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After two decades of searching for La Salles lost ship La Belle, Texas Historical Commission (THC) divers in 1995 located a shipwreck containing historic artifacts of European origin in the silty bottom of Matagorda Bay, off the coast of Texas. The first cannon lifted from the waters bore late seventeenth-century French insignias. The ill-fated La Belle had been found.Under the direction of then-THC Archeology Division Director James Bruseth, the THC conducted a full excavation of the water-logged La Belle. The conservation was subsequently completed at Texas A&M Universitys Conservation Research Laboratory, resulting in preservation of more than one million artifacts from the wreck.An official naval vessel granted to La Salle by the king of France in 1684, La Belle is still considered a sovereign naval vessel belonging to the French government under international maritime law. A formal agreement negotiated by the French Republic, the Musee national de la Marine, the US Department of State, and the THC allows the ship and artifacts to remain in Texas permanently and to be housed in an exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin, opening October 2014. This richly illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibit.

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Bullock Texas State History Museum, Jan Felts Bullock, Mark Wolfe, David Denney, Victoria Ramirez, James E. Bruseth

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Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones

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Offering a field-tested analytic method for identifying faunal remains, along with helpful references, images, and examples of the most commonly encountered North American species, Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual provides an important new reference for students, avocational archaeologists, and even naturalists and wildlife enthusiasts. Using the basic principles outlined here, the bones of any vertebrate animal, including humans, can be identified and their relevance to common research questions can be better understood. Because the interpretation of archaeological sites depends heavily on the analysis of surrounding materialssoils, artifacts, and floral and faunal remainsit is important that non-human remains be correctly distinguished from human bones, that distinctions between domesticated and wild or feral animals be made correctly, and that evidence of the reasons for faunal remains in the site be recognized. But the ability to identify and analyze animal bones is a skill that is not easy to learn from a traditional textbook. In Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones, veteran archaeologist and educator April Beisaw guides readers through the stages of identification and analysis with sample images and data, also illustrating how specialists make analytical decisions that allow for the identification of the smallest fragments of bone. Extensive additional illustrative material, from the authors own collected assemblages and from those in the Archaeological Analytical Research Facility at Binghamton University in New York, are also available in the books online supplement. There, readers can view and interact with images to further understanding of the principles explained in the text. 

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Written for biology students, teachers, nature lovers, amateur naturalists, conservation workers, and parks and wildlife personnel, this up-to-date, easy-to-use guide describes the marine plants of the Gulf of Mexico coast. The authors photographs accompany the updated identification keys, which are also visually oriented and simple to use.Veteran botanist and educator Roy L. Lehman describes the plants in four major sections, covering the common shoreline plants, seagrasses, mangroves, and marine algae (red, brown, and green seaweeds). Each section begins with an introduction that gives an overview of the plant group and includes information on the important traits and terminology used for identification. A simple key to the family or order directs the reader to the appropriate section, where the text is arranged alphabetically by family and then by genus and species. Each genus is illustrated by high quality photographs that include a close-up of each plant and images of its reproductive structures.Marine Plants of the Texas Coast collects these unique species for the first time in a single volume. As coastal issues, such as hurricane preparedness, beach erosion, wetland mitigation, freshwater inflows, and more, remain in the forefront of public concern, this botanical reference should find a permanent place on the bookshelves of scientists, policy makers, and citizens alike.

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Martial experiences and the mythologies that surround them have profoundly affected the ways in which Americans think of themselves. Wars identify the heroes who help define national character, provide the stories for the grand narratives of belonging and sacrifice, and serve as markers for essential moments of transformation. However, only in the last several years have scholars begun using the term cultural history of American warfare to identify the study of how public discourse formulates these defining myths and narratives. This volume brings together scholarship from diverse fields in a common mission to demonstrate the usefulness and significance of studying the cultural history of American warfare.The Martial Imagination: Cultural Aspects of American Warfare canvasses the American war experience from the Revolution to the War on Terror, examining how it infuses legitimacy and conformity with an urgency that contorts ideas of citizenship, nationhood, gender, and other pliable categories. The multidisciplinary scholarship in this volume represents the varied perspectives of cultural history, American studies, literary criticism, war and society, media studies, and public culture analysis, illustrating the rich dialogues that epitomize the cultural history of American warfare.Bringing together both recognized and emerging scholars, this book is the first anthology to feature essays on this topic, comprising research from twelve authors who represent a wide range of experiences and disciplines. Their work uncovers new and surprising understandings of the American war experience that reveal the ways in which culture makers have grappled with the trauma of war, salvaged meaning from the meaningless, or advanced some ulterior agenda.

