Muck City

Muck City
Author: Bryan Mealer
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-08-13
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0307888630

In a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where high school football is the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds. The loamy black “muck” that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade’s high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League – 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round. The industry that gave rise to the town and its team also spawned the chronic poverty, teeming migrant ghettos, and violence that cripples futures before they can ever begin. Muck City tells the story of quarterback Mario Rowley, whose dream is to win a championship for his deceased parents and quiet the ghosts that haunt him; head coach Jessie Hester, the town’s first NFL star, who returns home to “win kids, not championships”; and Jonteria Willliams, who must build her dream of becoming a doctor in one of the poorest high schools in the nation. For boys like Mario, being a Raider is a one-shot window for escape and a college education. Without football, Jonteria and the rest must make it on brains and fortitude alone. For the coach, good intentions must battle a town’s obsession to win above all else. Beyond the Friday night lights, this book is an engrossing portrait of a community mired in a shameful past and uncertain future, but with the fierce will to survive, win, and escape to a better life.

The Blanco River

The Blanco River
Author: Wes Ferguson
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2017-02-22
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1623495105

For eighty-seven miles, the swift and shallow Blanco River winds through the Texas Hill Country. Its water is clear and green, darkened by frequent pools. Wes Ferguson and Jacob Botter have paddled, walked, and waded the Blanco. They have explored its history, people, wildlife, and the natural beauty that surprises everyone who experiences this river. Described as “the defining element in some of the Hill Country’s most beautiful scenery,” the Blanco flows both above and below ground, part of a network of rivers and aquifers that sustains the region’s wildlife and millions of humans alike. However, overpumping and prolonged drought have combined to weaken the Blanco’s flow and sustenance, and in 2000—for the first time in recorded history—the river’s most significant feeder spring, Jacob’s Well, briefly ceased to flow. It stopped again in 2008. Then, in the spring of 2015, a devastating flood killed twelve people and toppled the huge cypress trees along its banks, altering not just the look of the river, but the communities that had come to depend on its serene presence. River travelers Ferguson and Botter tell the remarkable story of this changeable river, confronting challenges and dangers as well as rare opportunities to see parts of the river few have seen. The authors also photographed and recorded the human response to the destruction of a beloved natural resource that has become yet another episode in the story of water in Texas. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Running the River

Running the River
Author: Wes Ferguson
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2014-03-05
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1623491274

Growing up near the Sabine, journalist Wes Ferguson, like most East Texans, steered clear of its murky, debris-filled waters, where alligators lived in the backwater sloughs and an occasional body was pulled from some out-of-the-way crossing. The Sabine held a reputation as a haunt for a handful of hunters and loggers, more than a few water moccasins, swarms of mosquitoes, and the occasional black bear lumbering through swamp oak and cypress knees. But when Ferguson set out to do a series of newspaper stories on the upper portion of the river, he and photographer Jacob Croft Botter were entranced by the river’s subtle beauty and the solitude they found there. They came to admire the self-described “river rats” who hunted, fished, and swapped stories along the muddy water—plain folk who love the Sabine as much as Hill Country vacationers love the clear waters of the Guadalupe. Determined to travel the rest of the river, Ferguson and Botter loaded their gear and launched into the stretch of river that charts the line between the states and ends at the Gulf of Mexico. To learn more about The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, sponsors of this book's series, please click here.

Burn

Burn
Author: Nevada Barr
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2011-05-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780312381806

National Park Service Ranger Anna Pigeon takes the city of New Orleans by storm in her latest adventure from a "New York Times"-bestselling author. Now available in a tall Premium Edition. Martin's Press.

Marine Mammals Ashore

Marine Mammals Ashore
Author: Joseph R. Geraci
Publisher: National Aquarium in Baltimore
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2005
Genre: Marine mammals
ISBN: 0977460908

Comprehensive manual for understanding and carrying out marine mammal rescue activities for stranded seals, manatees, dolphins, whales, or sea otters.

Paddling Texas

Paddling Texas
Author: Shane Townsend
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2014-11-04
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1493016350

From the canyons of Big Bend to the cypress swamps of Pine Island Bayou, the waters of Texas have something for most every type of paddler and every paddling mood. One might float the diminutive Comal River, argued to be the shortest river in the world. Another might dig deep and follow the four-day, 260-mile route of the Texas Water Safari, which Canoe & Kayak Magazine referred to as “The World’s Toughest Canoe Race.” Whitewater is here too. Lakes are as well. And, the Texas Gulf Coast is home to sandy beaches, knobby mangroves, and sea grass flats. Meanwhile, Texas is home to some of the fastest growing cities in America. And, paddling is the fastest growing outdoor sport in the country. “Paddling Texas” is a guide for those who are new to either and all those who love both. Featured trips offer easy access, secure environments, good facilities, great fishing, superb wildlife viewing, and beautiful scenery. “Paddling Texas” gives recreational paddlers and anglers all the information they’ll need to paddle many of the best trips in Texas.

The Line Becomes a River

The Line Becomes a River
Author: Francisco Cantú
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2018-02-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0735217726

NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POST WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTEREST FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARD The instant New York Times bestseller, "A must-read for anyone who thinks 'build a wall' is the answer to anything." --Esquire For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.

Ancient Footprints of the Colorado River, 2nd Edition

Ancient Footprints of the Colorado River, 2nd Edition
Author: Alfredo A. Figueroa
Publisher: Alfredo A.Figueroa
Total Pages: 131
Release: 2012-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9780996214704

This book is the result of more than 53 years of research which includes the many field studies and observations that we have done throughout the years that were conducted in the Lower Colorado River Basin Valleys and in Mexico.This book is centered in the area of Blythe, CA in the Palo Verde/Parker Valleys. The unique research that is presented in this book opens a Pandora's Box of unknown history that remained lost for centuries. Most of the work is based on the sacred images that are in the surrounding mountains which provide a majestic view seen from our home located in the ancient Barrio de Acacitli, today's Barrio de El Cuchillo.The Xicano MOvement has motivated the foundation of this book and provided the vision for the social activists that gave birth to the ideals that fueled the Xicano Movement to its height. This in-depth research brings forth the truth of the Azteca/Mexica place of origin of Aztlan and of our forefathers, Moctezuma and Cuauhtémoc. Our participation in the Xicano Movement and the search for the truth of the origin of our Indigenous roots has been more than just a hobby or fad. It has been our way of life.Our research was conducted within the Lower Colorado River Basin Valleys and is based on the sacred mountain images, sacred ancient trails, landmarks, pictographs, petroglyphs, intaglios/geoglyphs, solstices and equinoxes. These overwhelmingly geographical and cosmological connections cannot be denied. Our research is also based on the Native oral language, traditional songs, and history of the Lower Colorado River Basin Valleys.We have called the area of the Palo Verde/Parker Valleys "La Cuna de Aztlan" because the old Island of Aztlan was located in the Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation (CRIT) as shown in the Boturini codex.

Exploring the Brazos River

Exploring the Brazos River
Author: Jim Kimmel
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2011
Genre: History
ISBN: 1603444807

"Come with us to learn about a great Texas river ... We will explore ... camp on its banks ... and look for places of excitement, beauty and learning - some of them surprising." From its ancient headwaters on the semiarid plains of eastern New Mexico to its mouth at the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazos River carves a huge and paradoxical crescent through Texas geography and history.