New York Times features TAMU Press author!

Did you know a student can participate in both professional and college rodeo at the same time?

“Our students may have a college rodeo one weekend and a professional rodeo the next weekend,” said Roger Walters, commissioner of NIRA and a former rodeo coach at Sam Houston State in Huntsville, Tex. “Or they may be up in a college rodeo on Friday and a professional rodeo on Thursday.”

Read more about these incredible students in the New York Times.

Sylvia Mahoney, author of College Rodeo: From Show to Sport is featured in the article!

Mahoney’s book College Rodeo: From Show to Sport gives readers an inside look to a sport that most people know very little about. In fact, seldom does a college sport exist for eighty years without having a book written about it, but college rodeo has. Sylvia Gann Mahoney has written the first history of the sport, tracing its growth parallel to the development of professional rodeo and the growth of the organizational structure that governs college rodeo. Mahoney draws on personal interviews as well as the archives of the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association and newspaper accounts from participating schools and their hometowns.

Mahoney chronicles the events, profiles winners, and analyzes the organizational efforts that have contributed to the colorful history of college rodeo. She traces the changing role of women, noting their victories that were ignored by much of the contemporary press in the early days of the sport. College Rodeo highlights outstanding individuals through extensive interviews, giving credit to the pioneers of college rodeo. This book includes rare photographs of rodeo teams, champions, and rodeo queens, blended with the true life details of sweat and tears that make intercollegiate rodeo such a popular sport.

Read more about College Rodeo here and order your own copy!

But I am not a Tomato Lover?!

Not a Tomato Lover? Who cares?!

Betsy Friauf of The Dallas Morning News reports that William D. Adams’s Texas Tomato Lover’s Handbook is advice that is “applicable to gardening in general, especially vegetable gardening, making [the] book a bargain.”

Friauf describes her judgement of the book's $25.00 price:
"At first I thought $25 might be pricey for this slender little book. I wasn’t reassured by the first chapter’s title: “History of the Garden Tomato.” Who has time for history when sudden 100-degree weather has seared my once-robust tomato vines?"

But after reading the first paragraph, she was hooked:
"..the first paragraph hooked me. For it’s the history lesson that tells me the tomato is not, as I’d imagined, a naturally tough customer that loves heat. No, it’s a native of mid- and high-altitude Peru, where mild climate and fertile soil combine to make tomatoes flourish. Now I understand where these babies are coming from."

Want to read Friauf's full article? Visit the Dallas Morning News website!

Read more about William D. Adams and his book, Texas Tomato Lover’s Handbook here and order your own copy now!

Author Thomas Hatfield featured in Humanities Texas

Thomas Hatfield’s "Rudder: From Leader to Legend" was recently featured in the June 2011 Humanities Texas e-newsletter! Check out this excerpt “The First Night on Point du Hoc” for a quick look into the book. You can order your own copy on our website here!

Reveille-The First Lady of Texas A&M

Reveille needs no introduction to Aggies; she is surrounded by traditions, honored and privileged anywhere on campus. Reveille By Rusty Burson and Vannessa Burson gives readers an inside look to the First Lady of Texas A&M.



Check out this video of Reveilles VII and VIII visit the spa for shampoo, blowout and trim!

Supporting in more ways than one: Aggie Moms

Aggie Mothers Know Best, about Aggie Moms’ Clubs and Mothers’ Club representatives talk about scholarships these clubs sponsor and what these gifts mean to both parents and students. Watch here!

Not only do Aggie Moms' Clubs offer great support to Aggie students, but they sure can cook! Their recipes are featured in the TAMU Press's book: Aggies, Moms, and Apple Pie, edited by Edna Smith.

The college experience revolves around many things, not the least important of which is food. From dorm room cuisine to tailgate parties to care packages, higher education can present some distinctive new demands on a person's cooking skills, time, and recipe file. This special cookbook will help both students and parents meet these challenges. It offers an array of good fare for late-night suppers, gatherings at your house, and regional specialties to impress the new roommate from New Jersey. Edna M. Smith, mother of two Texas Aggies, prepared this specially tailored cookbook from the recipes submitted by the members of seventy Federation of Texas A&M University Mothers' Clubs. The nearly five hundred recipes focus on the needs of families with college students and of the students themselves. Those who are novice cooks, perhaps just starting their own families and traditions, will appreciate the helpful suggestions for solving culinary mysteries. Any cook will enjoy the varied dishes that have been favorites for parties, covered dish suppers, and family feasts.

Read more and order your own copy of Aggies, Moms, and Apple Pie here!

Harvey Weil Sportsman Conservationist of the Year!

The outdoor tents at Welder Wildlife Refuge were packed Saturday night with people there to honor Texas A&M Press advancement board member Dick Bartlett as the Harvey Weil Sportsman Conservationist of the Year and, as the Professional Conservationist of the Year, Wes Tunnell, the long-time general editor of two press book series on the Gulf of Mexico (here with his wife, Kathy). Also honored, in memoriam, was friend of the press Dick Conolly, whose wife, Norma, is shown here with Dick Bartlett. It was a sensational evening of tribute to these internationally known conservationists.

Remembering Tom Hargrove

There were four guys from Fisher County who came to Aggieland (and Spider-D) in two-year staggered classes—Jim Lanning ’64, Tom Hargrove ’66, Lee Lanning ’68, and Raford Hargrove ’70. Their friendship embodied the best of the Aggie bonding. When Tom and Lee were both serving in Vietnam in 1969, their wives, Susan Hargrove and Linda Lanning, shared an apartment in San Francisco. TAMU Press published Linda’s moving account of their experience as waiting wives, Waiting: One Wife’s Year of the Vietnam War, in 2009. When Tom was kidnapped in Colombia, the Lannings were at the head of the list of friends who supported Susan in seeking his release, through ransom money, negotiating privately with the guerillas, and surviving the emotional rollercoaster.

It did not take knowing Tom long to understand how he generated that kind of loyalty and commitment. He was a leader in the Green Revolution of finding rice strains that would support Third World agriculture, a man of principle and courage, an agricultural journalist and international development worker. His mind was sharp, and his heart was as big as the West Texas that never left his accent or his perspective.

If you didn’t know Tom in person, you can know him through his books, which offer a unique account of and reflection on two dramatic episodes in America’s twentieth-century history: our involvement in Vietnam and our vulnerability to international drug runners. Even now, after his too-early death this week, Tom is worth getting to know; he will enlarge your heart and your experience.

Tom’s books: Long March to Freedom: The True Story of a Colombian Kidnapping
American History (TAMU Press edition 2007); A Dragon Lives Forever: War and Rice in Vietnam's Mekong Delta (TAMU Press edition 2008).