Miles And Miles Of Texas

On the eve of its centennial, Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson present almost 100 years of history and never-before-seen photographs that track the development of the Texas Highway Department. An agency originally created “to get the farmer out of the mud,” it has gone on to build the vast network of roads that now connects every corner of the state. When the Texas Highway Department (now called the Texas Department of Transportation or TxDOT) was created in 1917, there were only about 200,000 cars in Texas traveling on fewer than a thousand miles of paved roads. Today, after 100 years of the Texas Highway Department, the state boasts over 80,000 miles of paved, state-maintained roads that accommodate more than 25 million vehicles. Sure to interest history enthusiasts and casual readers alike, decades of progress and turmoil, development and disaster, and politics and corruption come together once more in these pages, which tell the remarkable story of an infrastructure 100 years in the making.

"Miles of Tiles" is a mathematics lesson for middle school classes requiring students to calculate the number and cost of tiles needed to cover the floor of the classroom. This lesson includes Internet activities. "Miles of Tiles" is presented as a service of the Link-to-Learn Professional Development Project of Pennsylvania, a state-sponsored educational technology initiative.

While Maj. Samuel Peter Heintzelman, one of the most cultured, dedicated, and respected officers in the antebellum frontier army, was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shock waves throughout Texas by brazenly leading some seventy-five angry raiders into the streets of Brownsville and initiated a war that would reverberate north to Austin and beyond to the halls of Washington and Mexico City. Heintzelman's journal provides a detailed and vivid account of the battles at El Ebonal and Rio Grande City. Heintzelman's impressions of his senior commander, Col. Robert E. Lee, are also noteworthy.

All the information since the earliest Billboard charts were originally compiled in 1942 is gathered into this one essential reference on country music that has been updated and expanded to capture today's top recording artists and their biggest songs. Original.

Charlie Sweetwater returns to his hometown to visit his brother but arrives to find he is a no-show: The Coast Guard has discovered Johnny’s shrimp boat drifting abandoned in the Gulf. Is it “death by misadventure” as the authorities presume, or something more sinister? Meanwhile, Fulton Harbor, where Charlie’s family have docked their shrimp boats for generations, has changed—and not for the better. Hard-working Vietnamese fishermen are under the thumb of Col. Nguyen Ngoc Bao, a ruthless exiled gangster who aims to recreate his criminal enterprise in a New World setting. Confronting Bao and his thugs are Charlie and a mismatched group of good guys (and gals): a fast-and-loose Cajun hustler, a salty cast of “Third Coast” barroom regulars, a handful of courageous Vietnamese émigrés, a menacing ex-convict, and a misplaced Texas Ranger who discovers a slice of the Lone Star State that the cowboy movies of his boyhood never prepared him for. Along the way Charlie finds himself falling for his brother’s girlfriend, whose zealous desire to see justice served tests his own limits for loyalty and commitment. Unlikely heroes arise from improbable circumstances, and the denizens of the small seaside community find their fortunes and fates ebbing and flowing like the tidal flux of the ocean itself.

“Jay B. Sauceda is creating a new kind of literature for the state, a visual literature that is as significant and powerful as John Graves’s Goodbye to a River, Robert Caro’s The Path to Power, Edna Ferber’s Giant, or T. R. Fehrenbach’s Lone Star. His compositions accomplish what all great work does—offering a new way of seeing things so familiar that we have stopped seeing them.” —Rick Bass in Texas Monthly On the ground, Texas is a vast patchwork of natural and human landscapes—wide open spaces contrasting with sprawling cities; the watery worlds of rivers, lakes, and coastlines giving way to the arid vistas of plains and deserts. From the air, though, Texas takes on a wholeness that unites the landscapes that people manufacture with the land that nature still sculpts. This is the Texas that Jay B. Sauceda portrays in A Mile above Texas, a book of stunning aerial photographs that document the entire perimeter of the state. Sauceda flew 3,822 miles, over five days in 2015, in a single-engine Cessna. He shot more than 44,000 photos from the plane, via handheld cameras and GoPros attached to the wings. This book presents the very best of those photographs in sections that cover each leg of the trip: Victoria to Marshall, Marshall to Dalhart, Dalhart to El Paso, El Paso to Marfa, and Marfa to Mustang Beach. With fresh views of Texas’s beaches and rivers, woodlands and deserts, cities and farms, A Mile above Texas offers an encompassing view of the state that perhaps only flyers and migratory birds have enjoyed before now.

Internationally acclaimed interior design sensation Miles Redd is known for his quirky brand of cozy glamour. His unique aesthetic vision is characterized by playful mélanges of high and low, invigorated with whimsical splashes of color and modern gestures. Drawing on inspirations ranging from Richard Avedon fashion photographs to Rene Gruau illustrations, Redd has crafted interiors for a wide array of venues. His Trademark approach to design has brought to life rooms infused with boldness, fantasy, and sophistication. This lavishly illustrated volume will be an inspiration to anyone interested in spirited, eclectic design.

The San Antonio area is perhaps the most picturesque spot for hiking in the Lone Star State. With this new edition in the best-selling 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles series, all these visually stunning and ruggedly charming routes are at the traveler's fingertips. This handy guide helps San Antonio and Austin natives get back into nature without going out of town. Extensive at-a-glance information makes it easy to choose the perfect hike based on length, difficulty, scenery, or on a specific factor such as hikes good for families, runners, or birding. Each trail profile includes maps, directions, driving times, nearby attractions, and other pertinent details.