I Will Survive is the story of Gloria Gaynor, America's "Queen of Disco." It is the story of riches and fame, despair, and finally salvation. Her meteoric rise to stardom in the mid-1970s was nothing short of phenomenal, and hits poured forth that pushed her to the top of the charts, including "Honey Bee," "I Got You Under My Skin," "Never Can Say Goodbye," and the song that has immortalized her, "I Will Survive," which became a #1 international gold seller. With that song, Gloria heralded the international rise of disco that became synonymous with a way of life in the fast lane - the sweaty bodies at Studio 54, the lines of cocaine, the indescribable feeling that you could always be at the top of your game and never come down. But down she came after her early stardom, and problems followed in the wake, including the death of her mother, whose love had anchored the young singer, as well as constant battles with weight, drugs, and alcohol. While her fans always imagined her to be rich, her personal finances collapsed due to poor management; and while many envied her, she felt completely empty inside. In the early 1980s, sustained by her marriage to music publisher Linwood Simon, Gloria took three years off and reflected upon her life. She visited churches and revisited her mother's old Bible. Discovering the world of gospel, she made a commitment to Christ that sustains her to this day.

In the fourteenth century, a culture arose in and around the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas that represents the last prehistoric peoples before the cultural upheaval introduced by European explorers. This culture has been labeled the Toyah phase, characterized by a distinctive tool kit and a bone-tempered pottery tradition. ?Spanish documents, some translated decades ago, offer glimpses of these mobile people. Archaeological excavations, some quite recent, offer other views of this culture, whose homeland covered much of Central and South Texas. For the first time in a single volume, this book brings together a number of perspectives and interpretations of these hunter-gatherers and how they interacted with each other, the pueblos in southeastern New Mexico, the mobile groups in northern Mexico, and newcomers from the northern plains such as the Apache and Comanche.? Assembling eight studies and interpretive essays to look at social boundaries from the perspective of migration, hunter-farmer interactions, subsistence, and other issues significant to anthropologists and archaeologists, The Toyah Phase of Central Texas: Late Prehistoric Economic and Social Processes demonstrates that these prehistoric societies were never isolated from the world around them. Rather, these societies were keenly aware of changes happening on the plains to their north, among the Caddoan groups east of them, in the Puebloan groups in what is now New Mexico, and among their neighbors to the south in Mexico.