Insight

Bookshelf

What's Been Happening

Walker's Texas Division C.S.A.: Greyhounds of the Trans-Mississippi by Richard Lowe, Regents Professor of history (LSU Press).

Lowe focuses on the largest group of Texans — about 12,000 men — to serve in the Civil War. Commanded by Maj. Gen. John G. Walker, the division fought at Milliken's Bend, La., during U.S. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Vicksburg campaign and helped repel U.S. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks' Red River campaign at the battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in Louisiana and Jenkins' Ferry in Arkansas. The book received the Museum of the Confederacy's Jefferson Davis Award as the outstanding narrative on the Confederate period published in the past year.

Caught in the Crossfire: Revolution, Repression and the Rational Peasant by T. David Mason, professor of political science (Rowman & Littlefield).

Mason analyzes grievances that motivate peasants to participate in political movements and explores the leadership, resources and strategies required. Discussing present and past uprisings and including case studies from El Salvador and Peru, he shows how different strategies produce different outcomes in the conflicts. He also examines how trends toward increased political democratization and economic globalization may affect future revolutionary movements.

Animal Assisted Therapy in Counseling by Cynthia K. Chandler, professor
of counseling (Routledge). Chandler discusses the latest empirical research in the field of counseling and offers guidelines for implementing animal assisted therapy in settings including community counseling agencies, schools, private practice and universities. The book features case examples and explains how to select, train and evaluate an animal for therapy work.

Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy edited by Bruce V. Foltz, professor of philosophy at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Robert Frodeman, associate professor and chair of the UNT Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies (Indiana University Press). The essays featured in this volume cover topics such as environmental ethics, theology, gender and the environment, and the role of science and technology in forming knowledge about the world. Included are "Boundary Projects Versus Border Patrol" by Irene J. Klaver, assistant professor of philosophy, and "Philosophy in the Field" by Frodeman.

The Untold Story of a Nigerian Royal Family: The Urhobo Ruling Clan of Okpe Kingdom by Joseph O. Asagba ('85 M.Ed., '93 Ph.D.) of Denton (iUniverse). The book examines the rise and fall of the Okpe princes of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, giving readers a look at an African royal family's history. While writing about the history of his family, Asagba documents the African slave trade from the vantage point of the 19th-century leaders of West Africa.

Second Wind by Nancy Vance Cooley ('40) of Garland (PublishAmerica). A sequel to Cooley's first novel, The Wind's Will, this book is about the rigors of settling in the Texas Panhandle in the late 19th century. Her characters face blizzards, storms and droughts as well as an obsessed gambler and a kidnapping.

Blood of Angels by Reed Arvin ('78) of Nashville (HarperCollins). Characters in Arvin's latest thriller include a Nashville prosecutor, a Sudanese immigrant being tried for murder and a beautiful anti-death penalty advocate who emerges as the man's alibi. Arvin, who earned his North Texas degree in jazz studies, was a music producer before he began writing full time.

Fire, Ice and Roses: A Mississippi Story by Wanda Gaskin-Smith ('80) of McKinney (PublishAmerica). Set in the late 1940s in rural Mississippi, the novel examines race issues through the lives of a white blacksmith, his daughter and his black assistant. Gaskin-Smith is a licensed professional counselor with a private practice in McKinney.

The Comancheria: Shadow of the Great Owl by B Ray Mize ('71) of New Orleans (TurnKey Press). This unconventional Western novel follows the attempts of Reid Matthews, a Comanche war hero and former oil field hand, to stop an evil government network. For nearly two decades Mize was chief of audit and security for an oil drilling company and currently works as an oil field investigator. This second book in his Comancheria series is partially set in the Texas Hill Country and the Big Bend.

Dinner With a Perfect Stranger: An Invitation Worth Considering by David Gregory Smith ('95 M.S.) of Plano (WaterBrook Press). In this novel, which Smith wrote under the name David Gregory, an overworked man accepts an anonymous invitation and ends up dining with Jesus. Over the course of the meal, they discuss questions about God, pain, faith and doubt. Originally self published, the book was released this summer by WaterBrook, a religious publishing division of Random House.

America's Historic Stockyards: Livestock Hotels by J'Nell L. Pate ('82 Ph.D.) of Azle (TCU Press). Pate tells the story of livestock marketing in America from colonial days to the present and details the history of the two dozen largest stockyards that boomed from the 1860s to the 1960s. This book is her sixth. Her North Texas dissertation became Livestock Legacy: The Fort Worth Stockyards, 1887-1987, which won the Coral H. Tullis prize from the Texas State Historical Association as the best book on Texas history in 1988.

Other Media

Funky Phonics: Learn to Read by Sara Jordan ('79) of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada (Jordan Music Productions). One of the first graduates to receive a bachelor of music degree in the performance of woodwinds at North Texas, Jordan has gone from pit orchestra player to composer and lyricist of educational music. The four-volume Funky Phonics series of songs uses phonics to help kindergarteners through second graders learn to read. Lyrics books accompany the CDs, and separate resource books include classroom activities, lessons and worksheets. Also new are two volumes of Bilingual Songs: English-Spanish to help beginners learn Spanish.