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Guide to the Seasons in an Urban Wildland

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Ducks in January . . . bats in March . . . rain lilies in April . . . meteors in August . . . the predictable appearance of fauna and flora allows humans to experience the natural cycles in the environment, no matter how urban the setting. In Nature Watch Austin, avid amateur naturalists Lynne and Jim Weber provide an introduction and guide to some of the natural events that define the seasons in the city of Austin and its surrounding areas.Month-by-month, each chapter profiles the plants, animals, insects, and other natural phenomena that are particularly noteworthy at that time of year. The authors also provide suggestions on how and where to see themfrom driving to a nearby water treatment plant to lounging by the backyard bird feeder. Opening with a chart on weather, temperature, and daylight hours, each months chapter features photographs and original illustrations by the authors. A list of references includes area field guides and more in-depth sources of information by subject.No matter how clogged with traffic and entombed in concrete, even large cities harbor wildlife and support a community of plants, either in tucked-away places both familiar and unexpected, or in parks and preserves dedicated to city dwellers in search of open space. Learning the annual rhythms of urban wildland encourages everyone to be in tune with nature and welcome the opportunities to enjoy it, year after year.

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A Historic Ship Completes Its Final Voyage

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A hundred and fifty years ago, naval warfare entered a new phase with the introduction of ironclad vessels. On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor, prototype of this new class of warships, fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia at Hampton Roads, Virginia, after the Virginia had ravaged the Union fleet blockading the James River, sinking larger, seemingly more powerful wooden warships in a potent demonstration of the power of an armored, heavily-gunned, steam-powered warship.
In the worlds first clash between iron-armored warships, Monitor and Virginia exchanged gunfire at close range for nearly four hours. Neither inflicted serious damage on the other. While a technical stalemate, the events at Hampton Roads changed naval warfare forever. In the United States and abroad, iron and steam would soon replace wood and sail for warship construction. Less than nine months later, the now-famous Monitor was under tow, heading south to Beaufort, North Carolina, when she sank in heavy seas, with substantial loss of life.
Monitor was a total and irretrievable loss; even the location of her final resting place became a mystery. Not until 1973 was the inverted hull located, and in 1974 excavation of the wreck began, under the auspices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in partnership with the US Navy. The decision to place the Monitor in a protected zonea national marine sanctuarymarked another historic first for the vessel. The story of this decision, the raising of the turret, and the subsequent management of the historic resource adds another layer of history to the Monitors fascinating story.
Sidebars in the book flesh out details and add anecdotal color to the story of Monitor and of the efforts to preserve and interpret the site. Lavish illustrations (photographs, site drawings, and artifact sketches) complement the informative and highly readable account by the archaeologist who planned and directed the major expeditions that resulted in recovery of many of the Monitors most significant objects, as well as the remains of two Union soldiers who were only recently interred in Arlington National Cemetery, more than 150 years after their deaths.

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The Movement of Rural African Americans to Houston, 1900-1941

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The twentieth century has seen two great waves of African American migration from rural areas into the city, changing not only the countrys demographics but also black culture. In her thorough study of migration to Houston, Bernadette Pruitt portrays the move from rural to urban homes in Jim Crow Houston as a form of black activism and resistance to racism.Between 1900 and 1950 nearly fifty thousand blacks left their rural communities and small towns in Texas and Louisiana for Houston. Jim Crow proscription, disfranchisement, acts of violence and brutality, and rural poverty pushed them from their homes; the lure of social advancement and prosperity based on urban-industrial development drew them. Houstons close proximity to basic minerals, innovations in transportation, increased trade, augmented economic revenue, and industrial development prompted white families, commercial businesses, and industries near the Houston Ship Channel to recruit blacks and other immigrants to the city as domestic laborers and wage earners.Using census data, manuscript collections, government records, and oral history interviews, Pruitt details who the migrants were, why they embarked on their journeys to Houston, the migration networks on which they relied, the jobs they held, the neighborhoods into which they settled, the culture and institutions they transplanted into the city, and the communities and people they transformed in Houston.

