Author: James P. McCollom
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619029979
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
An Amazon Best History Book of the Month This true crime story transports readers to a tumultuous time in Texas history—when the old ways clashed with the new—as it sheds light on police brutality, gun control, Mexican American civil rights, and much more “[A] riveting story of a time when sheriffs could get away with murder.” —Dallas Morning News Beeville, Texas, was the most American of small towns—the place that GIs had fantasized about while fighting through the ruins of Europe, a place of good schools, clean streets, and churches. Old West justice ruled, as evidenced by a 1947 shootout when outlaws surprised popular sheriff Vail Ennis at a gas station and shot him five times, point–blank, in the belly. Ennis managed to draw his gun and put three bullets in each assailant; he reloaded and shot them three times more. Time magazine’s full–page article on the shooting was seen by some as a referendum on law enforcement owing to the sheriff’s extreme violence, but supportive telegrams from across America poured into Beeville’s tiny post office. Yet when a second violent incident threw Ennis into the crosshairs of public opinion once again, the uprising was orchestrated by an unlikely figure: his close friend and Beeville’s favorite son, Johnny Barnhart. Barnhart confronted Ennis in the election of 1952: a landmark standoff between old Texas, with its culture of cowboy bravery and violence, and urban Texas, with its lawyers, oil institutions, and a growing Mexican population. The town would never be the same again. The Last Sheriff in Texas is a riveting narrative about the postwar American landscape, an era grappling with the same issues we continue to face today. Debate over excessive force in law enforcement, Anglo–Mexican relations, gun control, the influence of the media, urban–rural conflict, the power of the oil industry, mistrust of politicians and the political process—all have surprising historical precedence in the story of Vail Ennis and Johnny Barnhart.
Author: George Wier
Publisher: Flagstone Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
THE LAST CALL starts with a protagonist on the edge of an impending midlife crisis. Add a blond and an old friend with a fetish for high explosives, and you have the kickoff of a first rate crime novel. George Wier writes with wit, verve, and a gut-bucket knowledge of Texas and those who people its quirky underside. This book does not disappoint. —Milton T. Burton, author of Nights of the Red Moon and The Rogue’s Game. George Wier's THE LAST CALL has it all: a great setting, characters you care about, a little Texas history, and a twisty plot that's built Texas tough. Get it before last call! —Bill Crider, author of Murder In the Air. Bill Travis, an unmarried, unattached investment counselor rapidly approaching his fortieth birthday, conceives that he may not live the most exciting of lives, yet Julie Simmons, his first appointment that Monday, is deeply in trouble. She has taken a North Texas quarter horse racer and liquor baron named Archie Carpin--the last of a dynasty of criminals from the 1920's--for a ride and cleaned him out of a neat two million bucks. And thus begins the adventure of Bill’s life. Ensues a chase north across Texas to recover the money and shake the pursuit of a couple of rednecks with a penchant for rifles and rigged explosives. Yet, through all this action the compelling tale of yet another mystery—an 80-year old missing person’s case—begins to unravel.
Author: Jessica Goudeau
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593300513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417
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Book Description
An award-winning author's deep exploration of pivotal moments in Texas history through multiple generations of her own family, and a ruthless reexamination of our national and personal myths Seven generations of Jessica Goudeau’s family have lived in Texas, and her family’s legacy—a word she heard often growing up—was rooted in faith, right-living, and the hard work that built their great state. It wasn’t until her aunt mentioned a stowaway ancestor and she began to dig more deeply into the story of the land she lives on today in suburban Austin, that Goudeau discovered her family’s far more complicated role in Texas history: from a swindling land grant agent in the earliest days of Anglo settlement that brought slavery to Mexican land, up through her Texas Ranger great-uncle, who helped a sociopathic sheriff cover up mass murder. Tracking her ancestors’ involvement in pivotal moments from before the Texas Revolution through today, We Were Illegal is at once an intimate and character-driven narrative and an insider’s look at a state that prides itself on its history. It is an act of reckoning and recovery on a personal scale, as well as a reflection of the work we all must do to dismantle the whitewashed narratives that are passed down through families, communities, and textbooks. And it is a story filled with hope—by facing these hypocrisies and long-buried histories, Goudeau explores with us how to move past this fractured time, take accountability for our legacy, and learn to be better, more honest ancestors.
