This was one of the very first cookbooks I ever purchased and it has been a mainstay in my kitchen ever since. The recipes are clear and concise. Not to mention all the recipes are incredibly delicious. I was raised in Austin and now reside in Colorado so it was great to take this cookbook with me. My family and I love the brisquet recipe, the chicken fried steak, king ranch chicken and countless others. It was also nice to be able to bring some of the great food I grew up on into my own kitchen and prepare these meals for friends and family. This is definitely a cookbook for anyone who loves southern, texmex and the in between. I highly recommend it. Texans definitely know how to cook!

This book is probably the best comprehensive study book for the Professional Development part of the ExCET exam. It has lots of information and sample test questions. It is very well written and was suggested in my school district as the best book to get. There is a study book that works well with it (kind of like a workbook) called Pass the ExCET on Your First Try. I highly recommend The Best Test Prep...

This is a great work on Parsons' Cavalry in the Civil War: The 12, 19th, and 21st Cavalry, Morgan's Texas Battalion, the Tenth Texas Field Battery, and Johnson's Spy company. I have an ancestor in the 19th Texas Cavalry and I found this work to be complete and accurate. Well, either it is accurate, or the Confederate Research Center is accurate, but that's another story... Anyhow, this fine work covers the early Civil War days in Texas, the wild skirmishes in Arkansas, the raid into Missouri, the Red River Campaign (where the Texans, outnumbered 5 to 1, inflicted such punishment on the Yankee cavalry, infantry, artillery, and ironclads that they retreated across the Mississippi, never to return). Yee-Haw! It is a great book - I get goose bumps just readin' it.

Dunagin is right on target by giving us practical steps of outreach, renewal, and growth in the mainline church located in an area that has experienced demographical changes. With great programatic recommendations, he's right on target with United Methodists, Lutherans, Disciples, and others who want to get off the plateau.

Joe Nocera is the best business writer in America and this a collection of works from his days as a writer at the highly regarded Texas Monthly.

If you buy the book, please send a note and ask Joe to wear white shirts when he appears on CNBC. He looks too wild and crazy with the other colors.

Don McNay...

Ron Tyler's seminal work on the Big Bend of Texas is required reading for anyone who plans a trip to the "Texas Outback". This enchanting out-of-the-way part of Texas has invited explorers and adventurers for years and Tyler's historical treatment brings all the mystery and drama of the region to the surface for the modern traveler. The maps and historical photographs blend with the text to give the reader a "sense of place" that separates the Big Bend area from other southwestern landscapes. A must read for anyone interested in the remote lands of North America.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by lifelong naturalists Campbell and Lynn Loughmiller, Big Thicket Legacy is a compendium of engaging and informative anecdotes about life and living in the Big Thicket country, which is a nearly impassable area of Texas territory that only a few pioneers dared to brave. In those days, only the heartiest of individuals and families could call a place within the heart of the Big Thicket home; their tales have become a part of Texas folklore, and in Big Thicket Legacy are preserved to available to the general reading public, thereby recounting a very special experienced wisdom for new generations of Texans.

I had to read this book for my history class (my Professor is Ernest Obadele-Starks!) This book gives all the inside scoop about why and how unions were formed, how the FECP help minorities, and some of the flaws of the FECP. I think it's a good book to read to learn more about unions and racism during the mid 1900's. I think Dr. Starks is an excellent professor and this book tells a lot about his knowledge in the subject.

My friend Edgar actually wrote this, I'm just passing it on, since he's read the book and I haven't yet. The language is a bit stilted because it was originally included in a college term paper.

If earlier attempts to form historical connections from the pre-Contact past to the ethnographic present have been confounded by unintelligible data, new developments in Maya hieroglyphic translation radically collapsed many of the previous barriers to consulting the pre-Contact records, especially from the Classic Period (ca. 100-900 CE). Blaffer's fascinating (1972) ethnozoological monograph focuses on bat symbolism, from pre-Contact mythology and iconography to modern ethnography and folklore of the Tzotzils around Zinacantan, Chiapas. Specifically, Blaffer is interested in the continual identification of the bat with what in structuralism is termed the "ambiguous" or "anomalous intermediate category," a type of entity that obtains characteristics from both poles of otherwise diametric oppositions: nature/culture, life/death, male/female, animal/human, and so forth.

Nine years ago Kate McIntosh fled Beauville, Texas when rumor had it that her first love, Dustin Jones, got the waitress of a nearby diner pregnant. Feeling betrayed because he seems to find their own moments in the backseat parked at the Good Night Drive-in so unimportant, Kate leaves for college without ever confronting Dustin. She also never forgot.

When the drive-in's destruction coincides with her grandmother's ninetieth birthday, Kate finds herself confronting the past with a vengeance. Especially since Dustin is now living and working on her grandmother's ranch. Little does Kate suspect how much matchmaking is about to go into an attempt to transformation from successful soap-opera script author to owner of her grandmother's ranch.

All of the Jones brothers had a wild reputation, including Dustin. He was the one Kate's parents forbade her to date. When Kate disappeared without so much as goodbye, she took his heart with her. Now Dustin finds himself a father to a nine-year-old boy and foreman of the Dead Horse Ranch. He hasn't outgrown his feelings for Kate anymore than he's outgrown his reputation for trouble among the townsfolk.

Once again Kristine Rolofson presents a delightful, romantic romp that will certainly entertain. Confronting the past to build a future becomes a theme that binds all three generations of McIntosh women in BLAME IT ON TEXAS. Rolofogson's lively writing style, quirky sense of humor, and perfect sense for irrepressible make BLAME IT ON TEXAS one of her dazzling best reads. Readers who enjoy Rolofson's talent for bringing together unlikely characters will also delight in BLAME IT ON BABIES and BLAME IT ON COWBOYS. BLAME IT ON TEXAS comes highly recommended.