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In Coffins of the Brave: Lake Shipwrecks of the War of 1812, archaeologist Kevin J. Crisman and his fellow contributors examine sixteen different examples of 1812-era naval and commercial shipbuilding. They range from four small prewar vessels to four 16- or 20-gun brigs, three warships of much greater size, a steamboat hull converted into an armed schooner, two gunboats, and two postwar schooners. Despite their differing degrees of preservation and archaeological study, each vessel reveals something about how its creators sought the best balance of strength, durability, capacity, stability, speed, weatherliness, and seaworthiness for the anticipated naval struggle on the lakes along the US-Canadian border.The underwater archaeology reported here has guided a new approach to understanding the events of 181215, one that blends the evidence in contemporary documents and images with a wealth of details derived from objects lost, discarded, and otherwise left behind.This heavily illustrated volume balances scholarly findings with lively writing, interjecting the adventure of working on shipwrecks and archaeological finds into the investigation and interpretation of a war that continues to attract interest two centuries after it was fought.

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Arthur B. Cohn, Kevin J. Crisman, Walter Rybka, Kenneth Cassavoy, Christopher R. Sabick, LeeAnne Gordon, Sara Hoskins, Erich Heinold, Jonathan Moore, Christopher Amer, Eric Emery, Erika Washburn, Kevin J. Crisman

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Hundreds of novels have been written about young men coming of age in war. And millions of young men have, in fact, come of age in combat. This is the story of one of them, as told by his daughter, based on the daily letters he wrote to his family in 1944 and 1945.

After ten months of stateside training, nineteen-year-old Joe Ted (Bud) Miller shipped out from New York harbor in November 1944 and served with the 63rd Infantry in France and Germany. Although he fought with his unit at the Colmar Pocket and earned a Bronze Star for his role in pushing through the Siegfried Line, his letters focus less on the details of battle than on the many aspects of his life in the military: food, PX, movies, biographies of friends and platoon-mates, training activities, travelogues, and the behavior (good and bad) of officers. Buds journalistic skills show in his letters and fill his reports with a wealth of objective detail, as well as articulate reflections on his feelings about his experiences.

Katherine I. Miller, a communication scholar, brings to her fathers letterswhich form the centerpiece of the bookher scholarly training in analyzing issues such as the development of masculinity in historical context, the formation of adult identity, and the psychological effects of war. Further insights gained from additional personal and family archives, interviews with surviving family members, official paperwork, the unit history of the 63rd Infantry Division (254th Regiment), unit newspapers, pictorial histories, maps, and accounts by other unit members aided her in crafting this interpretive biography. The book also serves as a window onto more general questions of how individuals navigate complicated turning points thrown at them by external events and internal struggles as they move from youth to adulthood.

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The Concho Valley, named from the abundant mussel shells found in its principal river by seventeenth-century Spanish explorers, occupies a transitional position between the Chihuahuan Desert to the west and the Balcones Canyonlands to the east. As veteran field biologist and educator Terry C. Maxwell notes, the region has experienced wide-ranging changes in the makeup of its vertebrate populations, especially in the decades since farming and ranching began here in earnest, in the mid- to late 1800s.In Wildlife of the Concho Valley, Maxwell provides the first comprehensive summary of the animal life in this undercovered region of the state, which also happens to be his home territory. Uniquely qualified after a lifetime of study and field work, Maxwell places the region in its biogeographic context and then charts the history of vertebrate investigation there from the seventeenth century to the present. Following this ecological and historical perspective are accounts of all the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals reliably known by zoologists and naturalists to have occurred in the Concho Valley over the past 150 years. The species accounts include Latin and English names; distribution and abundance status; remarks, where the author elaborates on habitat preference, behavior, and other aspects of natural history; specimens reported; and subspecies and synonyms.This important work of traditional natural history is liberally illustrated with Maxwells own drawings, photographs, and maps. An invaluable reference, Wildlife of the Concho Valley is a major contribution from one of the states most respected biologists and teachers.

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What elements of American political and rhetorical culture block the imaginingand thus, the electingof a woman as president? Examining both major-party and third-party campaigns by women, including the 2008 campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin, the authors of Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture identify the factors that limit electoral possibilities for women.Pundits have been predicting womens political ascendency for years. And yet, although the 2008 presidential campaign featured Hillary Clinton as an early frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and Sarah Palin as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee, no woman has yet held either of the top two offices. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but the authors assert that the question certainly encompasses more than the shortcomings of women candidates or the demands of the particular political moment. Instead, the authors identify a pernicious backlash against women presidential candidatesone that is expressed in both political and popular culture.In Woman President: Confronting Postfeminist Political Culture, Kristina Horn Sheeler and Karrin Vasby Anderson provide a discussion of US presidentiality as a unique rhetorical role. Within that framework, they review womens historical and contemporary presidential bids, placing special emphasis on the 2008 campaign. They also consider how presidentiality is framed in candidate oratory, campaign journalism, film and television, digital media, and political parody.

