Lonn Taylor's Books

Turning the Pages of Texas

By: Lonn Taylor

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Turning the Pages of Texas is a collection of sixty essays about Texas books, authors, book collectors, libraries, and bookstores. It is a book for booklovers and bookish readers. Lonn Taylor writes from the point of view of a historian who has been reading books about Texas for seventy years, since he was seven years old, and who has known many of the authors he writes about. He presents his reflections about well-known figures such as John Graves, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. He also introduces readers to people like folklorist C. L. Sonnichsen, who wrote about Texas feuds; Julia Lee Sinks, who interviewed early settlers of Fayette County in the 1870s; Karen Olsson, who wrote a fine novel about the mystique of Austin; and David Dorado Romo, who describes himself as the “psychogeographer of El Paso” and is the grandnephew of a saint. Some of the authors Taylor writes about are truly obscure, like Gertrude Beasley, who published her autobiography in Paris in 1924 and died in a New York insane asylum, or Tony Cano, whose self-published autobiographical novel describes what it was like to be poor and Mexican in West Texas in the 1950s. Taylor also teases out the Texas connections of writers as diverse as William Sydney Porter, Hervey Allen, and H. Allen Smith, and he writes about tracking down Texas books in London and Washington, DC, as well as at Barber’s in Fort Worth, the Brick Row Book Shop in Austin, and Rosengren’s and Brock’s in San Antonio. This is a booklover’s book.

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291

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875657206

ISBN 13

9780875657202

Texas, My Texas

Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

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Texas, My Texas

Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

In a collection of essays about Texas gathered from his West Texas newspaper column, Lonn Taylor traverses the very best of Texas geography, Texas history, and Texas personalities. In a state so famous for its pride, Taylor manages to write a very honest, witty, and wise book about Texas past and Texas present. Texas, My Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy is a story of legacies, of men and women, times, and places that have made this state what it is today. From a history of Taylor’s hometown, Fort Davis, to stories about the first man wounded in the Texas Revolution, (who was an African American), to accounts of outlaw Sam Bass and an explanation of Hill Country Christmases, Taylor has searched every corner of the state for untold histories.Taylor’s background as a former curator at the Smithsonian National Museum becomes apparent in his attention to detail: Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, artists, architects, criminals, the founder of Neiman Marcus, and the famous horned frog “Old Rip” all make appearances as quintessential Texans. Lonn Taylor’s unique narrative voice is personal. As he points out in the foreword, it is the stories of Texans themselves, of their grit and eccentricities, that have “brought the past into the present . . . the two seem to me to be bound together by stories.” People—real Texans—are the focus of the essays, making Texas, My Texas a rite of passage for anyone who claims Texan heritage. There are just a few things every good Texan “knows,” like the fact that it is illegal to pick bluebonnets along the highway, or that the Menger Hotel bar is modeled after the one in the House of Lords in London. Taylor points out with his usual wit that it is not, in fact, illegal to pick any of the six varieties of bluebonnets that grow throughout our state, and that few Texans would know that the bar is modeled after the one in the House of Lords, as few Texans are Lords. These are just a few examples of Taylor’s knowledge of Texas and his passion for its citizens.

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Page Count

237

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875654975

ISBN 13

9780875654973

Texas People, Texas Places

More Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

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Texas People, Texas Places

More Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

Following up Texas, My Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy with a second collection of essays, Lonn Taylor’s Texas People, Texas Places again explores the very best of Texas geography, Texas history, and Texas personalities. In a state so famous for its pride, Taylor manages to write an exceptionally honest, witty, and wise book about Texas past and Texas present. Texas People, Texas Places is a story of men and women and places that have made this state great. From a small-town radio host to tight-fisted West Texas ranchers, and even to Taylor’s own family members, Taylor’s subjects paint a profound and dynamic picture. Lonn Taylor shares anecdotes that will appeal to any Texan, in a voice that is as personal as it is unique.

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Page Count

251

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875655823

ISBN 13

9780875655826

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

The art of furniture making flourished in Texas during the mid-nineteenth century. To document this rich heritage of locally made furniture, Miss Ima Hogg, the well-known philanthropist and collector of American decorative arts, enlisted Lonn Taylor and David B. Warren to research early Texas furniture and its makers. After more than a decade of investigation, they published Texas Furniture in 1975, and it quickly became the authoritative reference on this subject. An updated edition, Texas Furniture, Volume One, was issued in the spring of 2012. Texas Furniture, Volume Two presents over 150 additional pieces of furniture that were not included in Volume One, each superbly photographed in color and accompanied by detailed descriptions of the piece’s maker, date, materials, measurements, history, and owner, as well as an analysis by the authors. Taylor and Warren have also written a new introduction for this volume, in which they amplify the story of early Texas furniture. In particular, they compare and contrast the two important traditions of cabinetmaking in Texas, Anglo-American and German, and identify previously unknown artisans. The authors also discuss nineteenth-century Texans’ desire for refinement and gentility in furniture, non-commercial furniture making, and marquetry work. And they pay tribute to the twentieth-century collectors who first recognized the value of locally made Texas furniture and worked to preserve it. A checklist of Texas cabinetmakers, which contains biographical information on approximately nine hundred men who made furniture in Texas, completes the volume.

