A special edition to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Lonesome Dove miniseries

A photo-filled behind-the-scenes journey into the creation of the book, the miniseries, and the world of Lonesome Dove. Widely acclaimed as the greatest Western ever made, Lonesome Dove has become a true American epic. Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel was a New York Times bestseller, with millions of copies in print, and the miniseries has won seven Emmys. In this treasury, John Spong talks to forty of the key people involved, including author Larry McMurtry; actors Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones, Anjelica Huston, Diane Lane, Danny Glover, Ricky Schroder, D. B. Sweeney, Frederic Forrest, and Chris Cooper; executive producer and screenwriter Bill Wittliff; executive producer Suzanne de Passe; and director Simon Wincer. They and a host of others tell lively stories about McMurtry’s writing of the epic novel and the process of turning it into the miniseries Lonesome Dove. Accompanying their recollections are photographs of iconic props, costumes, set designs, and shooting scripts. Rounding out the book are continuity Polaroids used during filming and photographs taken on the set by Bill Wittliff, which place you behind the scenes in the middle of the action. Designed as a companion for A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, Wittliff’s magnificent fine art volume, A Book on the Making of Lonesome Dove is a must-have for every fan.

Winner, Will Rogers Medallion Award for Outstanding Merit/Excellence in Printing and Publication, 2008 Lonesome Dove—Larry McMurtry's epic tale of two aging Texas Rangers who drive a herd of stolen cattle 2,500 miles from the Rio Grande to Montana to found the first ranch there—captured the public imagination and has never let it go. The novel, published in 1985, was a New York Times best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. More than two decades after publication, it still sells tens of thousands of copies every year. The Lonesome Dove miniseries, which first aired on CBS in 1989, lassoed an even wider audience. Twenty-six million households watched the premier episode, and countless millions more have ridden with Gus and Call each time the movie has rerun on TV, video, and DVD. In addition to its popular success, the miniseries has also garnered unanimous critical acclaim. It was nominated for eighteen Emmy Awards and won seven. It also won Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Miniseries and Best Actor; a Peabody Award; the D. W. Griffith Award for Best Television Series; the National Association of Television Critics Award for Program of the Year and Outstanding Achievement in Drama; and the Writers' Guild of America Award for Best Teleplay (Bill Wittliff). Now bringing the sweeping visual imagery of the miniseries to the printed page, A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove presents more than one hundred classic images created by Bill Wittliff, the award-winning writer and executive producer (with Suzanne de Passe) of Lonesome Dove and a renowned fine art photographer. Wittliff took these photographs during the filming of the miniseries, but they are worlds apart from ordinary production stills. Reminiscent of the nineteenth-century cowboy photographs of Erwin Smith and the western paintings of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, each Lonesome Dove image stands alone as an evocative work of art, while as a whole, they provide a stunning visual summary of the entire miniseries. Accompanying the photographs are a foreword by Lonesome Dove author Larry McMurtry and an introduction by Stephen Harrigan, who describes the epic-in-itself creative journey that led to the making of the Lonesome Dove novel, miniseries, and book of photographs. In the afterword, Bill Wittliff recalls unforgettable moments—some hilarious, others momentous—from the production of the miniseries. A roster of the cast and crew completes the text. As its enduring popularity proves, Lonesome Dove conveys the spirit of the American West and the freedom of the open plains and sky as few other creative works ever have. For everyone who loves the novel and the movie, A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove provides yet another powerful way of experiencing this mythical, yet wholly real, world.

La vida brinca—life jumps—and yet we strive to capture its passing moments by creating images. One of the simplest yet most evocative techniques for image-making is pinhole photography. Using a tiny aperture without a lens to shine light on a piece of film, pinhole cameras accumulate light until an image forms. Bill Wittliff calls the cameras he makes tragaluces, "light swallowers." By controlling only the size of the aperture, the distance to the film, and the length of the exposure, he makes images that forsake the documentary realism of traditional photography to disclose instead the presence of the mystical in the everyday world. The tragaluz photographs in La Vida Brinca record iconic images of Hispanic life. Wittliff photographed fiestas, religious observances, street scenes, people's faces, and enduring rural landscapes. But with the soft focus and surprise elements that typify his tragaluz photographs, these images become dreamlike—scenes from a world where, as Stephen Harrigan says, "reassuring touchstones are likely to dissolve, and where the unseen is always startlingly on view." The accompanying essays by Harrigan and Elizabeth Ferrer discuss the history and techniques of pinhole photography, as well as Bill Wittliff's artistic choice to work in this medium. As a work of art, La Vida Brinca reveals that pinhole photography is an ideal vehicle for finding profound meaning in the commonplace, for seeing beyond what the eye can see.

Recounts myths of the closing decades of the western frontier viewed through the eyes of Nellie Courtright and her brother Jackson, orphans that make good in the town of Rita Blanca in what would become the Oklahoma Panhandle.

“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.

In 1965, 16-year-old Robin Lee Graham began a solo around-the-world voyage from San Pedro, California, in a 24-foot sloop. Five years and 33,000 miles later, he returned to home port with a wife and daughter and enough extraordinary experiences to fill this bestselling book, Dove.