1, 2, 3, Sí!: Numbers in English y Español

San Antonio Museum of Art (author), Madeleine Budnick (editor)

With ArteKids, children discover the world of art and learn English and Spanish at the same time. Introduce your child to the fundamentals of numbers and counting while connecting them to the world of art in a unique, fun, and colorful way. The book incorporates artwork found in the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with phrases and words in English and Spanish, to make bilingual learning and art...

100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared

Kim Stafford (author)

How many tricks does it take to grow up and survive? From a beautiful childhood, the older brother disappears into depression, leaving the younger to endure the story. 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do explores memory to find a brother lost to suicide—the saint who teaches his family about depression, violence, and the ultimate quest for harmonious relationships. Taking its title from a pamphlet Kim Stafford’s brother,...

7 Poets, 4 Days, 1 Book

Marvin Bell (author), István László Geher (author), Ksenia Golubovich (author), Simone Inguanez (author), Christopher Merrill (author), Dean Young (author), Tomaž Šalamun (author)

Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals

Claudius Aelianus (author), Gregory McNamee (editor)

The legends and innovations of the Roman Empire have been instilled in us since childhood. We know the great stories of legal and political governance, all-knowing gods and goddesses, military power and conquest, and developments in science and engineering. But we have known little, until now, about their knowledge of the animal kingdom—which was, by far, the most advanced in world history, thanks to the encyclopedic...

An Almanac for Moderns

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. An Almanac for Moderns contains a short essay for each day of the year that contemplates a unique but factual aspect of unbridled nature. According to a review in the Nation, this collection of essays manages to “appeal to the ordinary lover of nature . . . but the turn of Peattie’s mind is...

American Architecture and Urbanism

Vincent J. Scully (author)

Written by the foremost architectural historian in America, American Architecture and Urbanism is an illustrated history of American architecture and city planning based on Vincent Scully's conviction that the two are inextricably linked and must therefore be treated together. He defines architecture as a "continuing dialogue between generations which creates an environment across time." This definitive survey extends...

Animal Amigos!: Artsy Creatures in English y Español

San Antonio Museum of Art (author), Madeleine Budnick (editor)

With ArteKids, children discover the world of art and learn English and Spanish at the same time. Introduce your child to the fundamentals of animal life by connecting them to the world of art in a unique, fun, and colorful way. The book incorporates artwork found in the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art with phrases and words in English and Spanish to make bilingual learning and art exciting for eager...

The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Giles: Selected Restorations

Mary Carolyn Hollers George (author), W. Eugene George (photographs)

The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Giles focuses on architect Alfred Giles’s work in Texas and northern Mexico. Giles, who practiced from the 1870s to the 1920s after emigrating from England, designed buildings reflecting a great variety of styles derived from architectural forms of the past, combining them in original ways. Giles produced designs for unpretentious domestic residences and showy mansions, county...

Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists

Nan Cuba (editor), Riley Robinson (editor)

Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists pays tribute to the city’s vibrant creative community. A gathering of literary and visual art, the book features poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from the city’s writers, as well as images of painting, sculpture, photography, and installations from the city’s artists. All gathered here are closely associated with the city or have been in years past, and together they...

Baseball in the Lone Star State: The Texas League’s Greatest Hits

Tom Kayser (author), David King (author)

In vivid episodic chapters, Tom Kayser and David King create an entertaining history of the Texas League, providing a broad picture of the shifting character of baseball operations in this century-old minor league. Portrayed are the many varied and often colorful owners, managers, and players who did so much to give this league a powerful place in Texas culture. Accompanying the text are dozens of black-and-white...

Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology

Eldridge M. Moores (editor), Judith E. Moores (editor), Lauret E. Savoy (editor)

Novelists, poets, artists, anthropologists, traditional elders, philosophers, and naturalists come together to create a geological portrait of the Earth—from the violence of earthquakes and erupting volcanoes to epochal patterns in stone and the sinuous flow of rivers. With insights from many cultures and across time, Bedrock wonderfully illuminates the geology of our home planet.

