Here are 73 books that Lone Star Blue and Gray fans have personally recommended if you like
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Ed Cotham, is the prize-winning author of numerous books and articles on Texas Civil War history. A frequent lecturer, with appearances on television and radio, Ed has probably given more tours of Texas Civil War battlefields than anyone. Ed has written the texts for many historic markers and has served as project historian for several important shipwrecks in Texas waters.
This is the book I always recommend to people who don’t know very much about the Civil War battles that were fought in Texas. It is short, well-written, and has lots of good illustrations, photographs and maps. Don Frazier is one of the best Texas historians the state has ever produced and he really knows how to tell a story in an interesting and engaging fashion. Most Texans are amazed to see how many unusual and important battles were fought in Texas and this is the perfect introduction to the topic.
1862. Admiral David Farragut orders enclaves to be established in Texas as part of the Federal blockade. This involves attempts against Corpus Christi, Sabine Pass, Galveston, and Port Lavaca. By the end of the year Federal troops reduce the defenses of Sabine Pass and occupy Galveston, the state's principal port. However, the gains prove tenuous. While Federal sailors await Union infantry reinforcements, the Confederates, under Gen. John B. Magruder, seize the initiative. They organize a makeshift fleet of "cottonclads"—lightly armed and armored, but good platforms for sharpshooters—and boldly attack the Union fleet whenever it lies close to shore. Meanwhile, Confederate…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Ed Cotham, is the prize-winning author of numerous books and articles on Texas Civil War history. A frequent lecturer, with appearances on television and radio, Ed has probably given more tours of Texas Civil War battlefields than anyone. Ed has written the texts for many historic markers and has served as project historian for several important shipwrecks in Texas waters.
One of the most interesting stories involving Texas during the Civil War is the blockade runners that operated out of Galveston and other Texas ports. As other Confederate ports were captured by the Union, Texas gradually emerged as the last important route for Southern goods to be exported and weapons and other war materials to be imported. Andy Hall is the acknowledged expert on this subject and this book is essential for anyone wanting to explore this interesting and important subject. One of the best features of this book is that it includes many photographs, maps, and illustrations that are not available anywhere else.
In the last months of the American Civil War, the upper Texas coast became a hive of blockade running. Though Texas was often considered an isolated backwater in the conflict, the Union's pervasive and systematic seizure of Southern ports left Galveston as one of the only strongholds of foreign imports in the anemic supply chain to embattled Confederate forces. Long, fast steamships ran in and out of the city's port almost every week, bound to and from Cuba. Join author Andrew W. Hall as he explores the story of Texas's Civil War blockade runners--a story of daring, of desperation and,…
Ed Cotham, is the prize-winning author of numerous books and articles on Texas Civil War history. A frequent lecturer, with appearances on television and radio, Ed has probably given more tours of Texas Civil War battlefields than anyone. Ed has written the texts for many historic markers and has served as project historian for several important shipwrecks in Texas waters.
Galveston was the largest city in Texas at the time of the Civil War and it had the distinction of being blockaded, occupied by both sides, and was the subject of many battles and skirmishes. This book explores some of the battles, but it is particularly valuable because of the stories it explores relating to the way that the war affected the citizens of an important Texas city. It explores topics like Unionists in Galveston, yellow fever epidemics, and the liberation of enslaved African Americans. By focusing on one city and its citizens’ experiences throughout the war this book tells an important and interesting story.
One of the oldest cities in Texas, Galveston has witnessed more than its share of tragedies. Devastating hurricanes, yellow fever epidemics, fires, a major Civil War battle and more cast a dark shroud on the city's legacy. Ghostly tales creep throughout the history of famous tourist attractions and historical homes. The altruistic spirit of a schoolteacher who heroically pulled victims from the floodwaters during the great hurricane of 1900 roams the Strand. The ghosts of Civil War soldiers march up and down the stairs at night and pace in front of the antebellum Rogers Building. The spirit of an unlucky…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Ed Cotham, is the prize-winning author of numerous books and articles on Texas Civil War history. A frequent lecturer, with appearances on television and radio, Ed has probably given more tours of Texas Civil War battlefields than anyone. Ed has written the texts for many historic markers and has served as project historian for several important shipwrecks in Texas waters.