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Kristina Horn Sheeler, Karrin Vasby Anderson

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The Dawn of the Reagan-Bush Administration

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When Things Went Right is a colorful and insightful portrait of Washington at the beginning of the Reagan-Bush era (November 1980March 1983) as lived and recorded by an insider in his personal journal.
Chase Untermeyer was a Texas state legislator and former journalist when called to national service by his friend and mentor George H. W. Bush after the 1980 election. In his journal entries and subsequent annotations he describes how the Reagan Administration began to grapple with the major national and international challenges it inherited.
He also reveals specifically how thenVice President Bush, Reagans former rival, became a valued participant in this effort, in the process solidifying the vice presidency as a significant position in modern American government.
As executive assistant to the Vice President, Untermeyer saw how Bush, Reagan, and their top associates began asserting conservative principles on domestic, political, and foreign affairs. He captured in his journal not just the events of each day but also the atmosphere, the key personalities, and the witty, trenchant, and revealing things they said.
The books long-lasting value will be in providing historians of the period with telling anecdotes and quotations that were caught and preserved with a reporters eye and ear. In addition to perceptive portraits of Reagan and Bush, When Things Went Right also features numerous cameo appearances by such diverse characters as Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, Clare Boothe Luce, and jazz great Lionel Hampton.
For those who look back on the presidencies of Reagan and Bush with nostalgia and respect, and also for those interested in the inner workings of the administration during its earliest days, this is the story of the time when things went right.

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In a dazzling tribute to the Texas coast, conservationist and lawyer Jim Blackburn has teamed with photographer Jim Olive to give us the most intimate and important portrait yet of Texas bays and of those who work for their wise use and preservation. While giving life and sustenance to plants, animals, and people, the bays and estuaries of Texas have other stories to tellabout freshwater inflows, deep port construction, disappearing oyster beds, beach resorts, industrial pollution, and more. At a certain point, each story brings opposing forces into the courtroom for vigorous debates on the future of some of our most valuable and irreplaceable resources.

The Book of Texas Bays is a personal account of legal battles won and lost, but it is also a fine work of natural history by someone who has a deep spiritual connection to the Texas coast and all it has to offer. Jim Olives stunning photographs present us with a dramatic perspective of our relationship with the Gulf and remind us of both the grandness and the fragility of our coastal treasures.

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We hear roses are hard to grow. . . . We hear they require constant care and treatment. . . . Depending on where we live, we hear they cant stand the heat . . . the cold . . . the humidity . . . the arid air. The list of reasons not to grow roses is long, yet we persevere.from the first chapterMost gardeners have tried, with more or less success, to grow roses. For a plant that has been in cultivation all over the world for millennia, roses have an oddly persistent reputation for being finicky and disease-prone, difficult to establish, and in need of constant tending.And then you see a sprawling shrub, loaded with yellow blossoms, spilling carelessly over a church dumpster or a climbing mass of red roses clambering over a chain link fence. You wonder why growing a rose bush in your backyard should be so intimidating.Now, veteran gardener and author Judy Barrett tackles the persistent rumors and illusions that inhibit many of us from trying our hand at cultivating roses. She answers the most common questions (how to water, prune, train, and choose the best locations, among others) and then points readers in the direction of the many good choices to be had among both antique and old roses (the Bourbons and China roses, for example) and some newer varieties (hybrid teas, miniatures, and others). She also gives advice about cold-hardy roses and offers tips for ensuring success with heat- and drought-tolerant Earth-Kind roses.Illustrated with gorgeous photographs throughout, Yes, You Can Grow Roses will convince you that these beautiful plants are not nearly as fussy, frail, and persnickety as you thought. By following Barretts advice, youll enjoy season after season of durable, aromatic beauty in your garden.