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On December 11, 1863, a US brigadier general and a Confederate artillery captain met on board the packet steamer Diligent on the Mississippi River below Vicksburg. The Confederate officer had not come on board on official business; he was a paroled prisoner of war. The brigadier general was his older brother, who had learned of the younger mans capture three weeks earlier at Confederate Fort Semmes, on the Texas coast, and had arranged to have him brought from New Orleans to Vicksburg to be given medical care at the Federal garrison.The American Civil War has rightly been called a war of brothers; Henry, Jasper, and William Maltby were three such brothers. The scene recounted above was between Jasper and William, who had not seen each other in several years since Jasper had left their birth home in Ohio, but who met frequently over the months following their reunion, their familial bond overriding their political allegiances.The three brothers lives cover the critical years of Civil War and Reconstruction, a time when Jasper devotedly served the Union cause, while Henry and William became outspoken secessionists, operating Confederate newspapers in Corpus Christi, Matamoros, and Brownsville, eventually as a thorn in the side of Reconstruction officials. Despite their own Southern sympathies, the two Confederates cherished their Yankee brother, whose bravery at Fort Donelson and Vicksburg took a heavy toll on his health and eventually cost him his life. Both Rebels named a son in honor of their hero brother.Combining detailed research in William Maltbys personal papers with contemporary accounts, military and court records, and the editorials of the two who became newspapermen, veteran scholar and educator Norman Delaney has created a vibrant story of how war can affect a family and a community.

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Bioluminescence and Henry Compton's Art of the Deep

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The cold, stygian dark of the extreme sea depths is home to some of our planets strangest creatures. Even their names evoke a science fiction adventure: dragonfishes, greeneyes, viperfishes, mirrorbellies, lanternfishes. Marine biologist Henry Hank Compton (19282005) of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Departments Rockport Marine Lab was present on some of the earliest Gulf of Mexico cruises on which these fishes were collected for the first time in Texas waters.Upon returning, Compton would retire to the darkroom he had constructed beneath a stairwell at the lab and photograph the specimens. A talented artist, Compton then painted watercolors based on his photographs. He allowed free rein to both his scientific judgment and his artistic vision as he constructed representations of how the specimens might have appeared in the crushing pressure of their alien environment.Compton dubbed the series of deep-water paintings Fire in the Sea because of the shimmering bioluminescence common to these deep-water species. Then, along with taxonomic descriptions, he drafted fanciful narratives to accompany the paintings: quirky, humorous, and sometimes cryptic stories of the fishes in their unreachable habitat.  Professor, researcher, and author David A. McKee has taken Comptons work, discovered in cardboard boxes following his death, and, along with others, provided chapters on bioluminescence, life in the deep, taxonomic arrangement, and life history information.

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David A. McKee, Henry Compton, Larry J. Hyde, Michael Barrett, Jennifer Hardell, Mark Anderson

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Some of todays most prominent experts on the American presidency offer their perspectives, commentary, and analyses in this volume of studies, commissioned by the Fulbright Institute of International Relations and the Blair Center of Southern Politics and Culture, both at the University of Arkansas.With a shared focus on Bushs decision-making style, the impact of increasing partisanship, economic issuesespecially after the 2008 financial meltdownand, of course, the cumulative impact of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the contributors link their observations and conclusions to broader political and policy-related questions. They also take the opportunity to compare the Bush presidency with that of his successor, Barack Obama, through the latter administrations experience of disappointment in the 2010 congressional elections.The debate over the Bush legacy will not soon end, and this volume does not presume to offer the definitive, final commentary. It does, however, bridge the gap between dispassionate academic commentary written essentially for scholars and the sort of informed and unbiased analysis written for a larger public audience, contributing to the public understanding of our recent national experience. Taking the Measure: The Presidency of George W. Bush contributes significantly to the beginnings of careful, systematic consideration of the George W. Bush presidency.

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The Big Bend region of Texasvariously referred to as El Despoblado (the uninhabited land), a land of contrasts, Texas last frontier, or simply as part of the Trans-Pecosenjoys a long, colorful, and eventful history, a history that began before written records were maintained. With Big Bends Ancient and Modern Past, editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Robert J. Mallouf provide a helpful compilation of articles originally published in the Journal of Big Bend Studies, reviewing the unique past of the Big Bend area from the earliest habitation to 1900. Scholars of the region investigate not only the peoples who have successively inhabited it but also the nature of the environment and the responses to that environment. As the studies in this book demonstrate, the character of the region has, to a great extent, dictated its history.The study of Big Bend history is also the study of borderlands history. Studying and researching across borders or boundaries, whether national, state, or regional, requires a focus on the factors that often both unite and divide the inhabitants. The dual nature of citizenship, of land holding, of legal procedures and remedies, of education, and of history permeate the lives and livelihoods of past and present residents of the Big Bend.

