This book is about the Custom Cowboys of Houston County. It's a hard life. We've lived our lives fighting the rain, wind & weather, while riding the brush, briers and thickets of east Texas. The men these stories are about made a living with their horses and dogs during the Jet Age. They play the most important role in the cattle industry. No way ranchers could do without them. Their jobs are penning cattle to work, de-worming, helping with their necessary vaccinations, catching wild cattle, pasture doctoring sick cattle, pulling calves, thrashing cattle out of the brush and many other things that people never think about. They also get cattle out of the backwater when rivers & creeks overflow, trailing them down highways and roads when there is no way to haul them. I, for one, am glad I got to serve the public with my services as a cowboy for all the years I did. These are my stories, plus some that have been told to me by other cowboys.

Book 3 of Cowboys & Brides From New York Times and USA Today-bestselling author Carolyn Brown comes a contemporary Western romance filled to the brim with sexy cowboys, gutsy heroines, and genuine down-home Texas twang. Emily Cooper promised her dying grandfather that she'd deliver a long-lost letter to a woman he once planned to wed. Little does adventurous Emily know that this simple task will propel her to places she never could have imagined...with a cowboy who's straight out of her dreams... When sexy rancher Greg Adams discovers his grandmother Clarice has installed Emily on their ranch as her assistant, he decides to humor the two ladies. He figures Emily will move on soon enough. In the meantime, he intends to keep a close eye on her—he doesn't quite buy her story of his grandmother as a mail-order bride. A lost letter meant a lost love for Clarice, but two generations later, maybe it's not too late for that letter to work its magic. Fans of Linda Lael Miller and Diana Palmer will thrill to this charming story of a sexy Texas rancher and the mail order bride who brought him to one knee. Cowboys & Brides Series: Billion Dollar Cowboy (Book 1) The Cowboy's Christmas Baby (Book 2) The Cowboy's Mail Order Bride (Book 3) How to Marry a Cowboy (Book 4) Praise for Bestselling Contemporary Western Romances by Carolyn Brown: "Sizzling hot and absolutely delectable."—Romance Junkies "Charming...a smoking-hot romance...there's nothing sexier than a cowboy."—RT Book Reviews, 4 stars "Witty dialogue and hilarious banter... Carolyn Brown delivers yet another steamy cowboy romance."—Night Owl Reviews

Convict Cowboys is the first book on the nation’s first prison rodeo, which ran from 1931 to 1986. At its apogee the Texas Prison Rodeo drew 30,000 spectators on October Sundays. Mitchel P. Roth portrays the Texas Prison Rodeo against a backdrop of Texas history, covering the history of rodeo, the prison system, and convict leasing, as well as important figures in Texas penology including Marshall Lee Simmons, O.B. Ellis, and George J. Beto, and the changing prison demimonde. Over the years the rodeo arena not only boasted death-defying entertainment that would make professional cowboys think twice, but featured a virtual who’s who of American popular culture. Readers will be treated to stories about numerous American and Texas folk heroes, including Western film stars ranging from Tom Mix to John Wayne, and music legends such as Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Through extensive archival research Roth introduces readers to the convict cowboys in both the rodeo arena and behind prison walls, giving voice to a legion of previously forgotten inmate cowboys who risked life and limb for a few dollars and the applause of free-world crowds.

A haute take on one of America's most traditional cuisines--that of the Texas ranch. Don't be thinking this book is just full of ribs, beans, and biscuits . . . . unless, of course, you're thinkin' South Texas Venison Ribs with Peanut Dipping Sauce, Black Bean Nachos with Chargrilled Chicken, and West Texas Biscuit Pudding with Southern Comfort en Glace. You see, at the Reata Restaurant in West Texas, hot chef Grady Spears is cooking cowboy cuisine with an emphasis on the cuisine. Filled with fresh, strong flavors, fascinating ranch memorabilia (these Texans take their history seriously!), gorgeous full-color food photography, and truly marvelous, utterly real food, this is American cooking at its kick-off-your-boots-and-get-down-to-business greatest.

