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Texas Politics
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Approaching the politics of the Lone Star State from historical, developmental, and analytical perspectives, Cal Jillson's text avoids partisanship, ideology, and gimmicks to provide the most comprehensive, readable, and accurate brief description of Texas politics available today. Throughout the book students are encouraged to connect the origins and development of government and politics in Texas--from the Texas Constitution, to party competition, to the role and powers of the Governor--to its current day practice and the alternatives possible through change and reform. This text will allow teachers to share with their students the evolution of Texas politics, where we stand today, and where we are headed. Texas Politicsis one of the briefest and most affordable texts on the market, yet it offers instructors and students an unmatched range of pedagogical aids and tools. Each chapter opens with a number of focus questions to orient readers to the learning objectives and concludes with a Chapter Summary, a list of Key Terms, Suggested Readings, and Web Resources. Key Terms are bolded in the text, listed at the end of the chapter, and included in a Glossary at the end of the book. Each chapter presents several photos and numerous tables and figures to highlight the major ideas, issues, individuals, and institutions discussed. Each chapter also contains a Let's Compare feature, comparing selected states to Texas on various dimensions.
The Establishment in Texas Politics
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Texas has a history of producing nationally prominent leaders. It is also important for its burgeoning population and its natural resources. Few can argue that its politics are not fascinating. The years from 1938 to 1957 were the most primitive period of rule by the Texas Establishment, a loosely knit plutocracy of the Anglo upper classes answering only to the vested interests in banking, oil, land development, law, the merchant houses, and the press. Establishment rule was reflected in numerous and harsh antilabor laws, the suppression of academic freedom, a segregationist philosophy, elections marred by demagoguery and corruption, the devolution of the daily press, and a state government that offered its citizens, especially minorities, very few services. Important elements in the contemporary political scene originated between 1938 and 1957.
The Texas Senate
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The first Congress of the Republic of Texas met October 3, 1836, in Columbia in a large dog-trot house "meager in every respect." The fourteen senators who convened there must have been amazed at the circumstances that brought them together and fearful of the impermanence of their offices. Only a year earlier the representative body of their territory had been a provincial government of the Republic of Mexico, and not too long before that, residents of the region had sworn fealty to a Spanish king. On this autumn day, however, the inhabitants of the lands north of the Rio Grande were calling themselves Texans, creators and citizens of a country recognized only by themselves as the Republic of Texas. So begins The Texas Senate, which charts events, both grand and small, that have marked the legislative history of the republic and the state. This volume, the first of five, is written by members of the Senate Engrossing and Enrolling Department and edited by Enrolling Clerk Patsy McDonald Spaw. Leading off the volume, which covers the period up to secession, is a foreword by Lieutenant Governor William P. Hobby. Sources for the history include the Senate journals, the letters and private papers of senators, newspapers of the era, committee reports, and other primary sources, as well as general and specialized histories of the topics. More than fifty illustrations and eighteen appendices listing members of the legislative bodies (ten compiled by Thomas Phillips, chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court) add significant details. The professionally researched text tells the story of the young republic and state with forthrightness, drama, and humor. It presents information on who the members of the Senate were, vignettes of the more colorful members, issues of the day and their resolution, and interesting Senate proceedings and controversies. From the details emerges a realistic and intriguing picture of our forebears that includes rowdy drunkards, buffoons, criminals, and ne'er-do-wells, but also men and women of great courage and determination-educated, intelligent, self-sacrificing people who served Texas at great cost to themselves.
LBJ and Grassroots Federalism
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The book reveals the local ramifications of federal policy andalso offers a unique insight into a transformational period when the federal government broke down barriers and opened doors to the engagement of African Americans and Mexican Americans in community planning processes and social policy.