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The U.S. Decision to Conduct Unrestricted Submarine Warfare

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. . . until now how the Navy managed to instantaneously move from the overt legal restrictions of the naval arms treaties that bound submarines to the cruiser rules of the eighteenth century to a declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor has never been explained. Lieutenant Holwitt has dissected this process and has created a compelling story of who did what, when, and to whom.The Submarine Review
Execute against Japan should be required reading for naval officers (especially in submarine wardrooms), as well as for anyone interested in history, policy, or international law.Adm. James P. Wisecup, President, US Naval War College (for Naval War College Review)
Although the policy of unrestricted air and submarine warfare proved critical to the Pacific wars course, this splendid work is the first comprehensive account of its originsillustrating that historians have by no means exhausted questions about this conflict.World War II Magazine
US Navy submarine officer Joel Ira Holwitt has performed an impressive feat with this book. . . . Holwitt is to be commended for not shying away from moral judgments . . . This is a superb book that fully explains how the United States came to adopt a strategy regarded by many as illegal and tantamount to terror.Military Review

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Think of Doug Welshs Texas Garden Almanac as a giant monthly calendar for the entire statea practical, information-packed, month-by-month guide for gardeners and yardeners. This book provides everything you need to know about flowers and garden design; trees, shrubs, and vines; lawns; vegetable, herb, and fruit gardening; and soil, mulch, water, pests, and plant care. It will help you to create beautiful, productive, healthy gardens and have fun doing it.

Writer, educator, and broadcaster Doug Welsh gives a wealth of practical gardening advice in this book. Encouraging us to think like a plant, Welsh holds pruning school in February, conducts a lawn clinic in April, builds a perennial garden in September, and shows us how to grow fresh vegetables for Thanksgiving. Yet this barely scratches the surface of all that is offered in this comprehensive, fun-to-use guide. With colorful and instructive illustrations and helpful information boxes, plant lists, charts, sidebars, and tips, the book is written in the engaging, conversational style that anyone who has listened to Welshs radio show will recognize.

Whether your passion is roses or green beans, wildflowers or trees, reading this book is like having a personal garden consultant and friend at your side. Doug Welshs Texas Garden Almanac will inspire you throughout the year and make you more eager than ever to get out into your garden.

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Interpreting Lithic Assemblage Variability in Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Beringia

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Who were the first people who came to the land bridge joining northeastern Asia to Alaska and the northwest of North America? Where did they come from? How did they organize technology, especially in the context of settlement behavior?  During the Pleistocene era, the people now known as Beringians dispersed across the varied landscapes of late-glacial northeast Asia and northwest North America. The twenty chapters gathered in this volume explore, in addition to the questions posed above, how Beringians adapted in response to climate and environmental changes. They share a focus on the significance of the modern-human inhabitants of the region. By examining and analyzing lithic artifacts, geoarchaeological evidence, zooarchaeological data, and archaeological features, these studies offer important interpretations of the variability to be found in the early material culture the first Beringians. The scholars contributing to this work consider the region from Lake Baikal in the west to southern British Columbia in the east. Through a technological-organization approach, this volume permits investigation of the evolutionary process of adaptation as well as the historical processes of migration and cultural transmission. The result is a closer understanding of how humans adapted to the diverse and unique conditions of the late Pleistocene.

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Patricia Bernice Young, Brian T. Wygal, David R. Yesner, Norman A. Easton, Robert E. Ackerman, Jacob Baus, Jeffery A. Behm, John P. Cook, Yan Axel Gomez Coutouly, Barbara A. Crass, Kristine J. Crossen, E. James Dixon, Don E. Dumond, Daryl Fedje, Kelly E. Graf, John F. Hoffecker, Charles E. Holmes, E. M. Ineshin, Brant L. Kedrowski, Glen R. MacKay, Quentin Mackie, Duncan McLaren, Ben A Potter, Jeff Rasic, Joshua D. Reuther, Peter Schnurr, Sergei B. Slobodin, Natalia S. Slobodina, Nicole Smith, Robert J. Speakman, Karisa Terry, A. V. Teten'kin, Sergey A. Vasil'ev, Ian Buvit, Ted Goebel

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America had a secret weapon, writes Steve Call of the period immediately following September 11, 2001, as planners contemplated the invasion of Afghanistan. This weapon consisted of small teams of Special Forces operatives trained in close air support (CAS) who, in cooperation with the loose federation of Afghan rebels opposed to the Taliban regime, soon began achieving impressiveand unexpectedmilitary victories over Taliban forces and the al-Qaeda terrorists they had sponsored. The astounding success of CAS tactics coupled with ground operations in Afghanistan soon drew the attention of military decision makers and would eventually factor into the planning for another campaign: Operation Iraqi Freedom.

