Announcing a Major Publishing Initiative: The Texas Bookshelf

The University of Texas Press announces a major new initiative unprecedented in publishing—The Texas Bookshelf. This project will be the most ambitious and comprehensive publishing endeavor about the culture and history of one state ever undertaken. The Texas Bookshelf will comprise sixteen books and a companion website launching in 2017, all to be written by the distinguished faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. The first book will be a new full-length history of Texas, followed by fifteen books released over five years on a range of Texas subjects—politics, music, film, business, architecture, and sports, among many others. (Authors and subjects listed below)

The Texas Bookshelf authors.
Photo by Michael O’Brien (Hard Ground, 2011)

John Steinbeck wrote in his 1962 book Travels with Charley: In Search of America, “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.” Texas has long been a source of international fascination for writers, thinkers, musicians, artists, and innovators alike. This vast and varied state occupies a unique and sometimes controversial place in conversations about our nation’s cultural, economic, and political history, yet at the same time embodies something essential about the American experience. Today’s Texas, like America itself, is vital and diverse, a place whose rich heritage and Wild West romanticism are constantly being recombined with its modern entrepreneurial spirit, reflected in its personalities and national politicians—including three U.S. presidents—and the global boom industries of film, music, high tech, energy, and the growing sustainability movement. 

Drawing on the state’s brightest writers, scholars, and intellectuals, the engagingly written narratives of the Texas Bookshelf will reveal the many fascinating stories that have played out in Texas from pre-Columbian times to the twenty-first century.

Director of Princeton University Press Peter Dougherty calls the project “inspired” and says, “The Bookshelf is ambitious in aim, authoritative in authorship, and panoramic in scope. I think it brilliantly merges the resources of the University of Texas with a vision as big as Texas itself. The Bookshelf sets a new standard and establishes a new genre for university presses and publishers everywhere.”

The Alcalde :: The Memory of Bones

The Memory of Bones
Houston,  Stuart, and Taube
Buy It Now

Secrets of the Maya

Could the world really end in 2012—a date referenced on a Maya calendar? The UT expert who helped crack the Maya code says the truth is wilder than you know.

A heavy stone wheel, engraved with inscrutable hieroglyphs, spins in the night sky. “If you believe the Maya calendar, on December 21 polar shifts will reverse the Earth’s gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space,” we hear Matt Damon say. But just in case the Maya were wrong, Damon assures us, TD Ameritrade has some great 401(k) options.


Then there’s the Chevy Super Bowl ad: a man drives a pickup through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. A newspaper headlined “2012 MAYAN APOCALYPSE” clings to the remnants of a traffic light. “Where’s Dave?” the driver asks another survivor. “Dave drove a Ford,” his friend answers, as dead frogs rain from the sky. The apocalypse is everywhere. In commercials, movies like 2012 and Apocalypto, even a Saturday Night Live skit with Katy Perry. “Independent researcher” John Major Jenkins sells books with titles like Maya Cosmogenesis 2012. On the website December212012.org, the Deluxe 2-Person Survival Kit retails for $98.99.



What gets lost in all this noise is the ancient Maya themselves. We keep hearing that their calendar predicted the world’s end on Dec. 21, 2012—due to astrological alignment, Jesus, or aliens, depending on whom you ask. But what did the Maya really believe?

Until recently, that question was impossible to answer. That’s because our knowledge of the ancient Maya—a vast civilization that colonized Mesoamerica long before Europeans arrived—has long lagged behind that of other ancient peoples. For centuries, Maya hieroglyphs were almost completely unreadable. Only in the past three decades have researchers deciphered 90 percent of the glyphs.

read the full article at alcalde.texasexes.org »