In 1936, the Texas centennial was celebrated across the state. In The Frontier Centennial, Jacob Olmstead argues that Fort Worth?s celebration of the centennial represented a unique opportunity to reshape the city?s identity and align itself with a progressive future. Olmstead draws out the Frontier Centennial from its inception as a commemorative fair to theme park enshrining the mythic West to show the various ways centennial planners, boosters, and civic leaders sought to use the celebration as a means to bolster the city?s identity and image as a modern city of the American West. Olmstead?s retelling of the Frontier Centennial looks at two distinctive processes. The first addresses the interplay of memory, identity, and image in the evolution of the celebration?s commemorative messages. Fort Worth?s image as a progressive western metropolis also impacted other areas, less central, to Frontier Centennial planning. Debates over how outsiders would interpret features of the celebration, carried on by club women and others, reveal the interest the citizenry held in upholding or contesting the city?s modern image. Overlapping with the issues of memory and identity, the second process addresses how the larger narratives of the mythic West influenced the content of the celebration. Though drawn from actual events and people, the myth reduces the past to its ?ideological essence.? Mythmakers, like historians, draw upon facts to explain and give meaning to a particular worldview.

Fair Park Deco is a fascinating tour of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. Like every American exposition in the 1930s, it began in economic depression. Although its economy had been buoyed by major oil discoveries in the early '30s, Texas agriculture was hard hit by the Great Depression. By the middle of the decade, state officials had set their sights on a great centennial celebration to help stimulate the economy and attract tourist dollars. "If during the next six months the people of the state could become filled with the idea of holding a big celebration on the one hundredth anniversary of the establishment of Texas independence," the state's centennial commission speculated in July, 1934, "it would have the effect of creating a general forward-looking spirit through the state. It would be more stimulating than anything we can think of, and this effect would be immediate." This book focuses specifically on the Art Deco art and architecture of Fair Park--the public spaces, buildings, sculptures and murals that were designed for the 1936 exposition. Most of the chapters in the book represent different areas of Fair Park, with buildings and artwork effectively arranged in the same order that a visitor to the Texas Centennial Exposition might have seen them. The art and architecture are featured in original photography by Jim Parsons and David Bush as well as in historic photographs. Fair Park is one of the finest collections of Deco architecture in the country, but it is so much more: the embodiment of Texan swagger, it is a testament to the Texanic task of creating a dazzling spectacle in the darkest days of the Depression.

Before Terlingua achieved some notoriety as the site of the annual World Championship Chili Cookoff, the ghost town was the bustling center of the mercury mining industry in the United States. Quicksilver tells the story of the company town and its feudal lord, Chicago industrialist Howard E. Perry, who built a hilltop mansion overlooking the dry domain. Based on many primary sources, this solidly researched and historically sound book tells of profit, power, and loss; of U.S. Army protection from the effects of revolution south of the border; of Depression-era maneuverings and labor unrest; and of a region that holds growing fascination for thousands of visitors each year. Color and authenticity come from the author's interviews with such individuals as Robert Cartledge, who for nearly three decades worked as store clerk, purchasing agent, and finally general manager of the Chisos Mining Company in Terlingua.

Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo, Lickety Lickety, Zoo Zoo, Who Wah, Wah Who, Give 'em hell, TCU! Ezra Hood’s Riff, Ram, Bah, Zoo! Football Comes to TCU (named after TCU's "Riff, Ram" cheer, one of the oldest known cheers in the nation) traces the origins of Texas Christian University, a tiny liberal arts college in Waco, Texas, to its induction into the Southwest Conference in 1922 as an up-and-coming collegiate football power. Drawing from numerous newspaper sources—most notably from the TCU Daily Skiff—Hood’s book provides an in-depth, game-by-game history of a football program that struggled to find its place amongst established Texas football programs in the early twentieth century. Hood begins with the university’s conception in 1873, when it was known as AddRan Male and Female College, and describes the rise of football’s popularity in Texas. From there, the book chronicles each of TCU’s football seasons from its first year in 1896 to its final year in TIAA play, before it joined the Southwest Conference and went on to become, in Hood’s words, “the prince of the Southwest in the 1930s.” Hood captures particular details of each season—noting significant coaching changes and highly-touted recruits—all the while providing anecdotes from local newspapers as a way to capture the community response to TCU football in both Waco and Fort Worth. And while the book focuses largely on the ups and downs of the program, Hood also captures the impact of the times on both TCU and the many towns of central and north Texas—the impact of the first World War, for instance, on the state of football nationwide and the loss of notable TCU players to the war effort. Thanks to Hood’s exhaustive historical account, this book will be a valuable reference for both fans and historians of TCU and the game of football.

"The game itself would be secondary to the thrill of traveling outside Texas for the first time - a week-long trip each way in two Model A Fords; of watching the great Satchel Paige pitch in a semi- pro tournament; and of having real uniforms for the first time. "I think we all grew about a foot taller," recalled Victor Deike, "the first time we put them on.""--BOOK JACKET.

In 1936, Texas commemorated the 100th anniversary of its independence from Mexico with a series of statewide celebrations. A central exposition was proposed, with four cities waging a sometimes bitter campaign to secure the rights to stage this auspicious event. At stake for the host city was unparalleled national exposure and a strong economic boost in the midst of the Great Depression. Using the existing grounds and buildings at Fair Park as the basis of its bid, Dallas outhustled and outspent its competitors to be designated as the host city of the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition. The fair was planned by chief architect George Dahl with legions of talented designers and artists who collaborated to produce one of the great American world's fairs of the 1930s. In addition to the centennial celebration, 1936 marked the 50th anniversary of Fair Park as the site of the great State Fair of Texas. Many of the exhibition structures, livestock barns, and sports and performance venues built for the fair over the previous 50 years were incorporated into the new layout and design of the exposition. The architectural style that was applied to the old and new buildings at Fair Park was described as "Texanic," a combination of Texas iconography and classical motifs with the more spare, streamlined regimen of the moderne style. The result was a revelation to the millions of visitors that attended the Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "[The] rare biography of a public figure that's not only beautifully written, but also shockingly revelatory." -- The Atlantic A vivid biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most influential and under-appreciated women in American political history. Barbara Pierce Bush was one of the country's most popular and powerful figures, yet her full story has never been told. THE MATRIARCH tells the riveting tale of a woman who helped define two American presidencies and an entire political era. Written by USA TODAY's Washington Bureau chief Susan Page, this biography is informed by more than one hundred interviews with Bush friends and family members, hours of conversation with Mrs. Bush herself in the final six months of her life, and access to her diaries that spanned decades. THE MATRIARCH examines not only her public persona but also less well-known aspects of her remarkable life. As a girl in Rye, New York, Barbara Bush weathered criticism of her weight from her mother, barbs that left lifelong scars. As a young wife, she coped with the death of her three-year-old daughter from leukemia, a loss that changed her forever. In middle age, she grappled with depression so serious that she contemplated suicide. And as first the wife and then the mother of American presidents, she made history as the only woman to see -- and advise -- both her husband and son in the Oval Office. As with many women of her era, Barbara Bush was routinely underestimated, her contributions often neither recognized nor acknowledged. But she became an astute and trusted political campaign strategist and a beloved First Lady. She invested herself deeply in expanding literacy programs in America, played a critical role in the end of the Cold War, and led the way in demonstrating love and compassion to those with HIV/AIDS. With her cooperation, this book offers Barbara Bush's last words for history -- on the evolution of her party, on the role of women, on Donald Trump, and on her family's legacy. Barbara Bush's accomplishments, struggles, and contributions are many. Now, Susan Page explores them all in THE MATRIARCH, a groundbreaking book certain to cement Barbara Bush as one of the most unique and influential women in American history.