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Lonn Taylor, Bruce A. Glasrud, Robert J. Mallouf

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Much of the worlds population lives within thirty miles of a coast, and beaches are perhaps the most popular tourist destinations worldwide. The Gulf of Mexico is no exception: Millions of people make their homes nearby, and many of them spend considerable time at the beach, joined by millions more tourists and seasonal visitors.In Beaches of the Gulf Coast, Richard A. Davis Jr., a veteran coastal geologist, explores the dynamics of beach formation, providing the reader with a basic understanding of the characteristics and behavior of the beach environment and what causes it to change. He compares natural beach environments with those that have experienced human intervention, and he profiles many of the common plants and animals that grow and live on and adjacent to the beach.Following the coastline from the Florida Keys around the Gulf Coast to Varadero Beach in Cuba, Davis describes the major characteristics of beaches in each US state, with a final chapter on Mexico and Cuba. Focusing on public beaches, Davis emphasizes the special features of the beaches, indicating whether and how they are nourishedeither naturally or artificiallyand pointing out which beaches have problems and which ones are doing well.Including photographs, satellite images, charts, and maps that reveal the natural processes of beach formation and erosion, Davis showcases the beauty of some of the Gulfs best beaches, both popular and remote. Beaches of the Gulf Coast provides a broad range of basic knowledge for all who own beachfront property, who live near the beach, or who simply love the beach and want a better understanding of this special coastal environment.

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Richly illustrated with rare period photographs, Houstons Hermann Park: A Century of Community provides a vivid history of Houstons oldest and most important urban park. Author and historian Barrie Scardino Bradley sets Hermann Park in both a local and a national context as this grand park celebrates its centennial at the culmination of a remarkable twenty-year rejuvenation.
As Bradley shows, Houstons development as a major American city may be traced in the outlines of the parks history. During the early nineteenth century, Houston leaders were most interested in commercial development and connecting the city via water and rail to markets beyond its immediate area. They apparently felt no need to set aside public recreational space, nor was there any city-owned property that could be so developed.
By 1910, however, Houston leaders were well aware that almost every major American city had an urban park patterned after New Yorks Central Park. By the time the City Beautiful Movement and its overarching Progressive Movement reached the consciousness of Houstonians, Central Parks designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, had died, but his ideals had not. Local advocates of the City Beautiful Movement, like their counterparts elsewhere, hoped to utilize political and economic power to create a beautiful, spacious, and orderly city. Subsequent planning by the renowned landscape architect and planner George Kessler envisioned a park that would anchor a system of open spaces in Houston. From that groundwork, in May 1914, George Hermann publicly announced his donation of 285 acres to the City of Houston for a municipal park.
Bradley develops the events leading up to the establishment of Hermann Park, then charts how and why the park developed, including a discussion of institutions within the park such as the Houston Zoo, the Japanese Garden, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The books illustrations include plans, maps, and photographs both historic and recent that document the accomplishments of the Hermann Park Conservancy since its founding in 1992.Royalties from sales will go to the Hermann Park Conservancy for stewardship of the park on behalf of the community.

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Alice (Barrie) M. Scardino Bradley, Doreen Stoller, Stephen Fox

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Operation Lam Son 719 and Vietnamization in Laos

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In February 1971, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) launched an incursion into Laos in an attempt to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and destroy North Vietnamese Army (NVA) base areas along the border. This movement would be the first real test of Vietnamization, Pres. Richard Nixons program to turn the fighting over to South Vietnamese forces as US combat troops were withdrawn. US ground forces would support the operation from within South Vietnam and would pave the way to the border for ARVN troops, and US air support would cover the South Vietnamese forces once they entered Laos, but the South Vietnamese forces would attack on the ground alone.The operation, dubbed Lam Son 719, went very well for the first few days, but as movement became bogged down the NVA rushed reinforcements to the battle and the ARVN forces found themselves under heavy attack. US airpower wreaked havoc on the North Vietnamese troops, but the South Vietnamese never regained momentum and ultimately began to withdraw back into their own country under heavy enemy pressure.In this first in-depth study of this operation, military historian and Vietnam veteran James H. Willbanks traces the details of battle, analyzes what went wrong, and suggests insights into the difficulties currently being incurred with the training of indigenous forces.

