front cover of From Azaleas to Zydeco
From Azaleas to Zydeco
My 4,600-Mile Journey through the South
Mark W. Nichols
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2013
Inspired by a 1937 map and travelogue of a newspaperman’s tour, author Mark W. Nichols embarked on his own long journey into the unique cities of the South. En route he met beekeepers, cheese makers, crawfish “bawlers,” duck callers, and a licensed alligator hunter, as well as entrepreneurs and governors. His keen observations encompass the southern states from Virginia to Arkansas and points south, and he unpacks the unique qualities of every city he visits. “It’s easy to say that getting to meet so many interesting and wonderful people was the best part of the journey--because it’s true,” Nichols writes. “I know there are friendly people everywhere, but southern friendliness is different.” His story embraces a wealth of southern charm from local characters, folklore, and customs to food, music, and dancing. Besides being just plain fun to read, Nichols’s account of his journey gives readers a true taste of the flavor of the evolving modern South.
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front cover of Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites
Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites
New Edition
Laurence Parent
University of Texas Press, 2024

The essential guide to Texas’s state parks and historic sites.

Updated with a new park, Palo Pinto Mountains State Park west of Forth Worth; new historic sites; and scores of beautiful new photographs, the Official Guide to Texas State Parks has all the essential information organized by geographical regions to help you plan your great Texas adventure. The only complete resource of its kind on Texas, Laurence Parent’s Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the trusted source, with more than sixty-five thousand copies sold over the past thirty years.

Praise for Previous Editions

“Texas state-park fans should be thrilled. . . . Official Guide to Texas State Parks is the ultimate book detailing Texas’s state parks.”—Dallas Morning News

“This book will make you want to hit the road to visit the natural splendor of Texas.”—Houston Chronicle

“It’s good enough for a coffee table or a campfire. The Official Guide to Texas State Parks gives you sleek photography, maps, narratives, and loads of information.”—Southern Living

“The newly updated Official Guide to Texas State Parks and Historic Sites . . . has beautiful color photographs and insights on camping, fishing, horseback riding, and other recreational opportunities around the state.”—Texas Journey

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front cover of Roll With It
Roll With It
Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans
Matt Sakakeeny
Duke University Press, 2013
Roll With It is a firsthand account of the precarious lives of musicians in the Rebirth, Soul Rebels, and Hot 8 brass bands of New Orleans. These young men are celebrated as cultural icons for upholding the proud traditions of the jazz funeral and the second line parade, yet they remain subject to the perils of poverty, racial marginalization, and urban violence that characterize life for many black Americans. Some achieve a degree of social mobility while many more encounter aggressive policing, exploitative economies, and a political infrastructure that creates insecurities in healthcare, housing, education, and criminal justice. The gripping narrative moves with the band members from back street to backstage, before and after Hurricane Katrina, always in step with the tap of the snare drum, the thud of the bass drum, and the boom of the tuba.
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front cover of Southern Fried
Southern Fried
Going Whole Hog in a State of Wonder
Rex Nelson
Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, 2016

For decades, Rex Nelson has been traveling Arkansas. He learned to love the back roads, small towns, and people of the state while going on trips with his father, who sold athletic supplies to high schools. They sat in old Depression-era gyms built by the Works Progress Administration, ate in small-town cafes, and waded in streams on warm spring days.

Throughout his career as a sportswriter, political writer, senior staff member in the governor’s office, presidential appointee to the Delta Regional Authority, and now corporate communications director for Simmons Bank, Nelson has written millions of words about Arkansas and its people.

In this collection of columns from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Nelson brings to life the personalities, communities, festivals, and tourist attractions that make Arkansas unique. As he says, “Arkansas is a hard place to explain to outsiders. We’re mostly Southern but also a bit Midwestern and a tad Southwestern. The Ozarks are different from the pine woods of the Gulf Coastal Plain, and the Delta is different from the Ouachitas. Invariably, though, those who take the time to get off the main roads and get to know the real Arkansas are entranced by the place.”

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front cover of Texas Monthly On . . .
Texas Monthly On . . .
Food
From the editors of Texas Monthly
University of Texas Press, 2008

From reviews of the newest, hippest restaurants in cities across Texas to stories about the comfort foods we all love, Texans have long relied on Texas Monthly to dish up some of the best writing about food in the Lone Star state. This anthology brings together twenty-eight classic articles about food in Texas and the culture that surrounds it—markets that purvey exotic and traditional foods, well-known chefs, tributes to the cooks and cookbooks of days gone by, and even a feature on how to open a restaurant. Many of the articles are by Patricia Sharpe, Texas Monthly's longtime restaurant critic and winner of the James Beard Journalism Award for Magazine Feature Writing without Recipes. Joining her are Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith and contributors Gary Cartwright, Jordan MacKay, Skip Hollandsworth, Pamela Colloff, Anne Dingus, Suzy Banks, Joe Nick Patoski, and Prudence Mackintosh.

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