a composite of rifle portholes in Espada’s bastion, with other dramatic views of the missions and related landmarks in between.

Harry J. Shafer

Painters in Prehistory

$55.00

Painters in Prehistory is a revised update of the book Ancient Texans: Rock Art and Lifeways along the Lower Pecos, edited by Harry Shafer with photographs by Jim Zintgraff, and published by the Witte Museum, in conjunction with a permanent exhibition in 1986. The Witte Museum is known for its focus on natural history, science, and the history and culture of South Texas, and the scholarly and artistic pieces collected in the book are the result of years of research and dedication to the story of the ancient canyon dwellers along the Rio Grande.

The remnants of prehistoric Lower Pecos people reveal lifeways unlike those anywhere else in the world. The people who inhabited the land in what is now Texas left a unique series of narratives in their shelters, including art on rock walls, pictographs, and organic residue and trash. These narratives are tantalizing in their noveltythey provide information about almost 12,000 years of existence, the last 7,000 of which are still astoundingly evident.

This updated edition features significant research by new scholars who have deepened the understanding of rock art interpretation, scientific analysis of artifacts and coprolites, and the lifeways of prehistoric Lower Pecos people. Contributors include Megan Biesele, Stephen L. Black, Carolyn E. Boyd, Vaughn M. Bryant Jr., J. Phil Dering, Peter T. Furst, Margaret Greco, Thomas R. Hester, Elton R. Prewitt, Roberta McGregor, Shirley Boteler Mock, and Marvin W. Rowe.

San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio

$39.95

On Sept. 27, 1865, the San Antonio Express-News made its debut. And from the beginning, there was plenty to write about. The Civil War had just concluded, and it was only twenty-nine years after the fall of the Alamo. The Chisholm Trail, the high road of the Cattle Kingdom, began in San Antonio, which was the largest and among the most diverse cities in Texas. Spanish, German, and English were commonly spoken. The politics were lively and sometimes divisive, as the city was full of Unionist sympathizers in a state that was an anchor of the Confederacy. Today, 150 years later, San Antonio is America’s fastest-growing big city and still making history. San Antonio is a richly illustrated compilation of more than 150 years of coverage on the history and culture of the city, as told in the pages of the San Antonio Express-News. From local politics to news stories on the military, energy, water use, the border and immigration that reverberate nationally and internationally, to the recent naming of San Antonio’s five Spanish missions as a World Heritage site, the city has always been a place where the American identity is forged. This book tracks the city's past from 1865 until 2015 and is full of evocative pictures and compelling accounts culled from the Express-News archives.

The collection celebrates companies that shaped the city, such as Frost Bank, which began extending credit in 1867; the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, founders in 1869 of what is now the Christus Santa Rosa Health System and subsequently their namesake university; and H-E-B grocery. This is not a standard civic history or a straightforward march through the decades. Loosely organized by theme, the stories in the collection are often quite often surprising, just like San Antonio itself. As anyone who has spent time in the city knows, this is a place with a soul.

Rebecca Solnit

The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness

$25.95

The incomparable Rebecca Solnit,author of more than a dozen acclaimed books of nonfiction, brings the same dazzling writing to the twenty-nine essays in The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness. As the title suggests, the territory of Solnit’s concerns is vast, and in her signature alchemical style she combines commentary on history, justice, war and peace, and explorations of place, art, and community, all while writing with the lyricism of a poet to achieve incandescence and wisdom. Gathered here are celebrated iconic essays along with little-known pieces that create a powerful survey of the world we live in. In its encyclopedic reach and its generous compassion, Solnit’s collection charts a way through the thickets of our complex social and political worlds. Like the women who've pioneered before herSontag, Didion, and Dillardher essays are a beacon.

The Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness

Barry Lopez

Outside

$18.95

The six stories in Outside showcase Barry Lopez’s majestic talent as a fiction writer. Lopez writes in spare prose, but his narratives resonate with an uncanny power. With a reverence for our exterior and interior landscapes, these stories offer profound insight into the relationships between humans and animals, creativity and beauty, and, ultimately, life and death. Again and again, whether describing a Navajo rug possessing the essence of its maker, a boy who can change places with his half-coyote dog (named Leaves), or a teacher whose presence brings into question the meaning of friendship, Lopez portrays elemental and sacred places. His prose transcends its simplicity to enter spaces of wonder and mystery. As James Perrin Warren says in his compelling introduction, Lopez’s narrators bear witness to extraordinary patterns and purposes . . . The storyteller is vital to the community and to a healthy landscape, but the vital relationship is also reciprocal. . . . We participate, along with Lopez, in the long history of storytelling. We become part of the atmosphere in which wisdom shows itself.”

Linda Pace

Dreaming Red

$29.95

Since its founding in 1993 by the late Pace Foods heiress Linda Pace, Artpace has become one of the premiere foundations for contemporary art. An artist residency program based in San Antonio, Texas, Artpace's goal is to give artists time and space to imagine new ways to work. Each year, nine artists (three from Texas, three from other areas of the United States, and three from abroad) are invited to the foundation to create new work. Selected by guest curators like Robert Storr and Okwui Enwezor, the artists who have undertaken residencies is impressive, prescient, and diverse, including Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Annette Messager, Tracey Moffatt, Xu Bing, Nancy Rubins, Cornelia Parker, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Glenn Ligon, Kendell Geers, Carolee Schneemann, Mona Hatoum, Isaac Julien, Arturo Herrera, and Christian Jankowski.

Dreaming Red includes images of all the works created at Artpace since its inception; an essay by art historian Eleanor Heartney; short essays on selected artists by guest curators, including Cuauhtémoc Medina, Lynne Cooke, Chrissie Iles, and Judith Russi Kirshner; and a lengthy essay on the personal history of the foundation and its founder.