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The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism

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In The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism, some of our most accomplished and readable historians push the origins of present-day Texas conservatism back to the decade preceding the twentieth century. They illuminate the initial factors that began moving Texas to the far right, even before the arrival of the New Deal.By demonstrating that Texas politics foreshadowed the partisan realignment of the erstwhile Solid South, the studies in this book challenge the traditional narrative that emphasizes the right-wing critique of modern America voiced by, among others, radical conservatives of the states Democratic Party, beginning in the 1930s. As the contributors show, it is impossible to understand the Jeffersonian Democrats of 1936, the Texas Regular movement of 1944, the Dixiecrat Party of 1948, the Shivercrats of the 1950s, state members of the John Birch Society, Texas members of Young Americans for Freedom, Reagan Democrats, and most recently, even, the Tea Party movement without first understanding the underlying impulses that produced their formation.

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Michael Lind, Sean Cunningham, Nancy Baker, Michael Phillips, Sam Tullock, Keith J. Volanto, George Green, Kyle G. Wilkison, David O'Donald Cullen

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Campaign rhetoric helps candidates to get elected, but its effects last well beyond the counting of the ballots; this was perhaps never truer than in Barack Obamas 2008 campaign. Did Obama create such high expectations that they actually hindered his ability to enact his agenda? Should we judge his performance by the scale of the expectations his rhetoric generated, or against some other standard? The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency grapples with these and other important questions.Barack Obamas election seemed to many to fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.s vision of the long arc of the moral universe . . . bending toward justice. And after the terrorism, war, and economic downturn of the previous decade, candidate Obamas rhetoric cast broad visions of a change in the direction of American life. In these and other ways, the election of 2008 presented an especially strong example of creating expectations that would shape the publics views of the incoming administration.  The publics high expectations, in turn, become a part of any presidents burden upon assuming office.The interdisciplinary scholars who have contributed to this volume focus their analysis upon three kinds of presidential burdens: institutional burdens (specific to the office of the presidency); contextual burdens (specific to the historical moment within which the president assumes office); and personal burdens (specific to the individual who becomes president).

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The role of public opinion in American democracy has been a central concern of scholars who frequently examine how public opinion influences policy makers and how politicians, especially presidents, try to shape public opinion. But in Speaking with the Peoples Voice: How Presidents Invoke Public Opinion, Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury asks a different question that adds an important new dimension to the study of public opinion: How do presidents rhetorically use public opinion in their speeches?In a careful analysis supported by case studies and discrete examples, Drury develops the concept of invoked public opinion to study the modern presidents use of public opinion as a rhetorical resource. He defines the term as the rhetorical representation of the beliefs and values of US citizens.Speaking with the Peoples Voice considers both the strategic and democratic value of invoked public opinion by analyzing how modern presidents argumentatively deploy references to the beliefs and values of US citizens as persuasive appeals as well as acts of political representation in their nationally televised speeches.

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Growing up near the Sabine, journalist Wes Ferguson, like most East Texans, steered clear of its murky, debris-filled waters, where alligators lived in the backwater sloughs and an occasional body was pulled from some out-of-the-way crossing. The Sabine held a reputation as a haunt for a handful of hunters and loggers, more than a few water moccasins, swarms of mosquitoes, and the occasional black bear lumbering through swamp oak and cypress knees. But when Ferguson set out to do a series of newspaper stories on the upper portion of the river, he and photographer Jacob Croft Botter were entranced by the rivers subtle beauty and the solitude they found there. They came to admire the self-described river rats who hunted, fished, and swapped stories along the muddy waterplain folk who love the Sabine as much as Hill Country vacationers love the clear waters of the Guadalupe. Determined to travel the rest of the river, Ferguson and Botter loaded their gear and launched into the stretch of river that charts the line between the states and ends at the Gulf of Mexico. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

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Wes Ferguson, Jacob Croft Botter, Andrew Sansom

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Term Limits and Executive Action in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina

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Presidents of nations with constitutionally imposed term limits are often viewed as growing weaker as they approach the end of their time in office. However, in this important new study, political scientist Genevieve M. Kehoe argues that because such chief executives are free from reelection constraint and often still enthusiastic to create a legacy by pursuing bold projects, they may accomplish significant initiatives. Kehoe has developed a concept for this which she calls Terminal Logic Behavior (TLB). Presidents and Terminal Logic Behavior: Term Limits and Executive Action in the United States, Brazil, and Argentina provides both case studies and quantitative evidence to show how US presidents of the last three decades have utilized decrees on foreign, domestic, and environment policy during their final months in office. She finds a systematic pattern of decree use consistent with the mark of TLB in a most unexpected placepresidents use of national emergency powers. In a careful comparative analysis, she also finds support for her argument in the Argentinean and Brazilian experience of the same period.

