Explore the vast range of titles available.

A central purpose of the new Texas Biography Series by TCL Press is to be more inclusive in telling the Texas story - to move beyond the great white men and \"examine the full range of historical actors who have shaped the destiny of the Lone Star State\" (p. viii). The series thus aims to provide a more complete history of the state. Light Townsend Cummins\"s biography of Emily Austin, daughter of Moses Austin and sister of Stephen F Austin, admirably fulfills the goals of the series and sets a high standard by which to measure ensuing volumes.

Varina Davis's Civil War, by Joan E. Cashin presents a nuanced interpretation of a very complex woman and firmly grounds the life of Varina Davis within the broader context of nineteenth-century political and social history. By doing so, Cashin has deepened our understanding of the complicated nature of soudiern allegiance to the Confederacy, the enormously heavy strains mat war placed on families, marriages, and friendships, and the difficulties women faced in struggling to define dieir lives while confronting and manipulating social conventions. (In fact, in her widowhood she did work for a salary and took pride in supporting herself.) Her racial attitudes were more typical of the soudiern planter class: although she recognized the humanity of slaves, she never overcame her feeling that they were inferior beings.

The richness is in the detail: medicine, travel and communication, parenting, education, extended family relationships, plantation finances, slavery, death, religion- these topics and more are dealt with on a daily basis, and that specificity provides important insight into the minds and lives of antebellum Southern women. Living on her St. Simons Island plantation retreat and owning fifty slaves, Anna assumed responsibility for the family's financial security.

Lass reviews Success Is All That Was Expected: The South Atlantic Blockading Squadron during the Civil War by Robert M. Browning Jr.

\"Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars\" by Catherine Clinton is reviewed.

Laas reviews Blood and Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861-1937 by Sarah E. Gardner.

\"The Websters: Letters of an American Army Family in Peace and War, 1836-1853\" edited by Van R. Baker is reviewed.