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Alexander Terrell's career placed him at the center of some of the most pivotal events in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history, ranging from the Civil War to Emperor Maximilian's reign over Mexico and an Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire. Alexander Watkins Terrell at last provides the first complete biographical portrait of this complex figure.

Born in Virginia in 1827, Terrell moved to Texas in 1852, rising to the rank of Confederate brigadier general when the Civil War erupted. Afterwards, he briefly served in Maximilian's army before returning to Texas, where he was elected to four terms in the state Senate and three terms in the House. President Grover Cleveland appointed him minister to the Ottoman Empire, dispatching him to Turkey and the Middle East for four years while the issues surrounding the existence of Christians in a Muslim empire stoked violent confrontations there. His other accomplishments included writing legislation that created the Texas Railroad Commission and what became the Permanent University Fund (the cornerstone of the University of Texas's multibillion-dollar endowment).

In this balanced exploration of Terrell's life, Gould also examines Terrell's views on race, the impact of the charges of cowardice in the Civil War that dogged him, and his spiritual searching beyond the established religions of his time. In his rich and varied life, Alexander Watkins Terrell experienced aspects of nineteenth-century Texas and American history whose effects have continued down to the present day.

Jad Smith traces the career of the unlikeliest of SF icons. Winner of the first Hugo Award for The Demolished Man, Bester also worked in comics, radio, and TV, and his intermittent SF writing led some critics to brand him a dabbler. In the 1960s, however, New Wave writers championed his work, and his reputation grew. Smith follows Bester's journey from consummate outsider to an artist venerated for foundational works that influenced the New Wave and cyberpunk revolutions. He also explores the little-known roots of a wayward journey fueled by curiosity, disappointment with the SF mainstream, and an artist's determination to go his own way.

Frank Kearns was the go-to guy at CBS News for danger- ous stories in Africa and the Middle East in the 1950s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s. By his own account, he was nearly killed 114 times. He took stories that nobody else wanted to cover and was challenged to get them on the air when nobody cared about this part of the world. But his stories were warning shots for conflicts that play out in the headlines today.

In 1957, Senator John Kennedy described America’s view of the Algerian war for independence as the Eisenhower Administration’s “head in the sand policy.” So CBS News decided to find out what was really happening there and to determine where Algeria’s war for independence fit into the game plan for the Cold War. They sent Frank Kearns to find out.

Kearns took with him cameraman Yousef (“Joe”) Masraff and 400 pounds of gear, some of which they shed, and they hiked with FLN escorts from Tunisia, across a wide “no-man’s land,” and into the Aures Mountains of eastern Algeria, where the war was bloodiest. They carried no passports or visas. They dressed as Algerians. They refused to bear weapons. And they knew that if captured, they would be executed and left in unmarked graves. But their job as journalists was to seek the truth whatever it might turn out to be.

This is Frank Kearns’s diary. 

Author, collector, and historian Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) was among the most important and prolific writers of her day. Between 1890 and 1904, she produced seventeen books as well as numerous articles, pamphlets, and speeches about the life, manners, customs, and material culture of colonial New England. Earle's work coincided with a surge of interest in early American history, genealogy, and antique collecting, and more than a century after the publication of her first book, her contributions still resonate with readers interested in the nation's colonial past.

An intensely private woman, Earle lived in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and four children and conducted much of her research either by mail or at the newly established Long Island Historical Society. She began writing on the eve of her fortieth birthday, and the impressive body of scholarship she generated over the next fifteen years stimulated new interest in early American social customs, domestic routines, foodways, clothing, and childrearing patterns. 

Written in a style calculated to appeal to a wide readership, Earle's richly illustrated books recorded the intimate details of what she described as colonial “home life.” These works reflected her belief that women had played a key historical role, helping to nurture communities by constructing households that both served and shaped their families. It was a vision that spoke eloquently to her contemporaries, who were busily creating exhibitions of early American life in museums, staging historical pageants and other forms of patriotic celebration, and furnishing their own domestic interiors.

Runner-up, Carr P. Collins Award for Best Book of Non-Fiction, 2021

Go-Go’s bassist Kathy Valentine’s story is a roller coaster of sex, drugs, and of course, music; it’s also a story of what it takes to find success and find yourself, even when it all comes crashing down.