This book includes 11 essays by an all-star cast of historians. It goes well beyond the military events of the war and covers the impact of the war on various groups of people. The essays discuss previously unexplored topics ranging from the wartime experiences of Texas women to the impact of the war on German immigrants. It also includes essays discussing the post-war impact of the conflict. Of particular interest is Carl H. Moneyhon’s essay on the reaction of Texans to Confederate defeat. This is not only an important book, but will also be interesting even to casual history lovers.
What was Texas' role in the Civil War? In its examination of a state too often neglected by Civil War historians, The Fate of Texas presents Texas as a decidedly Southern, yet in many ways unusual, state seriously committed to and deeply affected by the Confederate war effort in a multitude of ways. When the state joined the Confederacy and fought in the war, its fate was uncertain. The war touched every portion of the population and all aspects of life in Texas. Never before has a group of historians examined the impact of the war on so many facets…
I have been reading, researching, writing, and teaching Civil War military history for nearly thirty years. I first became interested in soldiers and their experiences as a teen, and went on to earn a PhD in American History at the University of Georgia. I’ve always been fascinated by the anti-hero, and the ways in which everyday people coped (or failed to cope) with this violent conflict. I am currently writing a book about regiments accused of cowardice and how those searing allegations cast a shadow over their military record. From 2010-2015, I served as editor of the scholarly journal Civil War History, and I was recently elected President of the Society for Civil War Historians (2022-2024).
Ural tackles a unit history, but this time a brigade and one of the most famous ones: Hood’s Texans. She showcases not just why and how they became renowned for their fighting effectiveness, but how these men—white southerners—were unapologetic in their support of slavery and the Confederacy. It is “new military history” at its best—combining astute military analysis with social and cultural understandings of the people and the times in which they lived.
One of the most effective units to fight on either side of the Civil War, the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia served under Robert E. Lee from the Seven Days Battles in 1862 to the surrender at Appomattox in 1865. In Hood's Texas Brigade, Susannah J. Ural presents a nontraditional unit history that traces the experiences of these soldiers and their families to gauge the war's effect on them and to understand their role in the white South's struggle for independence.
According to Ural, several factors contributed to the Texas Brigade's extraordinary success: the unit's strong self-identity…
I was a wild card in the industry heavy town where I was born and raised, destined to burn out my days early in a factory or steel mill. But I worked my way through college, survived several close calls in Vietnam and bull headed my way into a series of jobs that pushed me toward Hollywood assignments as a writer, producer and director.
I liked this book because of its unique plot. After the American Civil War, ex-trooper and sharp shooter Valdez is working as a part-time small town sheriff. He gets on the bad side of a wealthy rancher who has a gang beat him up and leave him for dead out in the desert.
But after this excellent opening, I love what happens next. Valdez is a survivor: he returns to face off against incredible odds, to regain his honor and see that justice prevails.
No writer chronicles the battles of misfits, underdogs and renegades like Elmore Leonard ...
VALDEZ IS COMING is a stunning stale of morality and justice in which a simple, honest man is transformed into a killer - and begins a long journey of revenge against those who scarred his soul for ever.
Elmore Leonard's Western novels stand as some of the most vivid writing of his career. With all of his trademark sharp dialogue and set against a beautifully evoked landscape, this is a classic work that captures the wild and glorious spirit of the American West.
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
Despite what my kids think, I am not actually old enough to have “been there” during the Civil War itself, but I have spent my entire professional career studying it. Years in archives reading other people’s mail, old newspaper accounts, dusty diaries, and handwritten testimonies, along with sifting through records books and ledgers of all descriptions have taught me exactly how intertwined slavery, Civil War, and emancipation all were, and I am dedicated to trying to explain the connections to anyone who reads my books, stumbles across my digital history work, or sits in my classroom at Georgetown University, where I teach history. Two good places to see the results of my efforts include What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War which won the Avery Craven Award for best book on the Civil War and was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize, and Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War, which won the Jefferson Davis Prize and was also a finalist for the Lincoln Prize.
Kate Stone was 20 years old when the Civil War came, living as a cherished daughter in a large, loving, wealthy Louisiana family headed by her indomitable widowed mother. The war up-ended Kate’s world. Beloved brothers joined the Confederate Army. First luxuries and then necessities dried up. Union forces helped themselves to Kate’s favorite horse. Neighbors and relations died or left. Eventually Kate and her family did, too, “refugeeing” to Texas where they did not always mingle smoothly with the locals. Meanwhile, the same forces that shattered Kate’s world opened the doors to a new one for the many enslaved people on whom Kate and her family relied. Kate’s marvelously eloquent diary offers readers a front-row seat into the drama of the Confederate homefront as a young woman on the cusp of adulthood experienced it, and from the corner of the reader’s eye, we also see glimpses of enslaved people…
This journal records the Civil War experiences of a sensitive, well-educated, young southern woman. Kate Stone was twenty when the war began, living with her widowed mother, five brothers, and younger sister at Brokenburn, their plantation home in northeastern Louisiana. When Grant moved against Vicksburg, the family fled before the invading armies, eventually found refuge in Texas, and finally returned to a devastated home.