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In Working Women into the Borderlands, author Sonia Hernandez sheds light on how womens labor was shaped by US capital in the northeast region of Mexico and how womens labor activism simultaneously shaped the nature of foreign investment and relations between Mexicans and Americans. As capital investments fueled the growth of heavy industries in cities and ports such as Monterrey and Tampico, womens work complemented and strengthened their male counterparts labor in industries which were historically male-dominated.As Hernandez reveals, women laborers were expected to maintain their proper place in society, and work environments were in fact gendered and class-based. Yet, these prescribed notions of class and gender were frequently challenged as women sought to improve their livelihoods by using everyday forms of negotiation including collective organizing, labor arbitration boards, letter writing, creating unions, assuming positions of confianza (trustworthiness), and by migrating to urban centers and/or crossing into Texas.Drawing extensively on bi-national archival sources, newspapers, and published records, Working Women into the Borderlands demonstrates convincingly how womens labor contributions shaped the development of one of the most dynamic and contentious borderlands in the globe.

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The M. D. Anderson Foundation and the Texas Medical Center

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At the heart of Houston stands the Texas Medical Center. This dense complex of educational, clinical, and hospital facilities offers state-of-the-art patient care, basic science, and applied research in more than fifty medicine-related institutions. Three medical schools, four schools of nursing, and schools of dentistry, public health, and pharmacology occupy the thousand-acre campus.But none of this would exist if not for the generosity and vision of Monroe Dunaway Anderson, who, in 1936, established the foundation that bears his name. The M. D. Anderson Foundation ultimately became the driving force behind creating and shaping this leading-edge medical complex into what it is today.Enduring Legacy: The M. D. Anderson Foundation and the Texas Medical Center provides a unique perspective on the indispensable role the foundation played in the creation of the Texas Medical Center. It also offers a case study of how public and private institutions worked together to create this veritable city of health that has since become the largest medical complex in human history.Historian William Henry Kellar caps off a decade of research on institutions and characters associated with the Texas Medical Center.  He draws on oral histories, extensive archival work, and a growing secondary literature to provide an absorbing account of this leading institution of modern medicine and the philanthropy that made it possible.

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William Henry Kellar, George H. W. Bush, James A. Baker

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History and Ecology of an American Wetland

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In this comprehensive, one-volume reference, Nature Conservancy scientist Bryan P. Piazza poses five key questions:What is the Atchafalaya River Basin?Why is it important?How have its hydrology and natural habitats been managed?What is its current state?How do we ensure its survival?For more than five centuries, the Atchafalaya River Basin has captured the flow of the Mississippi River, becoming its main distributary as it reaches the Gulf of Mexico in south Louisiana. This dynamic environment, comprising almost a million acres of the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley and Mississippi River Deltaic Plain, is perhaps best known for its expansive swamp environments dominated by baldcypress, water tupelo, and alligators. But the Atchafalaya River Basin contains a wide range of habitats and one of the highest levels of biodiversity on the North American continent.    Piazza has compiled and synthesized the body of scientific knowledge for the Atchafalaya River Basin, documenting the ecological state of the basin and providing a baseline of understanding. His research provides a crucial resource for future planning. He evaluates some common themes that have emerged from the research and identifies important scientific questions that remain unexplored.

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The World War I Diary of Jose de la Luz Saenz

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I am home, safe and sound, and reviewing all these memories as if in a dream. All of this pleases me. I have been faithful to my duty. Thus Jose de la Luz Saenz ends his account of his military service in France and Germany in 1918. Published in Spanish in 1933, his annotated book of diary entries and letters recounts not only his own war experiences but also those of his fellow Mexican Americans. A skilled and dedicated teacher in South Texas before and after the war, Saenzs patriotism, his keen observation of the discrimination he and his friends faced both at home and in the field, and his unwavering dedication to the cause of equality have for years made this book a valuable resource for scholars, though only ten copies are known to exist and it has never before been available in English. Equally clear in these pages are the astute reflections and fierce pride that spurred Saenz and others to pursue the postwar organization of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). This English edition of one of only two known war diaries of a Mexican American in the Great War is translated with an introduction and annotation by noted Mexican American historian Emilio Zamora.