Life for the son of the nation’s most beloved and likely greatest president was full of challenges, yet Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926) embraced his circumstances and thrived in business, public service, and family life. Certainly, the... Read More

From the 1950s up through the 1968 election, American toy maker Louis Marx produced a semi-educational series of presidential figurines. From Washington to Nixon, the presidents, each standing on a small base, were reduced to two and... Read More

The life of J. Richard Steffy (“Dick” to his friends) centered on ships and shipbuilding. Though he spent most of his working life as an electrician, his childhood fascination with ships and the history of their construction remained... Read More

Trying to put jazz into words can be tricky, like setting James Joyce to music. But Texas author, poet, and jazz expert Dave Oliphant has embraced a novel way to do so that is adventurous, just a little odd, and entirely satisfying.... Read More

The mention of Emily Dickinson’s name does not generally conjure up images of a hot-blooded hussy sneaking off for steamy encounters with a married man who was old enough to be her father. But that’s essentially the picture the... Read More

An illegal immigrant from Mexico, Lorenzo Anzaldua, nicknamed Lencho, arrived in Texas with his father and three brothers in 1920. A thoroughly self-made man with no shame about his flaws and justifiable pride in his accomplishments,... Read More

Abraham Lincoln once claimed his best friend was “the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read,” writes Augustin Stucker in his thoroughly researched and lively “dual biography” of the sixteenth president of the United States... Read More

As the architect of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute from 1892 to 1932, Robert Taylor, the nation’s first professionally educated African American architect, was charged with realizing buildings that would lend a unifying... Read More