William P. “Will” Hobby Sr. and Oveta Culp Hobby were one of the most influential couples in Texas history. Both were major public figures, with Will serving as governor of Texas and Oveta as the first commander of the Women’s Army Corps and later as the second woman to serve in a presidential cabinet. Together, they built a pioneering media empire centered on the Houston Post and their broadcast properties, and they played a significant role in the transformation of Houston into ...

The art of furniture making flourished in Texas during the mid-nineteenth century. To document this rich heritage of locally made furniture, Miss Ima Hogg, the well-known philanthropist and collector of American decorative arts, enlisted Lonn Taylor and David B. Warren to research early Texas furniture and its makers. After more than a decade of investigation, they published Texas Furniture in 1975, and it quickly became the authoritative reference on this subject. An updated edit...

People have been looking for the sites of the long-lost and mysterious battles of King Arthur for a thousand years. In this book, the result of extensive consultation with experts across academic disciplines, the author’s researches point to fascinating new conclusions about Arthur’s life. Much of the history of the time was lost because of some kind of natural catastrophe around AD 540. But the warrior elite, of which Arthur was part, went on to rule what later became known as Wessex, the...

In a state assumed to have a constitutionally weak governor, the Speaker of the Texas House wields enormous power, with the ability to almost single-handedly dictate the legislative agenda. The House Will Come to Order charts the evolution of the Speaker's role from a relatively obscure office to one of the most powerful in the state. This fascinating account, drawn from the Briscoe Center's oral history project on the former Speakers, is the story of transition, modernization, an...

Texas native James Farmer is one of the “Big Four” of the turbulent 1960s civil rights movement, along with Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Farmer might be called the forgotten man of the movement, overshadowed by Martin Luther King Jr., who was deeply influenced by Farmer’s interpretation of Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent protest.Born in Marshall, Texas, in 1920, the son of a preacher, Farmer grew up with segregated movie theaters and “White Only” drinking ...

A comprehensive biography of a legendary lieutenant governor.During his five terms as lieutenant governor of Texas, Bill Hobby became one of the most powerful political figures in the state’s history. He was first elected lieutenant governor of Texas in 1972 and served until 1990. Thanks to his brilliance as a political tactician and his personal integrity, Hobby was able to set the Senate’s agenda and garner respect from legislators on both sides of the aisle....

Born on a farm near Anahuac, Texas, in 1875 and possessed of only a fourth-grade education, Ross Sterling was one of the most successful Texans of his generation. Driven by a relentless work ethic, he become a wealthy oilman, banker, newspaper publisher, and, from 1931 to 1933, one-term governor of Texas. Sterling was the principal founder of the Humble Oil and Refining Company, which eventually became the largest division of the ExxonMobil Corporation, as well as the owner of the Hous...

The story of the behind-the-scenes political battle to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act: "Excellent . . . a highly readable play-by-play." — The AtlanticIt was a turbulent time in America—a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington, and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door—when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Ca...

A timely and nonpartisan book on voter manipulation and electoral corruption—and the importance of stimulating voter turnout and participationThough voting rights are fundamental to American democracy, felon disfranchisement, voter identification laws, and hard-to-access polling locations with limited hours are a few of the ways voter turnout is suppressed. These methods of voter suppression are pernicious, but in Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich, Dr....

“A detailed and dramatic narrative of the rise of the modern right...It's an amazing story, and Perlstein, a man of the left, does it justice” (William Kristol, The New York Times Book Review)Before the Storm begins at the tail end of the 1950s, with America affluent, confident, and convinced that political ideology was a thing of the past.But when John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960, conservatives—editor William F. Buckley Jr., ...

David Daley’s “extraordinarily timely” (New York Times Book Review) account uncovers the fundamental rigging of our House of Representatives and state legislatures nationwide.Lauded as a “compelling” (The New Yorker) and “eye-opening tour of a process that many Americans never see” (Washington Post), David Daley’s Ratf**ked documents the effort of Republican legislators and political operatives to hack American democracy through ...

The time is 1887. From any window in Georgia O’Keeffe’s Sun Prairie, Wisconsin birthplace home she only saw the Wisconsin prairie with its traces of roads veering around the flat marshlands and a vast sky that lifted her soul. At twelve years of age Georgia had a defining moment when she declared, “I want to be an artist.” Years later from her east-facing window in Canyon, Texas she observed the Texas Panhandle sky with its focus points on the plains and a great canyon of earth history col...