Black & Blanco!: Engaging Art in English y Español

San Antonio Museum of Art (author), Madeleine Budnick (editor)

With ArteKids, children discover the world of art and learn English and Spanish at the same time. Introduce your child to the fundamentals of contrasting colors while connecting them to the world of art in a unique, fun, and colorful way. The book incorporates artwork found in the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art with phrases and words in English and Spanish to make bilingual learning and art exciting for...

A Book of Hours

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. A Book of Hours contains twenty-four essays, one for each hour of the day, that seek to bridge the gap between definitive scientific philosophy and the beauty that Donald Culross Peattie envisioned in everyday life. The Boston Transcript referred to this collection as “science, in sheer poetry,”...

The Burning Island: Myth and History in Volcano Country, Hawai‘i

Pamela Frierson (author)

Westerners—from early missionaries to explorers to present-day artists, scientists, and tourists—have always found volcanoes fascinating and disturbing. Native Hawaiians, in contrast, revere volcanoes as a source of spiritual energy and see the volcano goddess Pele as part of the natural cycle of a continuously procreative cosmos. Volcanoes hold a special place in our curiosity about nature. The Burning Island is an...

Cargoes and Harvests

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. Originally published in 1926, Cargoes and Harvests takes readers on a compelling adventure through the socioeconomic histories of staples such as tea, coffee, cocoa, potatoes, and tobacco. Starting with the seeds and roots of the American landscape, Peattie illustrates where we’ve been and how...

Chinese Writers on Writing

Arthur Sze (editor)

With more than half the works appearing in English for the first time, Chinese Writers on Writing features authors such as Mo Yan, whose book Red Sorghum was made into an award-winning movie by the same name, Lu Xun, known as the Chinese George Orwell, and Gao Xingjian, the recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. This is the first collection to bring together material by writers reflecting on their work,...

Clowns and Rats Scare Me

Cary Clack (author), Naomi Shihab Nye (foreword)

Cary Clack is beloved in San Antonio, and for good reason. He brings wit and wisdom to his writings, making his columns the first thing people turn to in the morning paper. It’s fair to say that Clack speaks to people beyond his local fans, using his heartfelt, probing, and powerful approach to cover national issues such as terrorism, racism, and child abuse. After 9/11 he spent weeks in New York City, observing...

Colores Everywhere!: Colors in English y Español

San Antonio Museum of Art (author), Madeleine Budnick (editor)

With ArteKids, children discover the world of art and learn English and Spanish at the same time. Introduce your child to the fundamentals of colors by connecting them to the world of art in a unique, fun, and colorful way. The book incorporates artwork found in the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with phrases and words in English and Spanish, to make bilingual learning and art exciting for eager...

Colors on Clay: The San José Tile Workshops of San Antonio

Susan Toomey Frost (author)

Colors on Clay brings to life the rich artistry, designers, and styles that brought the colorful tiles, bowls, plates, and other wares produced by the San José Workshops in San Antonio, Texas, into prominence nationally. Intertwining art, personality profiles, and history, Susan Toomey Frost presents the first definitive account of this intriguing story. Against the backdrop of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the...

Deep in the Heart of San Antonio: Land and Life in South Texas

Char Miller (author)

Char Miller combines the savvy of a historian and the street smarts of an urban observer as he delves into the special qualities of San Antonio and the larger issues characterizing South Texas. Writing with a lively and intimate style, Miller provides an overview of the region’s natural and environmental history; water issues; urban development; politics; and the Alamo City’s future. He subtly and successfully...

Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime

Kenneth I. Helphand (author)

Why is it that in the midst of a war, one can still find gardens? Wartime gardens are dramatic examples of what landscape architect Kenneth Helphand calls defiant gardens—gardens created in extreme social, political, economic, or cultural conditions. In his examination of the landscape of war, Helphand not only details the surprising occurrence of gardens but also provides an expansive account of the events and forces...

Diversions of the Field

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. The essays in Diversions of the Field tackle the subjects of hunting, fishing, game animals, and wildlife in different regions of the country. The Atlantic called the collection “a refreshing animal book,” and the New York Times said it was “written by a naturalist, who is at heart a poet, to...