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Page Count

351

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292745818

ISBN 13

9780292745810

Texas, My Texas

Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

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Texas, My Texas

Musings of the Rambling Boy

By: Lonn Taylor

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237

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Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875654975

ISBN 13

9780875654973

Child of the Sun

Memories of a Philippine Boyhood

By: Lonn Taylor

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Child of the Sun

Memories of a Philippine Boyhood

By: Lonn Taylor

Historian Lonn Taylor built a career as a curator in history museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. In retirement he wrote weekly columns on the people and places of Texas, signed the “Rambling Boy,” that were distributed widely in print and on the radio. This book stands out from his numerous other books on historical and literary topics: it’s the only one he wrote about himself and the last book he wrote before he died in June 2019. It describes how his experience of growing up in the Philippines from 1947 to 1955 shaped his entire life by teaching him the destructive power of war. In the Philippines, his father was employed as a civil engineer building and rebuilding roads and bridges in the war-devastated islands. “I lived most of my daily life in a well-protected bubble of white colonialism,” he says in this memoir of his youth, “and thought nothing about it.” Despite that “well-protected bubble,” Taylor was aware of the ruins all around him, the ravages of bombs and artillery shells, and of his Filipino neighbors unbowed by their loss of wealth and privilege, or their confinement and starvation in Japanese internment camps. The manifest strengths and resilience of a society blended of Malay, Chinese, Spanish, and American cultures made him a lifelong believer in the benefits of multiculturalism—even as he bore witness to the islands’ postcolonial woes: a feudal agricultural system maintained by landlords with private armies, corruption so endemic that even post office clerks expected tips for selling stamps, and deadly outbreaks of personal violence. As an American child in the Philippines, and then, inevitably, an outsider in the postwar America he returned to at fifteen, Taylor honed a keen and varied sense of difference in class, culture, and language. This nuanced understanding can be heard throughout Child of the Sun as Taylor reflects on his innocent years, conveying with hard-earned worldliness and wisdom all the beauty and lasting conflict of a lost world and time.

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Page Count

299

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806167769

ISBN 13

9780806167763

Foreigners in the Confederacy

By: Ella Lonn

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Foreigners in the Confederacy

By: Ella Lonn

The Confederate armies included in their ranks a remarkable range of nationalities--among them Germans, Irish, Italians, French, Poles, Mexicans, Cubans, Hungarians, Russians, Swedes, Danes, and Chinese. Covering the complete story of the activities of th

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Page Count

598

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

080785400X

ISBN 13

9780807854006

Sweet Demotion

How an Almost Famous Rock Journalist Lost Everything and Found Himself (Almost)

By: Lonn Friend

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Sweet Demotion

How an Almost Famous Rock Journalist Lost Everything and Found Himself (Almost)

By: Lonn Friend

In his first book, Life on Planet Rock, author Lonn Friend shared his ringside view of rocks decade of decadence. Now, in Sweet Demotion, the veteran rock scribe takes off the gloves and battles himself. Lonn was enjoying a six-figure multi-media career in 1998 when, at the end of a four-year run as a record company VP, he was bitch slapped by the Universe; his professional ride came to a crashing pause. But instead of hiring headhunters or putting a resume together to find another gig, Lonn hit the rock-and-roll road less traveled. The result is a brutally transparent, shamelessly self-deprecating mid-life memoir of a writer who stopped making money and started seeking truth. Sweet Demotion chronicles a thirteen-year period of personal deconstruction, spiritual madness, and bizarre anecdotal wordplay where faith was lost in everything but the moment and the music. Lonns intimate adventure invites the reader to a porn burial in the desert, a Janis Joplin ghost sighting, a Dallas meditation on the anniversary of JFKs assassination following the interview of a heavy metal legend, and the sharing of sacred space on a northeast lake with the lead singer of Aerosmith. Sweet Demotion is a sojourn to near-enlightenment that no one but Lonn Friend could have possibly experienced.

