The history of New Texas, the Texas we know today—oil-rich, insufferably loud, and unbearably proud of itself—begins in the late 1920s, when a horned frog wakes from its thirty-one-year nap in a courthouse cornerstone and flabbergasts the nation. In slightly over two decades ten individuals—their words, actions, and accomplishments—come to define the New Texas of the twenty-first century. While the history of Old Texas rests on oft-told legends of Houston, Austin, Travis, Crockett, Rusk, Lamar, and Seguin, today’s New Texas—proud, loud, self-promotional, sports-crazy, and too rich for its own good—is the Texas that percolates throughout the nation’s popular culture. In Texas Loud, Proud, and Brash: How Ten Mavericks Created the Twentieth-Century Lone Star State, author Rusty Williams profiles ten largely unsung men and women responsible for the Texas you love, hate, and (secretly) envy today.

This is a new release of the original 1945 edition.

Winner, 2017 Oklahoma Book Award, sponsored by the Oklahoma Center for the Book Winner, 2016 Outstanding Book on Oklahoma History, sponsored by the Oklahoma Historical Society At the beginning of America’s Great Depression, Texas and Oklahoma armed up and went to war over a 75-cent toll bridge that connected their states across the Red River. It was a two-week affair marked by the presence of National Guardsmen with field artillery, Texas Rangers with itchy trigger fingers, angry mobs, Model T blockade runners, and even a costumed Native American peace delegation. Traffic backed up for miles, cutting off travel between the states. This conflict entertained newspaper readers nationwide during the summer of 1931, but the Red River Bridge War was a deadly serious affair for many rural Americans at a time when free bridges and passable roads could mean the difference between survival and starvation. The confrontation had national consequences, too: it marked an end to public acceptance of the privately owned ferries, toll bridges, and turnpikes that threatened to strangle American transportation in the automobile age. The Red River Bridge War: A Texas-Oklahoma Border Battle documents the day-to-day skirmishes of this unlikely conflict between two sovereign states, each struggling to help citizens get goods to market at a time of reduced tax revenue and little federal assistance. It also serves as a cautionary tale, providing historical context to the current trend of re-privatizing our nation’s highway infrastructure.

From the murder of French explorer La Salle to the impressive career of the state’s first female black senator, It Happened in Texas looks at intriguing people and episodes from the history of the Lone Star State. Discover why a group of migrant farm workers marched nearly 500 miles in sweltering summer heat to meet with Texas’s governor. Find out how the annexation of Texas into the United States led to the first war Americans ever fought on foreign soil. Learn what prompted ranchers of South Texas to bombard the sky for hours with hundreds of explosives one starry night in the fall of 1891. And relive the last days of outlaw couple Bonnie and Clyde, from an endearing family reunion to their violent deaths in an unrelenting hail of gunfire.

Includes material on Sally Skull, Chipita Rodriguez, Mrs. Swine, Jessie Williams, Edna Milton, Sarah Bowman, Belle Starr, Beulah Morose, Sophia Suttenfield, Aughinbaugh Coffee Butt (or Butts) Porter, Etta Place, Allen Hill and family, Lottie Deno, Adah Isaacs Menken, Bonnie Parker, Janis Joplin, and Karla Faye Tucker.

In 1950 Dallas was a spirited Texas town of some regional importance; by 1980 it was an international city, one of the nation’s most populous, a center of trade, transportation, finance, pro sports, and popular culture. Historic Photos of Dallas in the 50s, 60s, and 70s documents this amazing transformation with seldom-seen photographs of the period. Nearly 200 historic images show Dallas in the process of refashioning its skyline, its streets, its institutions, its public behavior, and its sense of self and worth. Historic Photos of Dallas in the 50s, 60s, and 70s blends striking black-and-white images with crisp commentary to chronicle moments of joy, pride, and anguish during these tumultuous decades. This volume takes readers back to the not-so-long-ago Dallas of trolley buses, downtown movie theaters, and four-lane expressways, then shows how the city transcended its parochial beginnings to become one of the most dynamic American cities of the twentieth century.

The New Orleans Greys were a group of young men, out for the adventure and money to be gained from war. This book details the importance of their participation in the Battle of the Alamo, as well as several other battles in the rebellion of 1835. Historian Brown has taken some little known history and created a fascinating and well-crafted story for the mainstream reader.