The Ecopoetry Anthology

Ann Fisher-Wirth (editor), Laura-Gray Street (editor), Robert Hass (introduction)

As the critic R. P. Blackmur said, poetry “adds to the stock of available reality.” In The Ecopoetry Anthology, editors Ann Fisher-Wirth and Laura-Gray Street present hundreds of poems that add to our reality about the natural world, its beauties and its degradations. This groundbreaking collection has the capacity to transform people's lives aesthetically and politically. Poetry's eloquent and ineffable power can...

Fifty Years of the Texas Observer

Char Miller (editor), Molly Ivins (foreword)

For the past five decades the Texas Observer has been an essential voice in Texas culture and politics, championing honest government, civil rights, labor, and the environment, providing a platform for many of the state’s most passionate and progressive voices. Included here are ninety-one selections, including Roy Bedichek, Lou Dubose, Ronnie Dugger, Dagoberto Gilb, Jim Hightower, Molly Ivins, Larry McMurtry, Maury...

Flowering Earth

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. In Flowering Earth Peattie explores the origin and significance of plant life with an unmatched sense of astonishment and reflection. According to the New York Times, his prose in this extraordinary work “is pervaded by a continuous sense of beauty and illuminative insight.”

A Gathering of Birds: An Anthology of the Best Ornithological Prose

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. A Gathering of Birds is an anthology of selected prose about birds by nineteen writers, among them Hudson, Audubon, and Thoreau, and includes brief biographical information about each. The New York Times called the book “a delightful ‘gathering’ that Mr. Peattie has presented, and his own...

The Grand Array: Writings on Nature, Science, and Spirit

Pattiann Rogers (author)

The Grand Array is a stunning collection of essays by acclaimed poet Pattiann Rogers. Written over a span of twenty-five years, these essays—and three interviews—show Rogers daringly yet delicately laying out her vision of the essential unity and interdependence of science, spirituality, the arts, and the sensual experience of the physical world. Composed in an anecdotal and lyrical—but never dogmatic—style, The Grand...

Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the Great Naturalists

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissues that have been out-of-print for decades by one of the most-loved naturalists of all time. In Green Laurels, Donald Culross Peattie combines his extensive knowledge of history's foremost naturalists with his personal observations about the subject to form what the New York Herald Tribune called "a delightful book...one would not wish to miss on any account." This piece is accurate and...

Hebrew Writers on Writing

Peter Cole (editor)

Hebrew Writers on Writing begins in early twentieth-century Warsaw, wanders through the formative years of Hebrew modernism in Europe and Palestine, and comes to engage the charged complexity of contemporary Israel. In the process, it explores, as no English volume has before, the shifting cultural and political landscape out of which the literature emerges and provides readers with an intimate vision of a startlingly...

Hello, Círculos!: Shapes in English y Español

San Antonio Museum of Art (author), Madeleine Budnick (editor)

With ArteKids, children discover the world of art and learn English and Spanish at the same time. Introduce your child to the fundamentals of shapes by connecting them to the world of art in a unique, fun, and colorful way. The book incorporates artwork found in the collections of the San Antonio Museum of Art, along with phrases and words in English and Spanish, to make bilingual learning and art exciting for eager...

Hi Mom, Send Sheep!: My Life as the Coyote and After

Tim Derk (author), David Robinson (foreword)

At the age of forty-seven, Tim Derk’s career as mascot for the San Antonio Spurs was soaring as the team headed toward their third NBA Championship. That career ended abruptly when he suffered a massive stroke. Despite remarkable success in regaining speech and movement, Derk knew there was no going back. Hi Mom, Send Sheep! is his fond look at his years as the Coyote. Beginning with his recruitment from a community...

Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape

Debra Gwartney (editor), Barry Lopez (editor), Molly O’Halloran (illustrations)

Have you ever wondered how it came to be called Las Vegas? Or why it was the Natchez Trace, not the Natchez Trail? Or what the difference is between ripples and riffles in a stream? Home Ground brings together, for the first time, the distinctly American vocabulary that people use to characterize the country’s landscape. Forty-five writers, with backgrounds and imaginations as different as journalist Bill McKibben’s...

Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape

Debra Gwartney (editor), Barry Lopez (editor)

Hailed by book reviewers as a "masterpiece," "gorgeous and fascinating," and "sheer pleasure," Home Ground was published in fall 2006 in hardcover. It was met with outstanding reviews and strong sales, going into three printings. A language lover's dream, this visionary reference revitalized a descriptive language for the American landscape by combining geography, literature, and folklore in one volume. This is a...

In a Special Light

Elroy Bode (author)

In a Special Light is a collection of essays and short pieces by Texas writer Elroy Bode. In simple but memorable prose, Bode explores his home city of El Paso, as well as the land and people of Central Texas. He observes everyday events—a young boy in a barbershop; plaza life; a young couple in Smoky’s Barbecue. Bode also reflects on his life as a high school English teacher, a father, and a writer. The work of Bode,...

In the Blue Pharmacy: Essays on Poetry and Other Transformations

Marianne Boruch (author)

Celebrated poet and essayist Marianne Boruch ponders poets and poetry, examining how the imagination works with mystery and surprise in a variety of writers. Combining a richly associative style with original insights on poetic texts, she brings in material from other worlds—among them, science and music—to demonstrate the myriad ways we transform experience and knowledge. The sixteen essays here explore poets and...

In the Country of Empty Crosses: The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico

Arturo Madrid (author), Miguel Gandert (photographs)

In the Country of Empty Crosses is Arturo Madrid’s complex yet affirming memoir about northern New Mexico—places such as Tierra Amarilla, San Augustín, and Los Fuertes that were once among the most remote in the nation. This is Madrid's homeland, a place in which his ancestors predate those who landed at Plymouth Rock. Madrid grew up in a family that was doubly removed from the community: as Hispanic Protestants,...

In the Sun’s House: My Year Teaching on the Navajo Reservation

Kurt Caswell (author), Rex Lee Jim (afterword)

In the Sun's House chronicles one academic year of Caswell’s life during which he taught at a small elementary and middle school at Borrego Pass, a remote Navajo community in northwest New Mexico. Caswell struggles all year to earn respect in the classroom, as his students know that he is an interloper, just one white teacher in a long string of white teachers who come to the reservation with no intention of staying....

Irish Writers on Writing

Eavan Boland (editor)

What does it mean to be a writer in the context of Ireland’s centuries of uncertainty and upheaval? How does an Irish writer define Irish writing? The writers in Irish Writers on Writing, who range from early legends to modern masters, address these questions through their sources: the land, the Church, the past, changing politics, and literary styles. Though the references are multiple, the source is single—the Irish...

I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing: Field Notes on Poetry, Illness, and Nature

Lucia Perillo (author)

During her days as a park ranger, Lucia Perillo loved nothing more than to hike the Cascade Mountains alone, taking special pride in her daring solo skis down the raw, unpatrolled slopes of Mount Rainier. Then in her thirties she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In I’ve Heard the Vultures Singing Perillo confronts, in stark but often comic terms, the ironies and losses of going from an outdoors person to...

José María de Jesús Carvajal: The Life and Times of a Mexican Revolutionary

Joseph E. Chance (author)

Both a biography of the Mexican reformer and a study of the events that shaped the Mexican-U.S. border, José María de Jesús Carvajal examines the challenges faced by Carvajal during the turbulent decades of the early to mid-nineteenth century. Carvajal, whose career stretched from the Texas Revolution to the French Intervention, played a key role in the violent struggle between the liberal and conservative political...

A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft

Andrea Barrett (editor), Peter Turchi (editor)

A Kite in the Wind: Twenty Fiction Writers on Their Craft is an anthology of essays by twenty veteran writers and master teachers. While the contributors offer specific, practical advice on such fundamental aspects of craft as characterization, character names, the first person point of view, and unreliable narrators, they also give extended, thoughtful consideration to more sophisticated topics, including...

Land and Light in the American West

Becky Duval Reese (foreword), William R. Thompson (introduction), John Ward (photographs)

Ranging in scale from tree bark to the vast emptiness of the desert Southwest, the photographs in Land and Light in the American West provide a visual integration of landscape and ruin, transcendence and decay, that speaks to the powerful forces of nature and culture at work in the West. Inspired by the photography of Eliot Porter and Ansel Adams and their dedication to the natural world, John Ward has been...

