TSHA Community

Great publications from our members and award recipients.

These books were authored by members of TSHA or received one of TSHA’s book awards. They are provided here for reference and support of the historical content they contain.

List of Publications (119 total) Page 3 of 10

Spanish Texas

Modern Texas, like Mexico, traces its beginning to sixteenth-century encounters between Europeans and Indians who contested control over a vast land. Unlike Mexico, however, Texas eventually received the stamp of Anglo-American culture, so that Spanish contributions to present-day Texas tend to be obscured or even unknown. The first edition of Spanish Texas, 1519–1821 (1992) sought to emphasize the significance of the Spanish period in Texas history. Beginning with information on the land and its inhabitants before the arrival of Europeans, the original volume covered major people and events from early exploration to the end of the colonial era.

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By Donald E. Chipman

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836

In honoring the heroic legend of the Texas Revolution, generations of scholars and Texans themselves have cleansed the revolution of its messier—and perhaps more truly revolutionary—dimensions. Focusing on the pre-existing causes of the conflict of 1835–36 and the military execution of the war, they have neglected the political turbulence, regional disharmonies, conflicts of interest, social upheaval, and racial and ethnic strife that characterized the period. This groundbreaking work on the Texas Revolution offers the first systematic analysis of the event as political and social history.

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By Paul D. Lack

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research. Recipient of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History.

Inside Texas: Culture, Identity, and Houses, 1878-1920

“Inside Texas: Culture, Identity and Houses, 1878–1920” is a 464 page book with 296 photos that tests and rejects the notion that Texas homes, like all things Texan, were unique and different. Over the 40 year time span covered by the book, decorating ideas nationally and in Texas went from the era of Victorianism with “all that stuff” to the spare, clean lines of the arts and crafts movement. By 1920, like Americans across the country, many Texans, especially the wealthier, were taking their decorating ideas from the new professionals – architects and designers – and their homes reflected less their own identity than the taste and eye of the decorator.

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By Cynthia A. Brandimarte

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research. Recipient of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History.

Turn Your Eyes Toward Texas: Pioneers Sam and Mary Maverick

From Sam Maverick’s arrival in Texas to his death in 1870, he participated in many of the most momentous events of the state’s early history, including the Siege of Bexar and the defense of the Alamo. He accumulated a fabled land empire and inspired the term “maverick” to denote an unbranded calf or an independent person. Sam’s wife, Mary—by some accounts the first AngloAmerican woman to settle in San Antonio—lived through the stresses and tragedies of pioneer family life, chronicling them with emotional intensity and immediacy of detail. Together Sam and Mary founded a Texas family dynasty and contributed immeasurably to the cultural development of San Antonio.

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By Paula Mitchell Marks, Ph.D.

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

Rise of the Lone Star: The Making of Texas

Patriotic Texans have long sung the praises of their "revolutionary heroes," such as Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston. Some historians have even contributed their own encomiums, while others have cast a less romantic gaze upon Texas' past. But a complete, scholarly analysis of the persons, politics, and events that created the Republic of Texas was not among the material on Texas' so-called revolution that has been published in the last century.

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By Andreas V. Reichstein

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

Soldiers, Sutlers, and Settlers: Garrison Life on the Texas Frontier

Texas’ frontiers in the 1840s were buffeted by disputes with Mexico and attacks by Indian tribes who refused to give up their life-styles to make way for new settlers. To ensure some measure of peace in the far reaches of Texas, the U.S. Army established a series of military forts in the state. These outposts varied in size and amenities, but the typical installation was staffed with officers, enlisted men, medical personnel, and civilian laundresses. Many soldiers brought their families to the frontier stations. While faced with the hardships of post life, wives and children helped create a more congenial environment for all concerned.

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By Robert A. Wooster

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

Los Mesteños: Spanish Ranching in Texas, 1721-1821

Jack Jackson chronicles in rich detail the hundred years of Spanish ranching that came before Mexico, and subsequently Texas, gained independence. From the introduction of livestock into the province by various early entradas (expeditions), to the first big roundup in 1787, and beyond, he traces the development of the range and of cattle working. He shows the feral increase of the early herds, the conflicts over ownership of the wild animals (mesteños), the emergence of Spanish "dynasties," and the attempts of colonial governments to regulate the industry.

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By Jack Jackson

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

Falfurrias: Ed C. Lasater and the Development of South Texas

Like many pioneer western cattlemen, Ed C. Lasater was confident, optimistic, and an aggressive user of bank credit. This history of the South Texas rancher and dairyman paints a vivid picture of frontier agriculture in an era that featured some of the region and the nation’s most progressive and most trying times.

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By Dale Lasater

Recipient of the Kate Broocks Bates Award for Historical Research.

Women in Texas History

In recent decades, a small but growing number of historians have dedicated their tireless attention to analyzing the role of women in Texas history. Each contribution—and there have been many—represents a brick in the wall of new Texas history. From early Native societies to astronauts, Women in Texas History assembles those bricks into a carefully crafted structure as the first book to cover the full scope of Texas women’s history.

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By Angela Boswell

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Redeeming La Raza: Transborder Modernity, Race, Respectability, and Rights

The transborder modernization of Mexico and the American Southwest during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries transformed the lives of ethnic Mexicans across the political divide. While industrialization, urbanization, technology, privatization, and wealth concentration benefitted some, many more experienced dislocation, exploitative work relations, and discrimination based on race, gender, and class. The Mexican Revolution brought these issues to the fore within Mexican society, igniting a diaspora to el norte. Within the United States, similar economic and social power dynamics plagued Tejanos and awaited the war refugees. Political activism spearheaded by individuals and organizations such as the Idars, Leonor Villegas' de Magnón's White Cross, the Magonista movement, the Munguias, Emma Tenayuca, and LULAC emerged in the borderlands to address the needs of ethnic Mexicans whose lives were shaped by racism, patriarchy, and poverty.

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By Gabriela Gonzalez

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women. Recipient of the Coral Horton Tullis Memorial Prize for Best Book on Texas History.

Women in Civil War Texas: Diversity and Dissidence in the Trans-Mississippi

Women in Civil War Texas is the first book dedicated to the unique experiences of Texas women during this time. It connects Texas women’s lives to southern women’s history and shares the diversity of experiences of women in Texas during the Civil War.

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By Angela Boswell and Deborah M. Liles

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.

Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives

In Texas Women, the authors, who have been researching the world of women in the Lone Star State for over thirty years, continue their documentation of the heritage and influence of Texas' pioneering women by presenting biographies of twenty-four noted women of Texas, from the nineteenth-century writer Jane Cazneau to twentieth-century politician Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

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By Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Light Townsend Cummins, Rebecca Sharpless, and

Available for purchase at Legacy of Texas .

Recipient of the Liz Carpenter Award for Best Book on the History of Women.