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Winner, Liz Carpenter Award For Research in the History of Women, Texas State Historical Association, 2010

Texas women broke barriers throughout the twentieth century, winning the right to vote, expanding their access to higher education, entering new professions, participating fully in civic and political life, and planning their families. Yet these major achievements have hardly been recognized in histories of twentieth-century Texas. By contrast, Texas Through Women's Eyes offers a fascinating overview of women's experiences and achievements in the twentieth century, with an inclusive focus on rural women, working-class women, and women of color.

McArthur and Smith trace the history of Texas women through four eras. They discuss how women entered the public sphere to work for social reforms and the right to vote during the Progressive era (1900–1920); how they continued working for reform and social justice and for greater opportunities in education and the workforce during the Great Depression and World War II (1920–1945); how African American and Mexican American women fought for labor and civil rights while Anglo women laid the foundation for two-party politics during the postwar years (1945–1965); and how second-wave feminists (1965–2000) promoted diverse and sometimes competing goals, including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, reproductive freedom, gender equity in sports, and the rise of the New Right and the Republican party.

The first, complete English translation of the ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books

The ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books, important compositions that decorated the New Kingdom royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, present humanity's oldest surviving attempts to provide a scientific map of the unseen realms beyond the visible cosmos and contain imagery and annotations that represent ancient Egyptian speculation (essentially philosophical and theological) about the events of the solar journey through the twelve hours of the night. The Netherworld Books describe one of the central mysteries of Egyptian religious belief—the union of the solar god Re with the underworldly god Osiris—and provide information on aspects of Egyptian theology and cosmography not present in the now more widely read Book of the Dead. Numerous illustrations provide overview images and individual scenes from each Netherworld Book, emphasizing the unity of text and image within the compositions. The major texts translated include the Book of Adoring Re in the West (the Litany of Re), the Book of the Hidden Chamber (Amduat), the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Books of the Creation of the Solar Disk, and the Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity.

Features:

• Accessible presentations of the main concepts of the Netherworld Books and the chief features of each text
• Notes and commentary address major theological themes within the texts as well as lexicographic and/or grammatical issues
• An overview of later uses of these compositions during the first millennium BCE

Perhaps the hardest-working member of the cabinet, Welles still found time to keep a detailed diary that has become one of the key documents for understanding the inner workings of the Lincoln administration. In this new edition, William E. and Erica L. Gienapp have restored Welles’s original observations, gleaned from the manuscript diaries at the Library of Congress and freed from his many later revisions, so that the reader can experience what he wrote in the moment. With his vitriolic pen, Welles captures the bitter disputes over strategy and war aims, lacerates colleagues from Secretary of State William H. Seward to General-in-Chief Henry Halleck, and condemns the actions of the self-serving southern elite he sees as responsible for the war. He just as easily waxes eloquent about the Navy's wartime achievements, extols the virtues of Lincoln, and drops in a tidbit of Washington gossip.

Carefully edited and extensively annotated, this edition contains a wealth of supplementary material. The appendixes include short biographies of the members of Lincoln’s cabinet, the retrospective Welles wrote after leaving office covering the period missing from the diary proper, and important letters regarding naval matters and international law.

When President Harry Truman introduced the atomic bomb to the world in 1945, he described it as a God-given harnessing of “the basic power of the universe.” Six days later a New York Times editorial framed the dilemma of the new Atomic Age for its readers: “Here the long pilgrimage of man on Earth turns towards darkness or towards light.” American nuclear scientists, aware of the dangers their work involved, referred to one of their most critical experiments as “tickling the dragon's tail.”

Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most Americans may not have been sure what an atomic bomb was or how it worked. But they did sense that it had fundamentally changed the future of the human race. In this book, Robert Jacobs analyzes the early impact of nuclear weapons on American culture and society. He does so by examining a broad range of stories, or “nuclear narratives,” that sought to come to grips with the implications of the bomb's unprecedented and almost unimaginable power. 

Beginning with what he calls the “primary nuclear narrative,” which depicted atomic power as a critical agent of social change that would either destroy the world or transform it for the better, Jacobs explores a variety of common themes and images related to the destructive power of the bomb, the effects of radiation, and ways of surviving nuclear war. He looks at civil defense pamphlets, magazines, novels, and films to recover the stories the U.S. government told its citizens and soldiers as well as those presented in popular culture. 

According to Jacobs, this early period of Cold War nuclear culture—from 1945 to the banning of above-ground testing in 1963—was distinctive for two reasons: not only did atmospheric testing make Americans keenly aware of the presence of nuclear weapons in their lives, but radioactive fallout from the tests also made these weapons a serious threat to public health, separate from yet directly linked to the danger of nuclear war.

2025 ALAA Book Award, Association for Latin American Art/Arvey Foundation, College Art Association

An exploration of Colombian maps in New Granada.

During the late Spanish colonial period, the Pacific Lowlands, also called the Greater Chocó, was famed for its rich placer deposits. Gold mined here was central to New Granada’s economy yet this Pacific frontier in today’s Colombia was considered the “periphery of the periphery.” Infamous for its fierce, unconquered Indigenous inhabitants and its brutal tropical climate, it was rarely visited by Spanish administrators, engineers, or topographers and seldom appeared in detail on printed maps of the period.