The Land’s Wild Music: Encounters with Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin

Mark Tredinnick (author)

The Land's Wild Music explores the home terrains and the writing of four great American writers of place—Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Terry Tempest Williams, and James Galvin. In their work and its relationship with their home places, Tredinnick, an Australian writer, searches for answers to such questions such as whether it’s possible for a writer to make an authentic witness of a place; how one captures the...

The Last Atoll: Exploring Hawai‘i’s Endangered Ecosystems

Pamela Frierson (author)

The Last Atoll is Pamela Frierson’s decade-long exploration of the least known part of Hawai‘i—the islands, atolls, and reefs at the far northwestern end of the archipelago. In travels that span over 1,200 miles, Frierson chronicles natural wonders and a troubled history, ending up at Kure Atoll, the most ancient Hawaiian landfall and the northernmost atoll on earth. Hers is an adventurous journey across the geology,...

Literary Charleston and the Lowcountry

Curtis Worthington (editor), Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (foreword)

The different faces of Charleston, South Carolina, have created curiosity and wonder among writers for centuries. In Literary Charleston and the Lowcountry, Curtis Worthington compiles this intriguing and surprising collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry selections by thirty-four local and internationally acclaimed authors. It provides a rich tapestry of one of the most popular tourist destinations worldwide....

Literary Nashville

Patrick Allen (editor), Madison Jones (foreword)

From honky tonk to high art, from Printer’s Alley to the Parthenon, Nashville is a writer’s town.There are many accents in Nashville, from the twang of country music and rockabilly to the well-bred tones of Belle Meade society. From Davy Crockett tales and the Agrarians to the BillBoard Top 100 and Goo-Goo Clusters, Nashville is known around the world. Yet the city’s true identity is best realized through its fiction,...

Literary Savannah

Patrick Allen (editor)

The statues of Savannah’s Monument Square are silent. The status of the solemn girl in Bonaventure Cemetery—made famous in John Berendt’s now legendary book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil—cannot speak. Only Savannah’s literary monuments can give voice to the rich and diverse history of one of America’s greatest and most visited cities. Many have written about Savannah, but few have captured the true spirit...

Literary Washington, D.C.

Patrick Allen (editor), Alan Cheuse (foreword)

The public face of Washington—the gridiron of L’Enfant’s avenues, the buttoned-down demeanor of Sloan Wilson’s archetypal “Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,” the monumental buildings of the Triangle—rarely gives up the secrets of this city’s rich life. But beneath the surface there are countless stories to be told. From the early swamp days to the Civil War, the Gilded Age to the New Deal and McCarthy eras, as the center...

Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer

Peter Turchi (author)

Maps of the Imagination takes us on a magic carpet ride over terrain both familiar and exotic. Using the map as a metaphor, fiction writer Peter Turchi considers writing as a combination of exploration and presentation, all the while serving as an erudite and charming guide. He compares the way a writer leads a reader though the imaginary world of a story, novel, or poem to the way a mapmaker charts the physical...

Mexican Writers on Writing

Margaret Sayers Peden (editor)

The pieces collected in Mexican Writers on Writing present a cross section of Mexican authors’ thoughts on writing, from Carlos Fuentes’s instructional Decalogue, to Bernardo de Balbuena’s flowery dissertation on the beauty of poetry, to Octavio Paz’s analysis of the essence of translation. From the time of the chronicles of the conquistadors to the contemporary movement Crack, these writers reveal ever-changing views...

The Monkey’s Bridge: Mysteries of Evolution in Central America

David Rains Wallace (author)

The Monkey’s Bridge is the story of Central America’s role as an evolutionary link between continents. No place reflects the sweep of evolutionary change more than Central America, where northern and southern organisms mingle in ecosystems ranging from Guatemalan pine-oak forests to Panamanian rain forests. Award-winning writer David Rains Wallace artfully combines vivid travel writing, reflections on the...

Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Kathleen Dean Moore (editor), Michael P. Nelson (editor), Desmond Tutu (foreword)

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of more than eighty visionaries—theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturists, activists, and writers—to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibilities to our planet.

A Natural History of North American Trees

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

One in a series of reissued books that have been out of print for decades, by one of the most loved naturalists of all time. "A volume for a lifetime" is how the New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and...

