In this book, we have hand-picked the most sophisticated, unanticipated, absorbing (if not at times crackpot!), original and musing book reviews of "As Texas Goes... How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda." Don't say we didn't warn you: these reviews are known to shock with their unconventionality or intimacy. Some may be startled by their biting sincerity; others may be spellbound by their unbridled flights of fantasy. Don't buy this book if: 1. You don't have nerves of steel. 2. You expect to get pregnant in the next five minutes. 3. You've heard it all.

“Gail Collins is the funniest serious political commentator in America. Reading As Texas Goes… is pure pleasure from page one.” —Rachel Maddow A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year (Nonfiction) As Texas Goes . . . provides a trenchant yet often hilarious look into American politics and the disproportional influence of Texas, which has become the model for not just the Tea Party but also the Republican Party. Now with an expanded introduction and a new concluding chapter that will assess the influence of the Texas way of thinking on the 2012 election, Collins shows how the presidential race devolved into a clash between the so-called “empty places” and the crowded places that became a central theme in her book. The expanded edition will also feature more examples of the Texas style, such as Governor Rick Perry’s nearsighted refusal to accept federal Medicaid funding as well as the proposed ban on teaching “critical thinking” in the classroom. As Texas Goes . . . will prove to be even more relevant to American politics by the dawn of a new political era in January 2013.

Throughout America and around the world, the United States has been known as a beacon of hope and opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Sadly, from the crumbling urban ghetto of Detroit to the cash-strapped shores of California to the rust belt of the Midwest, America is not living up to that promise. Except in Texas. While unemployment soars elsewhere, Texans are hard at work. While small businesses across the country are going under, Texas entrepreneurs are thriving. While large companies are being squeezed by taxes, regulations and unions, more and more corporations are moving to Texas to grow and expand. While people of faith are ridiculed and marginalized in most cities on both coasts, in Texas churches and synagogues are bursting at the seams. How did Texas embrace what the rest of America seems to have forgotten? In Lonestar America, popular talk radio show host Mark Davis presents a powerful case for economic prosperity, individual freedom, strong families, and even stronger pride of place – alive and kicking in Texas, and easily exportable to the rest of America. Davis shows how Texas has done it, how some “honorary Texans” in other states (governors and even local communities) have adopted some of the same policies and approaches, and how states across the country can reclaim the promise of the American dream.

A Texas historian looks at all of the shortcomings in her state's history and culture. From God to cowboy culture to the vaunted Alamo, not a hair on the Texas hide has been spared in this scathing critique. (It is also worth nothing that other than the introduction, the book is entirely blank.)

"Everything is bigger in Texas," as the saying goes, and this certainly applies to the history of sleaze, iniquity, and violence associated with the Lone Star State.Texas Confidential: Sex, Scandal, Murder, and Mayhem provides a glimpse at the state's seamy underbelly and delves into some of the most striking episodes of lust, corruption, slaughter, and chaos in Texas and the people who have perpetrated them. To a colorful rogues' gallery of lunatics, corrupt politicians, prostitutes, murderers, and every other sort of scoundrel that appears in the book, authorMichael O. Varhola has added a smattering of UFOs, mythological beasts, and other paranormal oddities. Specific chapters among the 54 that appear inTexas Confidential include "Rogues of the Alamo," a look at the things that just about everyone connected with the famous battle had to hide; "The Ivory Tower of Death," on the bloody 1966 University of Texas rampage that left 18 people dead and 42 wounded; "Porno, Texas Style," which includes a list of adult actors from the state; and "The Aurora UFO Incident," about the state's oldest documented UFO incident, which occurred in 1897.

Russell P. Strange "Book of the Year" Award from the Illinois State Historical Society, 2012. On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. Split off from Indiana Territory in 1809, the new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. The extreme southern part of the region was rich in timber, but the dominant feature of the landscape was the vast tall grass prairie that stretched without major interruption from Lake Michigan for more than three hundred miles to the south. The territory was largely inhabited by Indians: Sauk, Potawatomi, Kickapoo, and others. By 1812, however, pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, in which white settlers faced both Indians resistant to their encroachments and British forces poised to seize control of the upper Mississippi and Great Lakes. The war ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Sometimes led by skillful tacticians, at other times by blundering looters who got lost in the tall grass, the combatants showed each other little mercy. Until and even after the war was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. In this engrossing new history, published upon the war's bicentennial, Gillum Ferguson underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences. Endorsed by the Illinois Society of the War of 1812 and the Illinois War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

The most comprehensive account to date of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and aftermath, this volume includes unprecedented details on the impact on the Pentagon building and personnel and the scope of the rescue, recovery, and caregiving effort. It features 32 pages of photographs and more than a dozen diagrams and illustrations not previously available.