At twenty-one, Kathy Valentine was at the Whisky in Los Angeles when she met a guitarist from a fledgling band called the Go-Go’s—and the band needed a bassist. The Go-Go’s became the first multi-platinum-selling, all-female band to play instruments themselves, write their own songs, and have a number one album. Their debut, Beauty and the Beat, spent six weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 and featured the hit songs “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Are Sealed.” The record's success brought the pressures of a relentless workload and schedule culminating in a wild, hazy, substance-fueled tour that took the band from the club circuit to arenas, where fans, promoters, and crew were more than ready to keep the party going.

For Valentine, the band's success was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream—but it’s only part of her story. All I Ever Wanted traces the path that took her from her childhood in Texas—where she all but raised herself—to the height of rock n’ roll stardom, devastation after the collapse of the band that had come to define her, and the quest to regain her sense of self after its end. Valentine also speaks candidly about the lasting effects of parental betrayal, abortion, rape, and her struggles with drugs and alcohol—and the music that saved her every step of the way. Populated with vivid portraits of Valentine’s interactions during the 1980s with musicians and actors from the Police and Rod Stewart to John Belushi and Rob Lowe, All I Ever Wanted is a deeply personal reflection on a life spent in music.

From country and blues to rap and punk, Texas music is all over the map, figuratively and literally. Texas musicians have pioneered new musical genres, instruments, and playing styles, proving themselves to be daring innovators who often call the tune for musicians around the country and even abroad. To introduce some of these trailblazing Texas musicians to a wider audience and pay tribute to their accomplishments, Michael Corcoran profiles thirty-two of them in All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music.

Corcoran covers musicians who work in a wide range of musical genres, including blues, gospel, country, rap, indie rock, pop, Cajun, Tejano, conjunto, funk, honky-tonk, rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and Western swing. His focus is on underappreciated artists, pioneers who haven't fully received their due. He also includes well-known musicians who've been underrated, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Selena, and invites us to take a closer look at the unique talents of these artists. Corcoran's profiles come from articles he wrote for the Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman, Houston Press, and other publications, which have been expanded and updated for this volume. His musical detective work even uncovers a case of mistaken identity (Washington Phillips) and corrects much misinformation on Blind Willie Johnson and Arizona Dranes. Corcoran closes the book with lively pieces on the Austin music scene and its most famous, if no longer extant, clubs, as well as his personal lists of the forty greatest Texas songs of all time and the twenty-five essential CDs for Texas music fans.

When Gina Oliva first went to school in 1955, she didn’t know that she was “different.” If the kindergarten teacher played a tune on the piano to signal the next exercise, Oliva didn’t react because she couldn’t hear the music. So began her journey as a “solitary,” her term for being the only deaf child in the entire school. Gina felt alone because she couldn’t communicate easily with her classmates, but also because none of them had a hearing loss like hers. It wasn’t until years later at Gallaudet University that she discovered that she wasn’t alone and that her experience was common among mainstreamed deaf students. Alone in the Mainstream recounts Oliva’s story, as well as those of many other solitaries.

In writing this important book, Oliva combined her personal experiences with responses from the Solitary Mainstream Project, a survey that she conducted of deaf and hard of hearing adults who attended public school. Oliva matched her findings with current research on deaf students in public schools and confirmed that hearing teachers are ill-prepared to teach deaf pupils, they don’t know much about hearing loss, and they frequently underestimate deaf children. The collected memories in Alone in the Mainstream add emotional weight to the conviction that students need to be able to communicate freely, and they also need peers to know they are not alone.

In 1969, Henry Catto was selling insurance in San Antonio, Texas. Just twenty years later, he presented his credentials as ambassador to the Court of St. James's to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, at Buckingham Palace. In this engaging memoir, he retraces his journey from Texas outsider to Washington insider, providing a fascinating look at the glamour, day-to-day work, and even occasional danger that come with being a high-level representative of the United States government.

Catto's posts brought him into contact with the world's most powerful leaders and left him with a wealth of stories, which he recounts amusingly in these pages. He was the official host for Queen Elizabeth's visit to America during the Bicentennial year—and one of José Napoleon Duarte's protectors after his failed 1972 coup attempt in El Salvador. Catto accompanied Richard Nixon on his historic trip to Russia, sparred with Bill Moyers and the producers of "60 Minutes" as Caspar Weinberger's spokesman at the Pentagon, and hosted George Bush's planning meeting with Margaret Thatcher at the beginning of the Persian Gulf War. In telling these and other stories, he offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into how political power really works in Washington, London, and other world capitals.

