At the center of San Antonio’s growth from a small pioneering town to a major western metropolis sits CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned energy utility in the United States and an innovator in harnessing, conserving, and capitalizing on natural energy resources. The story of modern energy in San Antonio begins in 1860, when the San Antonio Gas Company started manufacturing gas for streetlights in a small plant on San Pedro Creek, using tree resin that arrived by oxcart. The company grew from a dark, dusty frontier town with more saloons than grocery stores to a bustling crossroads to the West and, ultimately, a twentieth-first-century American city. Innovative city leaders purchased the utility from a New York–based holding company in 1942, and CPS Energy as we know it today was born. In Powering the City, Catherine Nixon Cooke discusses the rise and fall of big holding companies, the impact of the Great Depression and World War II--when 25 percent of the company’s workforce enlisted in the armed forces--on the city’s energy supply, and the emergence of nuclear energy and a nationally acclaimed model for harnessing solar and wind energy. Known and relatively unknown events are recounted, including Samuel Insull’s move to Europe after his empire crashed in 1929; President Franklin Roosevelt’s Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which made it possible for the city to purchase the San Antonio Public Service Company; the city's competition with the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority, whose champion was Congressman Lyndon Johnson, in which the city emerged victorious in a deal that today returns billions in financial benefit; legal wranglings such as one that led to the establishment of Valero Energy Corporation; and energy’s role in the Southwest Research Institute and the South Texas Medical Center, HemisFair 1968, Sea World, Fiesta Texas, and Morgan’s Wonderland. Images from CPS's archive of historic photographs, some dating as far back as the early 1900s; back issues of its in-house magazine; and the Institute of Texas Cultures provide rich material to illustrate the story. As CPS Energy celebrates seventy-five years of city ownership, the region's industrial, scientific, and technological innovation are due in part to the company’s extraordinary impact on San Antonio.
Like Mexico itself, the McNab family story tells of a rich mix of culturesFrench, Scottish, Zapotec. The Thistle and the Rose captures that complexity, providing a unique lens through which to view a magnificent, complicated country during critical years of change. In The Thistle and the Rose, author Catherine Nixon Cooke narrates the story of John George McNab, a handsome Scotsman, and Guadalupe Fuentes Nivon McNab, a beautiful Oaxacan, and how they fell in love against the impossible challenge of building the famous Tehuantepec Railroad across the malaria-ridden isthmus of Mexico. Cooke weaves a rich tapestry using multiple threadsresearch by renowned Latin American scholar Teresa Van Hoy, documents and photographs found in the Pearson Archive in the United Kingdom, rare Mexican historic texts, personal interviews, family letters, diaries, photographs, and genealogical data from Ancestry.com. The author provides a sense of the rough-and-tumble country in early twentieth-century Mexico and the danger and challenge of building a link between the two oceans. She gives further insight into the McNab familys role in shaping Mexicos oil and transportation infrastructure. A story about love and courage in revolutionary Mexico, The Thistle and the Rose narrates the journey of self-discovery for a family that dared to embark on this quest.
The major guiding principle in the life of Tom Slick was a relentless search for adventure and exploration of the unknown, sparked by his immense curiosity about everything and his willingness to embrace and investigate new ideas. He was a larger-than-life Texas oilman, entrepreneur, and explorer. He climbed mountains in the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti. He developed new breeds of cattle. He discovered major oil fields. He founded several research institutes in San Antonio, including the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Southwest Research Institute, and the Mind Science Foundation. He even wrote and published on the topic of world peace in the 1950s; the Tom Slick World Peace Lectures at the University of Texas’ LBJ Library and the endowed Tom Slick Professorship of World Peace were established after his death in 1962. In this revised and expanded edition of her previously published biography, Catherine Nixon Cooke, niece of Tom Slick, has mined personal letters, family papers, archives of the institutes founded by her uncle, and other resources to expand what we know of this enigmatic, energetic adventurer. In addition to relating his better-known exploits and pursuits, Cooke delves for the first time into Slick’s shadowy connections with the world of international espionage, including clues that Slick may have been involved in certain operations and interests of the OSS and its successor organization, the CIA. Illustrated throughout with rare historic photographs, In Search of Tom Slick: Explorer and Visionary will introduce a new readership to this influential yet little known figure in modern history.
