A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

This intimate biography of the pioneering Texas governor is “required reading for political junkies—and for women considering a life in politics” (Booklist). When Ann Richards delivered the keynote of the 1988 Democratic National Convention and mocked President Bush—“Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth”—she became an instant celebrity and triggered a rivalry that would alter the course of history. In 1990, she won the governorship of Texas, becoming the first ardent feminist elected to high office in America. Richards opened pathways for greater diversity in public service, and her achievements created a legacy that transcends her tenure in office. In Let the People In, Jan Reid offers an intimate portrait of Ann Richards’s remarkable rise to power as a liberal Democrat in a deeply conservative state. Reid draws on his long friendship with Richards, as well as interviews with family, personal correspondence, and extensive research to tell the story of Richards’s life, from her youth in Waco, through marriage and motherhood, her struggle with alcoholism, and her shocking encounters with Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter. Reid shares the inside story of Richards’s rise from county office to the governorship, as well as her score-settling loss of the governorship to George W. Bush. Reid also describes Richards’s final years as a mentor to a new generation of public servants, including Hillary Clinton.

At 3:00 a.m. on March 1, 2008, Terry Caffey awoke to find his daughter’s boyfriend standing in his bedroom with a gun. An instant later the teen opened fire, killing Terry’s wife, his two sons, and wounding him 12 times, before setting the house ablaze. Terry fell into deep depression and planned to kill himself, but God intervened. Upon visiting his burned-out property, Terry noticed a scorched scrap of paper from one of his wife’s books leaning against a tree trunk. The page read: “[God,] I couldn’t understand why You would take my family and leave me behind to struggle along without them. And I guess I still don’t totally understand that part of it. But I do believe that You’re sovereign; You’re in control.” That page was like a direct message from God, and it turned Terry’s life around. Now, one year later, Terry is remarried, the adoptive father of two young sons, and working to rebuild his relationship with his 17-year-old daughter, who is currently serving two life sentences in a Texas state penitentiary for her involvement in the crimes. Terror by Night tells the compelling story of how Terry Caffey found peace after his wife and sons were brutally murdered and his teenage daughter implicated in the crime. Sharing never-before-told details about the night of the crime and subsequent murder trial, it explains how Terry was able to forgive the men who murdered his family, and how he even interceded with the prosecutors on their behalf. A powerful example of how the power of forgiveness can bring healing after tragedy and great loss, it shows how God can bring good out of even the darkest tragedies.

A powerful, bracing and deeply spiritual look at intensely, troubled youth, Last Chance in Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates. While reporting on the juvenile court system, journalist John Hubner kept hearing about a facility in Texas that ran the most aggressive–and one of the most successful–treatment programs for violent young offenders in America. How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas, famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation of violent and troubled youth? Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates, recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as children. The key moment comes when the young offenders reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the long road to redemption. Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to inflict on others the violence that they themselves have suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet ultimately full of hope.

Ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “another Pearl Harbor” of even more devastating consequence for American arms occurred in the Philippines, 4,500 miles to the west. On December 8, 1941, at 12.35 p.m., 196 Japanese Navy bombers and fighters crippled the largest force of B-17 four-engine bombers outside the United States and also decimated their protective P-40 interceptors. The sudden blow allowed the Japanese to rule the skies over the Philippines, removing the only effective barrier that stood between them and their conquest of Southeast Asia. This event has been called “one of the blackest days in American military history.” How could the army commander in the Philippines—the renowned Lt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur—have been caught with all his planes on the ground when he had been alerted in the small hours of that morning of the Pearl Harbor attack and warned of the likelihood of a Japanese strike on his forces? In this book, author William H. Bartsch attempts to answer this and other related questions. Bartsch draws upon twenty-five years of research into American and Japanese records and interviews with many of the participants themselves, particularly survivors of the actual attack on Clark and Iba air bases. The dramatic and detailed coverage of the attack is preceded by an account of the hurried American build-up of air power in the Philippines after July, 1941, and of Japanese planning and preparations for this opening assault of its Southern Operations. Bartsch juxtaposes the experiences of staff of the U.S. War Department in Washington and its Far East Air Force bomber, fighter, and radar personnel in the Philippines, who were affected by its decisions, with those of Japan’s Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo and the 11th Air Fleet staff and pilots on Formosa, who were assigned the responsibility for carrying out the attack on the Philippines five hundred miles to the south. In order to put the December 8th attack in broader context, Bartsch details micro-level personal experiences and presents the political and strategic aspects of American and Japanese planning for a war in the Pacific. Despite the significance of this subject matter, it has never before been given full book-length treatment. This book represents the culmination of decades-long efforts of the author to fill this historical gap.