Selected from the previously unseen Waterline Collection at the National Maritime Museum, this compilation of photographs recreates the heyday of cruise liners, spanning the early twentieth century, and crossing five continents, from the canals of Venice to the Caribbean.
In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth.Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.
Photographs from Texas Highways Magazine
Many outlanders think of Texas as a land of cactus flats or High Plains ranches, its landscape broken only by barbed wire fences of perhaps an oil derrick. Texans, of course, know better. Here, in 202 magnificently reproduced, full-color photographs from Texas Highways magazine, the astonishing diversity and beauty of Texas landscapes are splendidly and dramatically displayed. The damp pine forests, shaded lakes, and tangled thickets of East Texas; the fertile fields of the rolling prairies; the vast wheat and cotton farms and rangelands of the Panhandle plains; the rugged peaks rising high over desert flats in the Trans-Pecos; the sun-drenched beaches and citrus groves of the coastlands; and the limestone cliffs, clear streams, and hidden springs of the Hill Country—all are Texas landscapes. These stunning photographs from the state’s official travel magazine not only reveal the physical beauty of these varied regions, but also tell us something about the culture and heritage of those who live there. In his introduction to this volume, John Graves describes the Texas landscapes as they once were and as they now are, and muses on how man has shaped the land and how, in its turn, the land has shaped man too.