Lines in the Sand
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The events of 2003 in Texas were important to the political history of this country. Congressman Tom DeLay led a Republican effort to gerrymander the state's thirty-two congressional districts to defeat all ten of the Anglo Democratic incumbents and to elect more Republicans; Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in an effort to defeat the plan. The Lone Star State uproar attracted attention worldwide. The Republicans won this showdown, gaining six additional seats from Texas and protecting the one endangered Republican incumbent. Some of the methods used by DeLay to achieve this result, however, led to his criminal indictment and ultimately to his downfall. With its eye-opening research, readable style, and insightful commentary, Lines in the Sand provides a front-line account of what happened in 2003, often through the personal stories of members of both parties and of the minority activist groups caught in a political vortex. Law professor Steve Bickerstaff provides much-needed historical perspective and also probes the aftermath of the 2003 redistricting, including the criminal prosecutions of DeLay and his associates and the events that led to DeLay's eventual resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives. As a result, Bickerstaff graphically shows a dark underside of American politics--the ruthless use of public institutional power for partisan gain.
The City in Texas
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Texans love the idea of wide-open spaces and, before World War II, the majority of the state's people did live and work on the land. Between 1940 and 1950, however, the balance shifted from rural to urban, and today 88 percent of Texans live in cities and embrace the amenities of urban culture. The rise of Texas cities is a fascinating story that has not been previously told. Yet it is essential for understanding both the state's history and its contemporary character. In The City in Texas, acclaimed historian David G. McComb chronicles the evolution of urban Texas from the Spanish Conquest to the present. Writing in lively, sometimes humorous and provocative prose, he describes how commerce and politics were the early engines of city growth, followed by post-Civil War cattle shipping, oil discovery, lumbering, and military needs. McComb emphasizes that the most transformative agent in city development was the railroad. This technology--accompanied by telegraphs that accelerated the spread of information and mechanical clocks that altered concepts of time--revolutionized transportation, enforced corporate organization, dictated town location, organized space and architecture, and influenced thought. McComb also thoroughly explores the post-World War II growth of San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston as incubators for businesses, educational and cultural institutions, and health care centers.
Texas Labor History
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Too often, observers and writers of Texas history have accepted assumptions about labor movements in the stateOCoboth organized and notOCothat do not bear up under the light of careful scrutiny. Offering a scholarly corrective to such misplaced suppositions, the studies in "Texas Labor History" provide a helpful new source for scholars and teachers who wish to fill in some of the missing pieces.Tackling a number of such presumptionsOCothat a viable labor movement never existed in the Lone Star State; that black, brown, and white laborers, both male and female, were unable to achieve even short-term solidarity; that labor unions in Texas were ineffective because of laborersOCO inability to confront employersOCothe editors and contributors to this volume lay the foundation for establishing the importance of labor to a fuller understanding of Texas history. They show, for example, that despite differing working conditions and places in society, many workers managed to unite, sometimes in biracial efforts, to overturn the top-down strategy utilized by Texas employers."Texas Labor History" also facilitates an understanding of how the stateOCOs history relates to, reflects, and differs from national patterns and movements. This groundbreaking collection of studies offers notable opportunities for new directions of inquiry and will benefit historians and students for years to come.
A Private in the Texas Rangers
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What was it really like to be a Texas Ranger in 1887-88? Deconstructing myths, reconstructing realities, this gritty, day-to-day portrayal, written by Private A. T. Miller, Company B, Frontier Battalion, yields a complex vision of the passing West and its lawmen. A Private in the Texas Rangers takes us for a tumultuous ride along the fading Texas-Oklahoma frontier.
A Wild and Vivid Land
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Thompson details six centuries of exciting and entertaining history in a thoroughly researched and comprehensive text, lavishly illustrated by the work of artists Lino Sanchez y Tapia, Theodore Gentilz, and Frederic Remington, photographers Robert Runyon, E. O. Goldbeck, and Russell Lee, and many others.
In a Narrow Grave
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No one is neutral about Texas. It is too big to ignore and too boisterous to leave the rest of us alone.
