Once you meet Isaac Bladen, you'll never forget him. "The Eyes of Texans: From Slavery to the Texas Capitol" is a new book by Melvin E. Edwards, an award-winning newspaper reporter/columnist, and a former legislative speechwriter for long-time Texas Lt. Governor and Governor Rick Perry. Edwards' thirty years of genealogy research confirmed family stories that had been told for decades, exposed some that weren't accurate, and discovered details that had long been buried. These "first person" accounts will capture your attention and take you on a drive-by of the past 200 years of American and Texas history. Isaac Bladen was born into slavery on a farm just outside of Washington, D.C., in a town that is named after the family that enslaved him. He and his Virginia-born wife, Elvira, ended up in Texas in 1844 as enslaved farmers in Leon County, where they had a daughter, Louisa, who eventually married Amos Jones. Louisa and Amos became the parents of Walter Jones. Louisa was born 15 years before the Civil War and died four months after the end of World War II at the age of 99. Her son, Walter, and daughter-in-law, Anna Thorn, had a son they named Orlean Jones. Orlean and Alma Logan Jones became the parents of Ella Jones Edwards, the author's mother. The Logans and the Bladens lived in the same county at the same time as early as 1856, though it would take decades before they crossed family lines when Orlean and Alma married in 1923. For more than 100 years, beginning in 1844, their ancestors lived in Leon County, Texas, as farmers and cowboys, before moving to Houston for a "fresh start." Nearly two centuries after Isaac's birth in Bladensburg, Maryland, his great-great-great grandson rose to a key role at the Texas State Capitol just two hours away from where Isaac was enslaved for most of his life in Leona. This is a story of Texas through the eyes of true Texans. From a slave in the 19th century to a governor's speechwriter by the end of the 20th century. It is a creative re-telling based on actual events and family stories.

C.1 ST. AID B & T. 07-05-2007. $13.99.

In this seventh book in the "USA Today"-bestselling series, legendary mountain man Matt Jensen takes on a ruthless gang of cutthroats. Original.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.

In 1975, a secret organization known as The Eyes of Texas was founded on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. The Eyes of Texas quickly gained power over the Student Government, secretly controlling university life. In 2008, Lance Kennedy informed students about corruption at the University. The next year, an email was leaked to the campus newspaper revealing the existence of the society and confirming Kennedy's claims. The email revealed that the Eyes were working to promote the administration's initiatives instead of helping the campus be a better home to the thousands of students called Longhorns. This book is an exciting journey through Kennedy's attempts to thwart the power of The Eyes of Texas and improve the quality of life for the University's students, faculty, and staff. Meticulously researched, this book, The Eyes of Texas, includes excerpts from The Daily Texan and other news sources to highlight the influence of this secretive band of brothers and sisters, and the ongoing attempts to shed light on the activities of The Eyes of Texas and corruption at the University of Texas at Austin.

Past promises will be tested as new ones are given in Gray's latest, "A Texan's Promise," sure to please her fans and readers.

In ten impassioned essays, veteran Texas environmental advocates and conservation professionals step outside their roles as lawyers, lobbyists, administrators, consultants, and researchers to write about water. Their personal stories of what the springs, rivers, bottomlands, bayous, marshes, estuaries, bays, lakes, and reservoirs mean to them and to our state come alive in the landscape photography of Charles Kruvand. Allied with the Texas Living Waters Project (a joint education and policy initiative of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among others), editor Ken Kramer joins his fellow activists in a call to keep rivers flowing, to protect wildlife habitat, and to save tax dollars by using water efficiently and sustainability. INSIDE THIS BOOK:Introduction: the Living Waters of Texas—Ken KramerWhere the First Raindrop Falls—David K. LangfordSpringing to Life: Keeping the Waters Flowing—Dianne WassenichHooked on Rivers—Myron J. HessFalling in Love with Bottomlands: Waters and Forests of East Texas—Janice BezansonOn the Banks of the Bayous: Preserving Nature in an Urban Environment—Mary Ellen WhitworthA Taste of the Marsh—Susan Raleigh KaderkaBays and Estuaries of Texas: An Ephemeral Treasure?—Ben F. Vaughan IIIRio Grande: Fragile Lifeline in the Desert—Mary E. KellyLeaving a Water Legacy for Texas—Ann Thomas HamiltonTexas Water Politics: Forty Years of Going with the Flow—Ken Kramer