Nineteenth-Century American Writers on Writing

Brenda Wineapple (editor)

Nineteenth-Century American Writers on Writing features essays, letters, poems, prose, and excerpts of interviews by fifty-seven writers of the century, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Fanny Fern, Ulysses S. Grant, William James, and Frances Harper. Each of these writers confronted what it meant for a literature to be defined as “American” during a century rocked by the industrial...

A Novel Approach to Life

Coleen Grissom (author)

A Novel Approach to Life gathers a selection of the many noteworthy speeches Coleen Grissom has delivered over the years, entertaining and enlightening San Antonio audiences. On the page, these speeches read like the carefully crafted essays they are and, among other things, provide an intimate view of five decades on an American university campus—Trinity University. Grissom celebrates her love of literature and...

On the Border: An Environmental History of San Antonio

Char Miller (editor)

This collection of eleven essays examines the environmental history of San Antonio, drawing on an interdisciplinary array of authors and insights to highlight the evolving relationship between the city’s residents and the South Texas landscape and showing how the human community and the natural environment have shaped each other. The border of the title refers to San Antonio’s location at the edge of the Great Plains...

On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest

Char Miller (author)

On the Edge grew out of a lifetime spent living and traveling across the American Southwest, from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Internal to the various U.S. states and Mexico's northern tier, there are struggles over water, debates over undocumented immigrants, the criminalizing of the border, and the region's evolution into a no-man's land. The book investigates how we live on this contested land—how we make our place...

One-Way Tickets: Writers and the Culture of Exile

Alicia Borinsky (author)

In One-Way Tickets, Alicia Borinsky offers readers a splendid tour across twentieth-century literature and popular culture, providing a literary travelogue of writers and artists in exile. She describes their challenges in adjusting to new homelands, issues of identity and language, and the brilliant works produced under the discomforts and stresses of belonging nowhere. Glimpses of Hollywood divas, the romance of...

Places for the Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens

Hilton Als (foreword), Lowry Pei (introduction), Vaughn Sills (photographs)

Places for the Spirit is a stunning collection of more than eighty fine art photographs of African American folk gardens—and their creators—in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Through her patient search up and down small-town streets and dusty rural roads, award-winning photographer Vaughn Sills has unearthed an important element of American landscape that is quickly...

Plan for New Haven

Cass Gilbert (author), Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (author), Vincent J. Scully (preface), Alan J. Plattus (introduction), Douglas W. Rae (afterword)

Long before cities were going green and eco-conscious residents began debating ideas of sustainability, New Haven, Connecticut, was envisioning a plan for its growth taken from the challenging ideas of the City Beautiful movement and its call for civic monumentality. In a 1910 plan commissioned to legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and prominent architect Cass Gilbert, New Haven leaders charted...

The Plazas of New Mexico

Stefanos Polyzoides (editor), Chris Wilson (editor), Miguel Gandert (photographs)

The Plazas of New Mexico documents the rich heritage of New Mexico’s public plazas and the everyday life and community celebrations that help sustain them. It traces three distinct design traditions—the Native American center place with kiva and terraced residential blocks, the Hispanic plaza with church and courtyard houses, and the Anglo square with courthouse and business areas. New Mexico’s plazas, like urban...

Poets on the Psalms

Lynn Domina (editor)

Reverential, celebratory, antagonistic, and even erotic, this remarkable collection of essays interprets the Psalms as a collection of poetry. Written by fourteen acclaimed poets, the essays approach the Psalms from a personal, often autobiographical perspective, demonstrating how relevant they remain for today’s readers.

Polish Writers on Writing

Adam Zagajewski (editor)

Polish Writers on Writing captures the brilliance and originality of a literature rightly considered one of the most important and influential of our time. These writers are branded by the political realities of their country—creating literature out of the brutality of the Second World War, under the inhibiting and numbing Communist reign, and finally within a free society, but one burdened by its history. No common...

The Power of Trees

Gretchen C. Daily (author), Charles J. Katz Jr. (photographs)

Intimate in size yet quietly breathtaking in scope, this graceful gift book will forever change how you think, and how you feel, about trees. In poetically charged scientific observations, renowned conservation biologist Gretchen Daily narrates the evolution, impact, and natural wonder of trees. Charles Katz’s twenty-six duotone black and white photographs illustrate the development of trees: how trunks were formed,...