Kate began her journal in May, 1861, and made regular entries up to November, 1865. She included briefer sketches in 1867 and 1868. In chronicling her everyday activities, Kate reveals much about a way of life…
As an only child of a working mother, I spent a lot of Saturday afternoons with John Wayne. I graduated to movie nights at the theater with Clint Eastwood. My hero-worshipping crush on tough guys combined with my passion for romance novels and my fascination with the history of the American West made me the perfect candidate to write gritty, romantic westerns. My very first book, written over 30 years ago, was a western.
This novel takes place during the post-Civil war period, so it is not “technically” a western though it does take place in Texas. However, it has that gritty reality and deep, dark emotion I search for in my favorite novels.
The hero is tortured. The heroine is vengeful. They come together and terrible, difficult, life-changing, and character-building plot twists happen. They choose each other, above all odds.
If you want proof that love conquers all this is the book. I have never forgotten it.
Branded a traitor and imprisoned for refusing to fight for the Confederacy, Clayton Holland returns home to Cedar Grove, only to be spurned by the townspeople, except for vengeful Meg Warner, who finds her hatred and grief transformed by love.
My favorite novels explore the workings of the human psyche. I want to finish a book thinking Damn, that was a good read—and realize only later that I learned something about psychology, medicine, or history. There are dozens of writers I'd like to add to my list, but these are the five I'd choose if I were stranded on a desert island and allowed to take just five books. Sure, I go dark—the human mind is dark; human history is dark. But there must be beauty to balance the darkness, whether that beauty is in the plot and characterizations, or simply in the elegant use of language.
I'm fascinated, horrified, and entranced by stories of the American Old West, and nobody tells these stories better than Paulette Jiles.
The Color of Lightning is based on the life of a real man, Britt Johnson, a Black cowboy who went to extraordinary lengths to rescue his wife and child from Comanche raiders shortly after the Civil War. A secondary plotline follows a Quaker Agent trying to prevent the massacre of Plains Indians by the U.S. Government.
The story is heartbreaking, inspirational, and in so many ways, unexpected. Jiles is a master storyteller and all of her books are excellent, but this is the one that lingers in my mind.
In 1863, as the War Between the States creeps slowly yet inevitably toward its bloody conclusion, former Kentucky slave Britt Johnson ventures west into unknown territory with his wife, Mary, and their three children. Settling on the Texas plains, the Johnson family hopes to build on the dreams that carried them from the Confederate South to this new land of possibility - dreams that are abruptly shattered by a brutal Indian raid upon the settlement while Britt is away establishing a business. Returning to face the unthinkable - his friends and neighbours slain or captured, his eldest son dead, his…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I have spent over twenty years over (fifteen in Texas) recommending crime fiction as a bookseller in a couple of prominent stores. Texas and its writers have always fascinated me. Now that I get to call myself one, I am connected more to the genre literature of my adopted state and have an insider's view as both writer and resident.
This coverage of the crime wave of the Overton gang who burgled, pimped, and committed various crimes up and down I-35 is nonfiction, but hard to believe at times.
The story paints vivid time in Austin with a supporting cast of colorful lawyers, madams, and even UT Tower sniper Charles Whitman. Jesse Sublett, author, musician, painter, journalist, and photographer is basically as close as Austin has to royalty and portrays the events in a rock n’ roll style.
I’d also recommend Jesse’s fiction series staring bass player and skip tracer Martin Fender.
Timmy Overton of Austin and Jerry Ray James of Odessa were football stars who traded athletics for lives of crime. The original rebels without causes, nihilists with Cadillacs and Elvis hair, the Overton gang and their associates formed a ragtag white trash mafia that bedazzled Austin law enforcement for most of the 1960s. Tied into a loose network of crooked lawyers, pimps and used car dealers who became known as the "traveling criminals," they burglarized banks and ran smuggling and prostitution rings all over Texas. Author Jesse Sublett presents a detailed account of these Austin miscreants, who rose to folk…
