You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
American architect Hank Schubart was regarded as a genius for finding the perfect site for a house and for integrating its design into the natural setting, so that his houses appear to be as native to the forest around them as the trees and rocks. Salt Spring Island, one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada, offered him a place to create the kind of architecture that responded to its surroundings, and Schubart-designed homes populate the island. Built of wood and glass, suffused with light, and oriented to views, they display characteristic features: random-width cedar siding, exposed beams, rusticated stonework. Over time, Schubart’s homes on Salt Spring Island came to be c...
This intimate biography of the pioneering Texas governor is “required reading for political junkies—and for women considering a life in politics” (Booklist). When Ann Richards delivered the keynote of the 1988 Democratic National Convention and mocked President Bush—“Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth”—she became an instant celebrity and triggered a rivalry that would alter the course of history. In 1990, she won the governorship of Texas, becoming the first ardent feminist elected to high office in America. Richards opened pathways for greater diversity in public service, and her achievements created a legacy that transcends her tenure...
It was like a remake of The Cowboy and the Lady, except that this time they weren't friends. The 1990 Texas governor's race pitted Republican Clayton Williams, a politically conservative rancher and oil millionaire, against Democrat Ann Richards, an experienced progressive politician noted for her toughness and quick wit. Their differences offered voters a choice not only of policies and programs but also of stereotypes and myths of men's and women's proper roles. Claytie and the Lady is the first in-depth look at how gender affected the 1990 governor's race. The authors' analysis reveals that Ann Richards' victory was a result of a unique combination of characteristics. She was simultaneous...
Straight from the Heart is Ann Richards’s story, told with her trademark candor and spicy humor. Born in a tiny town near Waco, Texas, she entered politics when her husband wouldn’t—and went on to become state treasurer, the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas in fifty years. She’s had her victories and her battles (the breakup of a thirty-year marriage and a bout with alcohol), but it’s her love of Texas and Texas politics that has made her who she is. This extraordinary memoir by one of the nation’s leading politicians proves the wisdom of her observation that women “can have a good and wonderful life, but that it only begins when they accept responsibility for it, not when they expect someone else to make it happen.” Richards talks openly about the course her life has taken and the choices she has made on the way. Her hard-won triumphs and savvy political career provide inspiring examples for all.
A stirring memoir of liberal politics and personal reflection through years in Texas public service.
With contributions from a wide array of scholars and activists, including leading Chicana feminists from the period, this groundbreaking anthology is the first collection of scholarly essays and testimonios that focuses on Chicana organizing, activism, and leadership in the movement years. The essays in Chicana Movidas: New Narratives of Activisim and Feminism in the Movement Era demonstrate how Chicanas enacted a new kind of politica at the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and developed innovative concepts, tactics, and methodologies that in turn generated new theories, art forms, organizational spaces, and strategies of alliance. These are the technologies of resistance ...
A close-up examination and exploration, How We Live Now challenges our old concepts of what it means to be a family and have a home, opening the door to the many diverse and thriving experiments of living in twenty-first century America. Across America and around the world, in cities and suburbs and small towns, people from all walks of life are redefining our “lifespaces”—the way we live and who we live with. The traditional nuclear family in their single-family home on a suburban lot has lost its place of prominence in contemporary life. Today, Americans have more choices than ever before in creating new ways to live and meet their personal needs and desires. Social scientist, resear...
The history of the Lone Star state is a narrative dominated by larger-than-life personalities and often-contentious legends, presenting interesting challenges for historians. Perhaps for this reason, Texas has produced a cadre of revered historians who have had a significant impact on the preservation (some would argue creation) of our state’s past. An anthology of biographical essays, Writing the Story of Texas pays tribute to the scholars who shaped our understanding of Texas’s past and, ultimately, the Texan identity. Edited by esteemed historians Patrick Cox and Kenneth Hendrickson, this collection includes insightful, cross-generational examinations of pivotal individuals who interp...
A brand-new collection of 32 case studies that further demonstrate the retrofitting of suburbia This amply-illustrated book, second in a series, documents how defunct shopping malls, parking lots, and the past century’s other obsolete suburban development patterns are being retrofitted to address current urgent challenges they weren’t designed for: improving public health, increasing resilience in the face of climate change, leveraging social capital for equity, supporting an aging society, competing for jobs, and disrupting automobile dependence. Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges provides summaries, data, and references on how these cha...
People today are living longer and healthier lives than at any other time in history -- with profound implications for the nature of their romantic relationships. In this inspiring new book, best-selling author Abigail Trafford describes how people over fifty are rewriting the script of love and in the process redefining the institution of marriage for future generations. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of men and women, married and single, gay and straight, she shows how the unprecedented period of vitality after midlife but before traditional old age is much more complicated romantically and sexually than those glossy images of gray-haired people on the beach would suggest. And she rev...