“It’s every bit as fascinating to read about the battles between the Cowboys and the Texans as it is to follow today’s never-ending NFL dramas.” —Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk In the 1960s, on the heels of the “Greatest Game Ever Played,” professional football began to flourish across the country—except in Texas, where college football was still the only game in town. But in an unlikely series of events, two young oil tycoons started their own professional football franchises in Dallas the very same year: the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, and, as part of a new upstart league designed to thwart the NFL’s hold on the game, the Dallas Texans of the AFL. Almost overnight, a bitter feud was born. The team owners, Lamar Hunt and Clint Murchison, became Mad Men of the gridiron, locked in a battle for the hearts and minds of the Texas pigskin faithful. Their teams took each other to court, fought over players, undermined each other’s promotions, and rooted like hell for the other guys to fail. A true visionary, Hunt of the Texans focused on the fans, putting together a team of local legends and hiring attractive women to drive around town in red convertibles selling tickets. Meanwhile, Murchison and his Cowboys focused on the game, hiring a young star, Tom Landry, in what would be his first-ever year as a head coach, and concentrating on holding their own against the more established teams in the NFL. Ultimately, both teams won the battle, but only one got to stay in Dallas and go on to become one of sports’ most quintessential franchises—”America’s Team.” In this highly entertaining narrative, rich in colorful characters and unforgettable stunts, Eisenberg recounts the story of the birth of pro-football in Dallas—back when the game began to be part of this country’s DNA.

The Dallas Cowboys of the 1970s were one of the most dominant teams in pro football history, appearing in five Super Bowls and claiming two championships in a nine-year span. But during the late 1960s, the Cowboys were known as the team that couldn’t win the big one, getting close to the top but failing to seal the deal—they were perpetually “next year’s champions.” That all changed in 1971 when the Boys rallied to capture their first-ever title and put the franchise on its way to becoming “America’s Team.” In Breakthrough 'Boys, Jaime Aron gets the inside stories from former players, coaches, and other key figures to explore the fascinating and tumultuous road the Cowboys took to their first championship in 1971 under coach Tom Landry. Eight years after the assassination of JFK and seven years before the arrival of J. R. Ewing, this team gave the city of Dallas the new identity it needed and changed the face of football forever.

For readers of The Smartest Guys in the Room and When Genius Failed, the definitive take on Brian Hunter, John Arnold, Amaranth Advisors, and the largest hedge fund collapse in history At its peak, hedge fund Amaranth Advisors LLC had more than $9 billion in assets. A few weeks later, it completely collapsed. The disaster was largely triggered by one man: thirty-two-year-old hotshot trader Brian Hunter. His high-risk bets on natural gas prices bankrupted his firm and destroyed his career, while John Arnold, his rival at competitor fund Centaurus, emerged as the highest-paid trader on Wall Street. Meticulously researched and character-driven, Hedge Hogs is a riveting fly-on-the-wall account of the largest hedge fund collapse in history: a blistering tale of the recent past that explains our precarious present . . . and may predict our future. Using emails, instant messages, court testimony, and exclusive interviews, securities analyst turned investigative reporter Barbara T. Dreyfuss charts the colliding paths of these two charismatic traders who dominated the speculative energy market. We follow Brian Hunter, the Canadian farm boy and elbows-out high school basketball star, as he achieves phenomenal early success, only to see his ambition, greed, and hubris precipitate his downfall. Set in relief is the journey of John Arnold, whose mild manner, sophisticated tastes, and low profile belied his own ferocious competitive streak. As the two clash, hundreds of millions of dollars in pension and endowment money is imperiled, with devastating public consequences. Hedge Hogs takes you behind closed doors into the shadowy world of hedge funds, the unregulated wild side of finance, where over-the-top parties and lavish perks abound and billions of dollars of other people’s money are in the hands of a tiny elite. Dreyfuss traces the rise of this freewheeling industry while detailing the decades of bank, hedge fund, and commodity deregulation that turned Wall Street into a speculative casino. A gripping saga peppered with fast money, vivid characters, and high drama, Hedge Hogs is also an important and timely cautionary tale—a vivisection of a financial system jeopardized by reckless practices, watered-down regulation, and loopholes in government oversight, just waiting for the next bust. Praise for Hedge Hogs “Regulators, legislators and judges inclined to sympathize with the industry ought to rush out and buy a copy of Barbara Dreyfuss’s Hedge Hogs, a wonderfully instructive tale about Amaranth Advisors. . . . Dreyfuss, a Wall Street analyst turned investigative journalist, not only plowed through what turned out to be a treasure trove of official records and transcripts, but supplemented it with plenty of her own reporting. She manages to organize it all into a tight, riveting and understandable yarn.”—The Washington Post “Clearly and entertainingly told . . . a salutary example of how traders who believe they are super-smart might be nothing more than lucky, and how there is nothing so intoxicating as the ability to speculate with other people’s money.”—The Economist “[Dreyfuss] does a great job of putting Amaranth’s out-of-control trader into historical context, explaining the blitz of deregulation that set the stage for someone like Hunter to do maximum damage.”—Bloomberg “The definitive take on the largest hedge fund collapse in history . . . You will not be able to put it down.”—Frank Partnoy, author of F.I.A.S.C.O. and Infectious Greed Named One of the Top 10 Business & Economics Books of the Season by Publishers Weekly