In this lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched volume, Juliet Wiersema uncovers little-known manuscript cartography and makes visible an unexamined corner of the Spanish empire. In concert with thousands of archival documents from Colombia, Spain, and the United States, she reveals how a "periphery" was imagined and projected, largely for political or economic reasons. Along the way, she unearths untold narratives about ephemeral settlements, African adaptation and autonomy, Indigenous strategies of resistance, and tenuous colonialisms on the margins of a beleaguered viceroyalty.

In the late sixteenth century, Spanish explorers described encounters with North American people they called "Jumanos." Although widespread contact with Jumanos is evident in accounts of exploration and colonization in New Mexico, Texas, and adjacent regions, their scattered distribution and scant documentation have led to long-standing disagreements: was "Jumano" simply a generic name loosely applied to a number of tribes, or were they an authentic, vanished people?

In the first full-length study of the Jumanos, anthropologist Nancy Hickerson proposes that they were indeed a distinctive tribe, their wide travel pattern linked over well-established itineraries. Drawing on extensive primary sources, Hickerson also explores their crucial role as traders in a network extending from the Rio Grande to the Caddoan tribes' confederacies of East Texas and Oklahoma.

Hickerson further concludes that the Jumanos eventually became agents for the Spanish colonies, drafted as mercenary fighters and intelligence-gatherers. Her findings reinterpret the cultural history of the South Plains region, bridging numerous gaps in the area's comprehensive history and in the chronicle of these elusive people.

As the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine the Great has long interested those studying the establishment of Christianity. But Constantine is also notable for his ability to control a sprawling empire and effect major changes. The Justice of Constantineexamines Constantine's judicial and administrative legislation and his efforts to maintain control over the imperial bureaucracy, to guarantee the working of Roman justice, and to keep the will of his subjects throughout the Roman Empire.

John Dillon first analyzes the record of Constantine's legislation and its relationship to prior legislation. His initial chapters also serve as an introduction to Roman law and administration in later antiquity. Dillon then considers Constantine's public edicts and internal communications about access to law, trials and procedure, corruption, and punishment for administrative abuses. How imperial officials relied on correspondence with Constantine to resolve legal questions is also considered. A study of Constantine's expedited appellate system, to ensure provincial justice, concludes the book.

Constantine's constitutions reveal much about the Theodosian Code and the laws included in it. Constantine consistently seeks direct sources of reliable information in order to enforce his will. In official correspondence, meanwhile, Constantine strives to maintain control over his officials through punishment; trusted agents; and the cultivation of accountability, rivalry, and suspicion among them.

Popular lore has long depicted the Karankawa Indians as primitive scavengers (perhaps even cannibals) who eked out a meager subsistence from fishing, hunting and gathering on the Texas coastal plains. That caricature, according to Robert Ricklis, hides the reality of a people who were well-adapted to their environment, skillful in using its resources, and successful in maintaining their culture until the arrival of Anglo-American settlers.

The Karankawa Indians of Texas is the first modern, well-researched history of the Karankawa from prehistoric times until their extinction in the nineteenth century. Blending archaeological and ethnohistorical data into a lively narrative history, Ricklis reveals the basic lifeway of the Karankawa, a seasonal pattern that took them from large coastal fishing camps in winter to small, dispersed hunting and gathering parties in summer. In a most important finding, he shows how, after initial hostilities, the Karankawa incorporated the Spanish missions into their subsistence pattern during the colonial period and coexisted peacefully with Euroamericans until the arrival of Anglo settlers in the 1820s and 1830s. These findings will be of wide interest to everyone studying the interactions of Native American and European peoples.

Oral histories of many of the last generation of Lowell, MA, textile mill workers preceded by two introductory sections. The first presents the historic setting of economic development and subsequent decline of the textile industry in Lowell. The second is a brief explanation of the production process wherein the last generation of mill workers expended so many of their skills and so much of their energy.

Marks the celebration by the modern city of Pensacola, Florida, of the 450th anniversary of Luna’s fateful colony

The 1559–1561 expedition of Don Tristán de Luna y Arellano to Florida was at the time of Spain’s most ambitious attempt yet to establish a colonial presence in southeastern North America. In June of 159, eleven ships carrying some five hundred soldiers and one thousand additional colonists, including not just Spaniards but also many of Aztec and African descent, sailed north from Veracruz, Mexico, on their way to the bay known then as Ochuse, and later as Pensacola. Finally arriving in mid-August, the colonists quickly sent word of their arrival back to Mexico and unloaded their supplies over the next five weeks, leaving vital food stores onboard the vessels until suitable warehouses could be constructed in the new settlement. When an unexpected hurricane struck on the night of September 19, 1559, however, seven of ten remaining vessels in Luna’s fleet were destroyed, and the expedition was instantaneously converted from a colonial venture to a mission in need of rescue.

Though ultimately doomed to failure by the hurricane that devastated their fleet and food stores, the Luna expedition nonetheless served as an immediate prelude to the successful establishment of a permanent colonial presence at St. Augustine on Florida’s Atlantic coast in 1565, and prefaced the eventual establishment after 1698 of three successive Spanish presidios at the same Pensacola Bay where Luna’s attempt had been made more than a century before.