Follows Juan O'Gorman's life and the creation of his mural Confluence of Civilizations in the Americas, a spectacular piece of midcentury public art in San Antonio, Texas, that is one of the Mexican artist's most influential works"--
The story of John George McNab and his wife, Guadalupe Fuentes Nivon McNab. McNab was a Scottish engineer who moved to Mexico and played a role in the development of the Tehuantepec railroad in the early 1900s and in the discovery of big oil in Mexico in 1910. The book also traces Guadalupe's family history which had roots in France and ancient Oaxaca. The McNab family eventually settled in San Antonio.
At the center of San Antonio’s growth from a small pioneering town to a major western metropolis sits CPS Energy, the largest municipally owned energy utility in the United States and an innovator in harnessing, conserving, and capitalizing on natural energy resources. The story of modern energy in San Antonio begins in 1860, when the San Antonio Gas Company started manufacturing gas for streetlights in a small plant on San Pedro Creek, using tree resin that arrived by oxcart. The company grew from a dark, dusty frontier town with more saloons than grocery stores to a bustling crossroads to the West and, ultimately, a twentieth-first-century American city. Innovative city leaders purchased the utility from a New York–based holding company in 1942, and CPS Energy as we know it today was born. In Powering the City, Catherine Nixon Cooke discusses the rise and fall of big holding companies, the impact of the Great Depression and World War II--when 25 percent of the company’s workforce enlisted in the armed forces--on the city’s energy supply, and the emergence of nuclear energy and a nationally acclaimed model for harnessing solar and wind energy. Known and relatively unknown events are recounted, including Samuel Insull’s move to Europe after his empire crashed in 1929; President Franklin Roosevelt’s Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which made it possible for the city to purchase the San Antonio Public Service Company; the city's competition with the Guadalupe Blanco River Authority, whose champion was Congressman Lyndon Johnson, in which the city emerged victorious in a deal that today returns billions in financial benefit; legal wranglings such as one that led to the establishment of Valero Energy Corporation; and energy’s role in the Southwest Research Institute and the South Texas Medical Center, HemisFair 1968, Sea World, Fiesta Texas, and Morgan’s Wonderland. Images from CPS's archive of historic photographs, some dating as far back as the early 1900s; back issues of its in-house magazine; and the Institute of Texas Cultures provide rich material to illustrate the story. As CPS Energy celebrates seventy-five years of city ownership, the region's industrial, scientific, and technological innovation are due in part to the company’s extraordinary impact on San Antonio.
The major guiding principle in the life of Tom Slick was a relentless search for adventure and exploration of the unknown, sparked by his immense curiosity about everything and his willingness to embrace and investigate new ideas. He was a larger-than-life Texas oilman, entrepreneur, and explorer. He climbed mountains in the Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti. He developed new breeds of cattle. He discovered major oil fields. He founded several research institutes in San Antonio, including the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, Southwest Research Institute, and the Mind Science Foundation. He even wrote and published on the topic of world peace in the 1950s; the Tom Slick World Peace Lectures at the University of Texas’ LBJ Library and the endowed Tom Slick Professorship of World Peace were established after his death in 1962. In this revised and expanded edition of her previously published biography, Catherine Nixon Cooke, niece of Tom Slick, has mined personal letters, family papers, archives of the institutes founded by her uncle, and other resources to expand what we know of this enigmatic, energetic adventurer. In addition to relating his better-known exploits and pursuits, Cooke delves for the first time into Slick’s shadowy connections with the world of international espionage, including clues that Slick may have been involved in certain operations and interests of the OSS and its successor organization, the CIA. Illustrated throughout with rare historic photographs, In Search of Tom Slick: Explorer and Visionary will introduce a new readership to this influential yet little known figure in modern history.
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