History—natural history, human history, and personal history—and place are the cornerstones of The Eye of the Mammoth. Stephen Harrigan's career has taken him from the Alaska Highway to the Chihuahuan Desert, from the casinos of Monaco to his ancestors' village in the Czech Republic. And now, in this new edition, he movingly recounts in "Off Course" a quest to learn all he can about his father, who died in a plane crash six months

When Sarah Bird arrived in Austin in 1973 in pursuit of a boyfriend who was “hotter than lava,” she found an abundance of inspiration for storytelling (her sweetheart left her for Scientology, but she got to taste a morsel of Lynda Bird Johnson’s poorly preserved wedding cake as a temp worker at the LBJ Library). Sarah Bird went on to write ten acclaimed novels and contribute hundreds of articles to publications coast to coast, developing

"Yes, I do have a Texas connection, but, as we say in the Midwest, where I grew up, not so's you'd know it." So Calvin Trillin introduces this collection of articles and poems about a place that turns up surprisingly often when he's ostensibly writing about something else. Whether reporting on the American scene for the New Yorker, penning comic verse and political commentary for the Nation, or writing his memoirs, Trillin