Ranch Gates of the Southwest

Lucy R. Lippard (introduction), Daniel M. Olsen (photographs), Henk van Assen (photographs), Kenneth I. Helphand (contributor)

In the wide open landscapes of the Southwest, ranch gates stand out as singular icons of a way of life common to the region. Not only symbols of ranching culture, they also offer insight into the design, landscape, and cultural history of the Southwest. Ranch Gates of the Southwest explores in images and text how these entryways lead to an understanding of the people and the land across a territory that covers...

The Ranch That Was Us

Becky Crouch Patterson (author), Willie Nelson (foreword)

Braiding strands of earthen insight with uproarious storytelling, legendary Texas Hill Country author Becky Patterson recreates the history of the Stieler Hill Ranch in twenty-four anecdotal chapters interspersed with original artwork. The result is a mixture of memoir and montage, treasure chest and tableau vivant of a world that’s beautiful, brash, and wonderfully heartbreaking. Patterson, the daughter of Texas folk...

Reagan’s Comeback: Four Weeks in Texas That Changed American Politics Forever

Gilbert Garcia (author)

Reagan's Comeback is the surprising story of a pivotal point in Ronald Reagan’s career: a single dramatic month during the 1976 presidential election in which he found his footing on the national stage and turned American politics upside down. Never before has anyone told the story of how Reagan fi nally found his voice as a presidential contender and overcame the powerful Republican establishment to forever change...

Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz

Joanne Mulcahy (author)

For more than a decade, Joanne Mulcahy worked with Eva Castellanoz to capture her astonishing and sometimes harrowing life story from a poor farm worker in the Rio Grande Valley to a life of dignity and recognition. Former President Ronald Reagan called Eva Castellanoz a "national treasure" when he awarded her a National Heritage Fellowship in 1987. Featured in National Geographic, on National Public Radio, and in...

River of Traps: A New Mexico Mountain Life

Alex Harris (author), William deBuys (author)

River of Traps combines words and photographs to tell the story of Jacobo Romero, an oldtime northern New Mexico villager who befriends the authors and initiates them into knowledge of land, water, and a way of life long rooted in the mountain valley that became their common home. Critically acclaimed and widely admired, River of Traps has been justifiably called a western classic.

The Road of a Naturalist

Donald Culross Peattie (author)

The Road of a Naturalist is a fascinating autobiographical wonder written by one of America's most beloved naturalists at the height of his fame. A scientist, a philosopher, and a poet, Donald Culross Peattie takes us on an confessional journey across the landscape of his life. Told in flashbacks of years past and interspersed with impressions of a journey by motorcar across the American West, the book is intensely...

Romanian Writers on Writing

Norman Manea (editor)

Vanity doubled by vitality, vulnerability mixed in with force, and the fear of dissolution intimately linked with the desperate pride of defeating historical time confer upon Romanian literature a special tension, born from wandering and threat. The eighty-one writers gathered in Romanian Writers on Writing explore this unsettling tension and exemplify the powerful, polyphonic voice of their country’s complex...

San Antonio in Color

W. B. Thompson (illustrations)

San Antonio in Color captures the city’s historic sites, including the old Catholic missions, the Paseo del Rio, and the Spanish Governor’s Palace, as well as cultural institutions, such as the McNay Art Museum, the Carver Community Cultural Center, and the San Antonio Public Library. Completing the visual tour are scenes from San Antonio’s neighborhoods, festivals, and popular haunts—a west side ice house, King...

Saving Creation: Nature and Faith in the Life of Holmes Rolston III

Christopher J. Preston (author)

Saving Creation is the compelling story of Templeton Prize winner and Gifford lecturer Holmes Rolston III. Known as the father of environmental ethics, Rolston is celebrated for his advocacy to protect the Earth’s biodiversity and for his critical work reconciling evolutionary biology and Christianity. Christopher J. Preston conducted countless hours of personal interviews with Rolston, his family members, and his...