Author: Bobby R. White
Publisher: Page Publishing Inc
ISBN:
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 78
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Book Description
In 1990, I faced the biggest challenge of my law-enforcement career when I was recruited for an undercover drug assignment here in East Texas. At this point, there had never been a black undercover narcotic officer in the history of East Texas law enforcement. The top law enforcement officials of East Texas had no idea how bad the drug problem was, and now after all this time, they wanted to know the truth. The white and black kids were becoming completely uncontrollable all over East Texas because of the drug usage. I would later infiltrate so deep into the East Texas drug and criminal world that I gave up hope on coming out alive. I inadvertently would find out additional information about a famous Texas and national murder case called "The Kentucky Fried Chicken Murders" which had occurred in 1984 that was drug-related and involved some very high-profile people. The deception that I had to pull off involving so many people would go on to follow me the rest of my career. My only way out was my deep religious belief in Jesus Christ.
Author: Thad Sitton
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806134710
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
The Texas Sheriff takes a fresh, colorful, and insightful look at Texas law enforcement during the decades before 1960. In the first half of the twentieth century, rural Texas was a strange, often violent, and complicated place. Nineteenth-century lifestyles persisted, blood relationships made a difference, and racial apartheid was still rigidly enforced. Citizens expected their county sheriff to uphold local customs as well as state laws. He had to help constituents with their personal problems, which often had little or nothing to do with law enforcement. The rural sheriff served as his county’s “Mr. Fixit,” its resident “good old boy,” and the lord of an intricate rural society. Basing his interpretations on primary sources and extensive interviews, Thad Sitton explores the dual nature of Texas sheriffs, demonstrating their far-reaching power both to do good and to abuse the law.
Author: J. A. Zeigler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Author: John Douglas Miller
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1663226482
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Will Harris, a legendary gun fighter and one of the last living Confederate veterans, turns 100 on July 3, 1939. A parade is held in his honor, and newspapers and magazines from across the country send reporters to cover the event. Charles Case, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News, is one of these. He finds much more than he expected: two families involved in a blood feud that goes back to a train robbery in 1868; and to complicate matters, a boy from one of the families in love with a girl from the other. The book has an epic, mythical quality, reminiscent of Raintree County and Look Homeward, Angel.
Author: Nelson Algren
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609802470
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
The fiction and reportage included in The Last Carousel, one of the final collections published during Nelson Algren's lifetime, was written on ships and in ports of call around the world, and includes accounts of brothels in Vietnam and Mexico, stories of the boxing ring, and reminiscences of Algren's beloved Chicago White Sox, among other subjects. In this collection, not just Algren's intensity but his diversity are revealed and celebrated.
Author: Thomas Goodman
Publisher: Mainsail Media
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
2024 Spur Award Winner! 2024 Will Rogers Medallion Award Winner! Grand Prize Winner for the 2023 Chanticleer Laramie Award for Americana Fiction! "A novel as compelling as the incredible true story it's based on." James Wade, two-time Spur Award-winning author of Beasts of the Earth. When Santa Claus enters a Texas bank just before Christmas in 1927, no one expects him to pull a gun. The fake white beard hides his dentity from his neighbors while he and three others take everything. But their easy heist goes sideways fast when armed lawmen and citizens assemble to claim a new reward for dead bank robbers. Taking hostages, the gang forces a path through a frenzied and bloody shootout, setting the whole Lone Star state on their trail. One bandit dies in the getaway. One is executed in the electric chair. One swings from a rope in a mob lynching. The last man finds a life he always hoped for … if only he can keep it. Closely based on a true crime, The Last Man is a gritty Prohibition-era Western novel filled with flawed characters and second chances. "Do not miss this fabulous Texas tale!” Kathleen Y’Barbo, Publishers Weekly bestselling author of The Black Midnight and the Bayou Nouvelle series.
Author: William Stafford Sessoms
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
ISBN: 1685376940
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 84
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Book Description
Billy, A young lad who fell in love with a story in a book. The saga of Mister Bill became Mister Bill Driven by an inner desire to see the lands of the western frontier. He left his home at the age of fourteen. Inside him was a love for adventure. He could not put this aside and knew he had to go. some how he knew he was not traveling alone because deep inside him was some one else. He followed his heart in all endeavors. his love for the beautiful work and love for his fellow men and women kept him going. About the Author William Stafford Sessoms was born on a farm in North Carolina and went on to work for JCPenney’s for thirty-five years. He began writing thirty-five years ago and has four previously published works. He now resides in a retirement community with a family of like people enjoying their retirement. He enjoys playing bridge with friends, attending socials, and traveling, especially cruises. Sessoms is the father to two daughters, grandfather to three, and a great-grandfather to four.
