This is the best of the Society's papers over the past three years—from lynchings to el pato boat building; from sunbonnets to hammered dulcimers; from jokes about droughts and lawyers to tales of folk, gospel and blues music; from gravemarkers to bottle trees, and more.

There are many things that are big in Texas: Wide open spaces, personalities, hair, but above all, there's flavor! United Tastes of Texas is your geographical guide to Texas cuisine based on five distinct culinary regions: Central, Coastal, East, South, and West Texas; as well as the culinary influences brought by settlers from countries including Czechoslovakia, Germany, Mexico, and Spain. Each chapter starts with a brief history of the region, as well as plenty of interesting facts and bits of history including notes on cooking equipment, stories on local chefs and restaurants that have helped shape each of the regions, and pages of beautiful photography and imagery. But foremost is the food: 125 recipes featuring traditional and regional-specific dishes and cooking methods including Texan takes on Black-Eyed Peas, Skillet Cornbread, Shrimp Creole, Smoked Brisket, Smoked Tortilla Soup, and one of the most classically Texan dishes - Chicken Fried Steak, just to name a few. Whether you're a native Texan in need of recipe inspiration, a Texas ex-pat longing for a taste of home, or a culinary adventurer ready to explore the Lone Star State, United Tastes of Texas packs plenty of history, travel, and food into one book!

In Lost, Texas: Photographs of Forgotten Buildings, Bronson Dorsey takes us on a tour of old, abandoned buildings in Texas that evoke the mystique of bygone days and shifting population patterns. With a skilled photographer’s eye, he captures the character of these buildings, mostly tucked away in the far corners of rural Texas—though, surprisingly, some of his finds are in the midst of thriving communities, even, in one case, the Dallas metroplex. Most of the buildings are abandoned and in a state of decay, though a handful have been repurposed as museums, residences, or other functional structures. Encompassing all regions of the state, from the Piney Woods to the Panhandle, the images in Lost, Texas evoke distinctive memories of the past. They grant a sense of how those who preceded us lived and how the Texas of earlier days became the Texas of today. Some of the historic sites include a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Beeville, a lumberyard built over two generations, a beautiful, mission-style schoolhouse raised in a small farming community, the skeleton of a boomtown gas station near the Yates oilfield, and what remains of the only silver mining operation in Texas. With Dorsey as a guide, readers may explore these hidden and neglected gems and learn the basic facts of their origins and intended uses, as well as the principal reasons for their demise. Along the way and in the background, he quietly makes the case for preserving these buildings that, while no longer central to the ongoing function of their communities, still serve as important emblems of the past.

Scream Away, But No One Cares… Austin’s urban sprawl is crowding in on Al Quinn’s once wilderness lakefront house. Yet he is tugged away from his cozy retirement, his quirky housemates, and even his promise to marry Fergie by a string of seemingly petty crimes that are starting to seem organized. Houses may be springing up around where he and his family live, but Al knows from his years as a sheriff’s department detective that there are still some quite dark corners in Texas. He finds himself drawn right out into the darkest of them. The trail he follows gets even more sinister when he and Fergie must confront the Aryan Brotherhood. There is no backing away, though, when the lives of his brother Maury, Bonnie, Little Al, and even Al’s dog, Tanner, are at stake.

Explores the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners region of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, looking at the history, geography, and people of the southwestern part of the country.

2nd Edition. This book is a peek into the Texas psyche and explains why Texans are the way they are...where all that attitude comes from.

In sunbaked Terlingua, Texas (pop., a few hundred), residents joke that there is a musician under every rock. Located ten miles from Mexico in one of the remotest corners of the United States, the town had a recording studio before it had a school, a well-stocked grocery store, or even a water utility. Open jam sessions are a daily ritual, and some songwriters make a living from their craft despite being thousands of miles from New York or Nashville. Why does such a tiny and isolated place ring with singing and guitars? Based on more than two years of on-the-ground research, On the Porch tells the story of this small but remarkable community. Chase Peeler invites us into the music, introducing us to a cast of characters as unique as the town itself. He reveals how novices and experts perform together—a rarity in contemporary America. He recounts the devastation brought on by a border closure and describes how music is once again uniting people across the Rio Grande. He considers the impact of gentrification in an off-the-grid paradise, and how this threatens to transform a precarious musical ecosystem. On the Porch is a celebration of human musicality, of the role that music plays and can play in our lives, both in Terlingua and beyond.