But who, exactly, are these air power experts and what is the function of the TACPs (Tactical Air Control Parties) in which they operate? Danger Close provides a fascinating look at a dedicated, courageous, innovative, and often misunderstood and misused group of military professionals.

Drawing on the gripping first-hand accounts of their battlefield experiences, Steve Call allows the TACPs to speak for themselves. He accompanies their narratives with informed analysis of the development of CAS strategy, including potentially controversial aspects of the interservice rivalries between the air force and the army which have at times complicated and even obstructed the optimal employment of TACP assets. Danger Close makes clear, however, that the systematic coordination of air power and ground forces played an invaluable supporting role in the initial military victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq. This first-ever examination of the intense, life-and-death world of the close air support specialist will introduce readers to a crucial but little-known aspect of contemporary warfare and add a needed chapter in American military history studies.

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In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand. Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainability. INSIDE THIS BOOK:Introduction: the Living Waters of TexasKen KramerWhere the First Raindrop FallsDavid K. LangfordSpringing to Life: Keeping the Waters FlowingDianne WassenichHooked on RiversMyron J. HessFalling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East TexasJanice BezansonOn the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban EnvironmentMary Ellen WhitworthA Taste of the MarshSusan Raleigh KaderkaBays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?Ben F. Vaughan IIIRio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the DesertMary E. KellyLeaving a Water Legacy for TexasAnn Thomas HamiltonTexas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the FlowKen Kramer  

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With more than 400 photographs, extensive interviews with the descendants of pioneer Jewish Texan families, and reproductions of rare historical documents, Natalie Ornishs Pioneer Jewish Texans quickly became a classic following its original release in 1989.This new Texas A&M University Press edition presents Ornishs meticulous research and her fascinating historical vignettes for a new generation of readers and historians. She chronicles Jewish buccaneers with Jean Lafitte at Galveston; she tells of Jewish patriots who fought at the Alamo and at virtually every major engagement in the war for Texan independence; she traces the careers of immigrants with names like Marcus, Sanger, and Gordon, who arrived on the Texas frontier with little more than the packs on their backs and went on to build great mercantile empires. Cattle barons, wildcatters, diplomats, physicians, financiers, artists, and humanitarians are among the other notable Jewish pioneers and pathfinders described in this carefully researched and exhaustively documented book.Filling a substantial void in Texana and Texas history, the Texas A&M University Press edition of Natalie Ornishs Pioneer Jewish Texans brings back into circulation this treasure trove of information on a rich and often overlooked vein of the multifaceted story of the Lone Star State.

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African Americans in South Texas History

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The history of South Texas is more racially and ethnically complex than many people realize. As a border area, South Texas has experienced some especially interesting forms of racial and ethnic intersection, influenced by the relatively small number of blacks (especially in certain counties), the function and importance of the South Texas cattle trade, proximity to Mexico, and the history of anti-black violence. The essays in African Americans in South Texas History give insight into this fascinating history.The articles in this volume, written over a span of almost three decades, were chosen for their readability, scholarship, and general interest.Contributors:Jennifer BorrerEdward ByerlyJudith Kaaz DoyleRob FinkRobert A. GoldbergKenneth Wayne HowellLarry P. KnightRebecca A. KosaryDavid LouzonSarah R. MasseyJeanette Nyda Mendelssohn PasstyJanice L. Sumler-EdmondCary D. WintzRue Wood" . . . a valuable addition to the literature chronicling the black experience in the land of the Lone Star. While previous studies have concentrated on regions most reflective of Dixie origins, this collection examines the tri-ethnic area of Texas adjoining Mexico wherein cotton was scarce and cattle plentiful. Glasrud has assembled an excellent group of essays from which readers will learn much."-L. Patrick Hughes, professor of history, Austin Community College

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Jeanette Nyda Passty, Cary D. Wintz, Larry P. Knight, Kenneth W. Howell, Rebecca Kosary, Sara R. Massey, Rue Wood, Janice L. Sumler-Edmond, Jennifer Borrer, Edward Byerly, Judith Kaaz Doyle, Robert C. Fink, David Louzon, Robert A. Goldberg, Bruce A. Glasrud

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A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier

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Strategically located at the western edge of the Atlantic World, the French post of Natchitoches thrived during the eighteenth century as a trade hub between the well-supplied settlers and the isolated Spaniards and Indians of Texas. Its critical economic and diplomatic role made it the most important community on the Louisiana-Texas frontier during the colonial era.