The definitive biography Amelia Gayle Gorgas, one of the most influential people in the history of the University of Alabama

Amelia Gayle Gorgas: A Biography is a richly documented and deeply compelling portrait of one of Alabama’s most influential nineteenth‑century women. Drawing on the unparalleled depth of the Gayle‑Gorgas Collection—letters, journals, family papers, and contemporary accounts—this biography argues that Amelia’s life offers enduring insight into the resilience, intellect, and quiet leadership that shaped Southern society before, during, and after the Civil War. 

Far more than the daughter of a governor, wife of Confederate ordnance chief Josiah Gorgas, or mother of famed physician William Crawford Gorgas, Amelia emerges here as a figure of remarkable adaptability and personal strength. The book traces her journey from a lively Greensboro childhood through the upheavals of war‑torn Richmond, the hardships of Reconstruction‑era Alabama, and her transformative service as librarian at The University of Alabama. Its chapters illuminate the themes that define her legacy: intellectual curiosity without formal schooling, deft management of family and community crises, a gift for nurturing students and soldiers alike, and an ability to thrive in environments as varied as Maine, Charleston, Sewanee, and Tuscaloosa. 

Vivid storytelling blends seamlessly with meticulous scholarship, giving readers both an intimate family narrative and a sweeping social history of the nineteenth‑century South. This biography will appeal especially to readers of Southern history, women’s history, university and library heritage, Civil War studies, and anyone drawn to strong, quietly trailblazing figures whose lives illuminate broader cultural change. Amelia’s story endures because it speaks to the universal work of holding families, institutions, and communities together in times of profound upheaval.

An exhilarating behind-the-scenes journey into the history of America’s largest cross-country ski race 

Each February, cross-country skiers from across the nation and around the world descend upon the sleepy northern Wisconsin town of Hayward to compete in the American Birkebeiner—the largest cross-country ski race in North America. In American Birkebeiner: The Nation’s Greatest Ski Marathon, author and skier Jerome P. Poling traces the remarkable history of the famed “Birkie,” from its modest origins in the early 1970s to its modern incarnation as an international Nordic-themed festival and multi-day racing event drawing more than 30,000 skiers and spectators.  

American Birkebeiner offers an up-close, behind-the-scenes tour of all things Birkie—from pre-race preparations and skier profiles to race-day highlights and history-making finishes. It also tells the story of visionary race founder Tony Wise and his efforts to popularize the sport of cross-country skiing in the Upper Midwest. The book delves into the origin and evolution of the world-class Birkebeiner Trail and the communities that support it, as well as the ways the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation is adapting to climate change to help ensure the event thrives for years to come. 

American Birkebeiner sparks with lively, narrative-driven prose and is based on extensive archival research, reporting, and personal interviews. The lavishly illustrated book also features 150 photographs, including intimate portraits of athletes pushed to the limits of their endurance, sweeping aerial shots of skiers and cheering crowds, and awe-inspiring winter vistas. An exquisitely crafted ode to an extraordinary race, American Birkebeiner will inspire winter sports fans and outdoor enthusiasts alike.  

More than 100 powerful images by noted photographer Russell Lee that document the working conditions and lives of coal mining communities in the postwar United States; publication coincides with an exhibition at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

In 1946 the Truman administration made a promise to striking coal miners: as part of a deal to resume work, the government would sponsor a nationwide survey of health and labor conditions in mining camps. One instrumental member of the survey team was photographer Russell Lee. Lee had made his name during the Depression, when, alongside Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, he used his camera to document agrarian life for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Now he trained his lens on miners and their families to show their difficult circumstances despite their essential contributions to the nation's first wave of postwar growth.

American Coal draws from the thousands of photographs that Lee made for the survey—also on view in the US National Archives and Records Administration’s exhibition Power & Light—and includes his original, detailed captions as well as an essay by biographer Mary Jane Appel and historian Douglas Brinkley. They place his work in context and illuminate how Lee helped win improved conditions for his subjects through vivid images that captured an array of miners and their communities at work and at play, at church and in school, in moments of joy and struggle, ultimately revealing to their fellow Americans the humanity and resilience of these underrecognized workers.