Stealing History

Gerald Stern (author)

In eighty-four short, intermingling essays, Gerald Stern moves nimbly between the past and the present, the personal and the philosophical. Creating the immediacy of dailiness, he writes about what he’s reading at the moment, be it Spinoza or John Cage, Maimonides or Lucille Clifton, and then seamlessly turns to memories of his student years in Europe on the G.I. Bill, or early family life in Pittsburgh, or his...

Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent

William L. Fox (author)

How do humans turn land into landscape and maps into art? William Fox has worked for more than three decades in the world’s harshest places, and everywhere he goes he has posed these questions in order to understand how we make space into place, and place into home. Now he takes us to the Antarctic, a continent so distant and difficult that everyone who has ever visited it would fit into a single football stadium....

Transforming San Antonio

Nelson W. Wolff (author), Henry Cisneros (foreword)

San Antonio boasts one of the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions, thanks to visionary personalities, key politicians, a vibrant citizenry, and a bit of luck. In this lively behind-the-scenes account, Bexar County judge and former San Antonio mayor Nelson Wolff conveys the complexity of the characters and the events—who said what to whom when and how that affected further developments. Wolff focuses on four...

Trinity University: A Tale of Three Cities

R. Douglas Brackenridge (author)

Since its founding in 1869 by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Trinity University has been engaged in realizing the dreams of its founders to become “a University of the highest order.” R. Douglas Brackenridge, professor emeritus of religion at Trinity University, brings a wealth of scholarship and knowledge to this institutional history. Brackenridge traces Trinity’s unique heritage from its founding in Tehuacana...

The Walk

William deBuys (author)

From Pulitzer Prize finalist William deBuys comes an uncommonly beautiful book—a testament to a particular place and to the horses that inhabit it, all of which help him rediscover hope after the end of a long marriage and the death of a friend. Set, like deBuys’s book River of Traps, on the small farm in a New Mexico mountain valley that the author has tended since 1977, The Walk explores the illuminating ways in...

The Way of Natural History

Thomas Lowe Fleischner (editor)

In this eclectic anthology, more than twenty scientists, nature writers, poets, and Zen practitioners attest to how paying attention to nature can be a healing antidote to the hectic and harrying pace of our lives.  Natural history is one of the oldest continuous human traditions. Throughout human history, attentiveness to nature was so completely entwined with daily life that it was never considered a practice...

What I Can’t Bear Losing

Gerald Stern (author)

In stunning personal essays that combine autobiography and meditation, poet Gerald Stern explores significant events in his life. As in his poetry, Stern discovers his subject as he goes along. His poetry has been variously praised for its visionary quality, its passion, its wholehearted embrace of life, its scope, its tenderness, and its use of paradox and irony. He is often compared to Walt Whitman, but Kate...

Wisdom for a Livable Planet: The Visionary Work of Terri Swearingen, Dave Foreman, Wes Jackson, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Werner Fornos, Herman Daly, Stephen Schneider, and David Orr

Carl N. McDaniel (author)

Carl McDaniel profiles the work and lives of eight visionaries who have dedicated their lives to various environmental issues. Each of their stories provides a portrait of an individual's valiant and inspiring campaign to improve the health of our planet.  The narratives of these visionaries collectively give us hope, and they suggest to us ways to act to create a brighter future for all life. *Terri Swearingen,...

Writing Architecture: A Practical Guide to Clear Communication about the Built Environment

Carter Wiseman (author)

Writing Architecture considers the process, methods, and value of architecture writing based on Carter Wiseman’s thirty years of personal experience writing, editing, and teaching young architects how to write. This book creatively tackles a problematic issue that Wiseman considers to crucial to successful architecture writing: clarity of thinking and expression. He argues that because we live our lives within the...

Yosemite in Time: Ice Ages, Tree Clocks, Ghost Rivers

Rebecca Solnit (author), Mark Klett (photographs), Byron Wolfe (photographs)

Yosemite is a world-famous location that has attracted photographic greats like Eadweard Muybridge, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams, along with environmentalists, mountaineers, and countless tourists. Yosemite in Time puts this landscape and its history in a new perspective, with Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe’s original photographs and panoramas, together with rephotographs of some of the most enduring images taken at...