Despite the communitys critical role under French and then Spanish rule, Colonial Natchitoches is the first thorough study of its society and economy. Founded in 1714, four years before New Orleans, Natchitoches developed a creole (American-born of French descent) society that dominated the Louisiana-Texas frontier.

H. Sophie Burton and F. Todd Smith carefully demonstrate not only the persistence of this creole dominance but also how it was maintained. They examine, as well, the other ethnic cultures present in the town and relations with Indians in the surrounding area.

Through statistical analyses of birth and baptismal records, census figures, and appropriate French and Spanish archives, Burton and Smith reach surprising conclusions about the nature of society and commerce in colonial Natchitoches.

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Clayton Wheat Williams and the Transformation of the Trans-Pecos

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Clayton Wheat WilliamsWest Texas oilman, rancher, civic leader, veteran of the Great War, and avocational historianwas a risk taker, who both reflected and molded the history of his region. His life spanned a dynamic period in Texas history when automobiles replaced horse-drawn wagons, electricity replaced steam power in the oilfields, and barren and virtually worthless ranch land became valuable for the oil and gas under its surface.

The setting for Williamss story, like that of his father before him, is Fort Stockton in the rugged Trans-Pecos region of Texas. As a youngster accompanying his father on surveying trips through the land, and subsequently as a cadet at Texas A&M, he developed a toughness that served him well in France and Flanders. His letters home provide an unusually nuanced picture of what life was like for an American officer in Europe during the Great War.

After the war, he returned home, where he taught himself petroleum geologyso effectively that he picked the site of what would become in 1928 the deepest producing oil well in the world. With his brother, he mapped the structure of what later became the Fort Stockton oil and gas field, and he went on to hammer out a successful career in the boom and bust cycles of the West Texas oil industry.

On the civic front, Williams served for fourteen years as a Pecos County commissioner, and he held offices in a number of social and civic organizations. Imbued with a deep love for the history of his region, he wrote (with the editorial help of historian Ernest Wallace at Texas Tech University) Texas Last Frontier: Fort Stockton and the Trans-Pecos, 18611895, published by Texas A&M University Press in 1982. Nonetheless, by some of his neighbors he may be best remembered for his role in drying up the towns famous Comanche Springs by pumping water feeding the springs aquifer to irrigate his and others farms west of town.

Williams left behind a treasure trove of letters, personal papers and writings, and interviews with his family, helping document in rich detail the history of an unforgiving land as well as what life was like during a pivotal period of American history. These materials, which form the core of the present manuscript, reveal a life that made a difference in the economy and history of the region and the nation at large.

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The Songwriting Legacy of Townes Van Zandt

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The writer of such influential songs as Pancho and Lefty, To Lives to Fly, If I Needed You, and For the Sake of the Song, Townes Van Zandt exerted an influence on at least two generations of Texas musicians that belies his relatively brief, deeply troubled life. Indeed, Van Zandt has influenced millions worldwide in the years since his death, and his impact is growing rapidly. Respected singer/songwriter John Gorka speaks for many when he says, Pancho and Lefty changedit unchainedmy idea of what a song could be. In this tightly woven, intelligently written book, Brian T. Atkinson interviews both well-known musicians and up-and-coming artists to reveal, in the performers own words, how their creative careers have been shaped by the life and work of Townes Van Zandt. Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Rodney Crowell, Lucinda Williams, and Lyle Lovett are just a few of the established musicians who share their impressions of the breathtakingly beautiful tunes and lyrics he created, along with their humorous, poignant, painful, and indelible memories of witnessing Van Zandts rise and fall. Atkinson balances the reminiscences of seasoned veterans with the observations of relative newcomers to the international music scene, such as Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Josh Ritter, and Scott Avett (the Avett Brothers), presenting a nuanced view of Van Zandts singular body of work, his reckless lifestyle, and his long-lasting influence. Forewords by Cowboy Jack Clement and longtime Van Zandt manager and friend Harold F. Eggers Jr. open the book, and each chapter begins with an introduction in which Atkinson provides context and background, linking each interviewee to Van Zandts legacy. Historians, students, and fans of all music from country and folk to rock and grunge will find new insights and recall familiar pleasures as they read Ill Be Here in the Morning: The Songwriting Legacy of Townes Van Zandt.

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Brian T. Atkinson, "Cowboy" Jack Clements, Harold F. Eggers