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Page Count

477

Publisher

AuthorHouse

Published Date

ISBN 10

1456748408

ISBN 13

9781456748401

Child of the Sun

Memories of a Philippine Boyhood

By: Lonn Taylor

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Child of the Sun

Memories of a Philippine Boyhood

By: Lonn Taylor

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Page Count

241

Publisher

University of Oklahoma Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0806167807

ISBN 13

9780806167800

Texas Furniture, Volume One

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880, Revised Edition

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture, Volume One

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880, Revised Edition

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

More examples of Texas' rich heritage of locally made nineteenth-century furniture and information on the craftsmen who produced it"--

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Page Count

393

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292728697

ISBN 13

9780292728691

Turning the Pages of Texas

By: Lonn Taylor

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Turning the Pages of Texas

By: Lonn Taylor

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Page Count

291

Publisher

Texas A&M University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0875657206

ISBN 13

9780875657202

Texas Furniture, Volume One

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880, Revised Edition

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture, Volume One

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880, Revised Edition

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

More examples of Texas' rich heritage of locally made nineteenth-century furniture and information on the craftsmen who produced it"--

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Page Count

393

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292728697

ISBN 13

9780292728691

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

The art of furniture making flourished in Texas during the mid-nineteenth century. To document this rich heritage of locally made furniture, Miss Ima Hogg, the well-known philanthropist and collector of American decorative arts, enlisted Lonn Taylor and David B. Warren to research early Texas furniture and its makers. After more than a decade of investigation, they published Texas Furniture in 1975, and it quickly became the authoritative reference on this subject. An updated edition, Texas Furniture, Volume One, was issued in the spring of 2012. Texas Furniture, Volume Two presents over 150 additional pieces of furniture that were not included in Volume One, each superbly photographed in color and accompanied by detailed descriptions of the piece's maker, date, materials, measurements, history, and owner, as well as an analysis by the authors. Taylor and Warren have also written a new introduction for this volume, in which they amplify the story of early Texas furniture. In particular, they compare and contrast the two important traditions of cabinetmaking in Texas, Anglo-American and German, and identify previously unknown artisans. The authors also discuss nineteenth-century Texans' desire for refinement and gentility in furniture, non-commercial furniture making, and marquetry work. And they pay tribute to the twentieth-century collectors who first recognized the value of locally made Texas furniture and worked to preserve it. A checklist of Texas cabinetmakers, which contains biographical information on approximately nine hundred men who made furniture in Texas, completes the volume.

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Page Count

352

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292739427

ISBN 13

9780292739420

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture, Volume Two

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840–1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Page Count

351

Publisher

University of Texas Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292745818

ISBN 13

9780292745810

Texas Furniture

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

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Texas Furniture

The Cabinetmakers and Their Work, 1840-1880

By: Lonn Taylor,David B. Warren

Photographs of more than two hundred representative pieces of furniture are supplemented by historical information, data on their measurements and styles and an annotated list of cabinetmakers

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Page Count

387

Published Date

ISBN 10

0292738013

ISBN 13

9780292738010

The Star-Spangled Banner

The Making of an American Icon

By: Lonn Taylor,Jeffrey Brodie,Kathleen Kendrick

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The Star-Spangled Banner

The Making of an American Icon

By: Lonn Taylor,Jeffrey Brodie,Kathleen Kendrick

More than just the tale of one flag and one song, The Star-Spangled Banner is the story of how Americans—often in times of crisis—have expressed their patriotism and defined their identity through the "broad stripes and bright stars" of our preeminent national symbol, a tradition that still thrives today. The original flag that inspired Francis Scott Key "by the dawn's early light" has been cared for by the Smithsonian since 1907. The dramatic story of this flag—and of the Smithsonian's effort to save it for posterity—are told here in this lavishly illustrated book that also explores the broader meaning of the flag in American life.

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Page Count

193

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0060885629

ISBN 13

9780060885625

Book's by Lonn Taylor

Turning the Pages of Texas

Turning the Pages of Texas

Texas, My Texas

Texas, My Texas

Texas People, Texas Places

Texas People, Texas Places

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas, My Texas

Texas, My Texas

Child of the Sun

Child of the Sun

Foreigners in the Confederacy

Foreigners in the Confederacy

Sweet Demotion

Sweet Demotion

Child of the Sun

Child of the Sun

Texas Furniture, Volume One

Texas Furniture, Volume One

Turning the Pages of Texas

Turning the Pages of Texas

Texas Furniture, Volume One

Texas Furniture, Volume One

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas Furniture, Volume Two

Texas Furniture

Texas Furniture

The Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner

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