Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2019

MAKING JFK MATTER: POPULAR MEMORY AND THE THIRTY-FIFTH PRESIDENT PAUL SANTA CRUZ ’06—UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS PRESS Santa Cruz examines how the popular memory of John F. Kennedy was used politically by various interest groups— primarily the city of Dallas, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Robert Kennedy. Santa Cruz argues that we have memorialized JFK out of admiration for the ideals he embodied but also because invoking his name carries legitimacy and power. THE CEDAR CHOPPERS: LIFE ON THE EDGE OF NOTHING KEN ROBERTS, PROFESSOR EMERITUS AND FORMER CULLEN CHAIR IN ECONOMICS—TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS A featured author at the 2018 Texas Book Festival, Roberts explores a legendary Texas subculture that migrated from Appalachia to the Texas Hill Country and carved out a livelihood by hunting, trapping, moonshining, and chopping cedar for fence posts and charcoal. A Top Texas Read of 2018 according to the Austin American-Statesman , this is the first book-length treatment of the cedar choppers’ culture clash with the gentrified urban population of Austin and their longing for a rapidly disappearing way of life. THE CHARACTER OF VIRTUE: LETTERS TO A GODSON STANLEY HAUERWAS ’62—EERDMANS In 16 letters, theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas offers his real-life godson something far more precious than toys or trinkets: the gift of his hard-won wisdom on life and the process of maturing. Each letter explores a specific virtue and its meaning for a child growing yearly into the Christian faith. WOMEN IN TEXAS HISTORY ANGELA BOSWELL ’87—TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY PRESS The first narrative history of Texas women from Native Americans to astronauts, Boswell’s book is “the most thorough history of women in Texas to date,” according to Elizabeth Hayes Turner, coeditor of Texas Women: Their Histories, Their Lives . Boswell examines how the physical and geographic challenges of the landscape, the changing legal and political context, and social and cultural forces affected women’s lives—and how women, in turn, shaped class, religion, community, and art in Texas. YOUR HIDDEN SUPERPOWERS: HOW THE WHOLE TRUTH OF FAILURE CAN CHANGE OUR LIVES BECCA NORTH, VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY—SEVERN RIVER PUBLISHING North’s first book reveals that the negative way we think about failure affects our lives powerfully. It explores how shifting that prevailing view would change how we lead our lives and ultimately yield profound benefits by exposing hidden resources within us—innovations, breakthroughs, joy, meaning, and magic yet to be discovered. BECOMING CREOLE: NATURE AND RACE IN BELIZE MELISSA JOHNSON, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY—RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS This book explores Belizean Creole peoples’ relationships with the more-than-human plants, animals, water, and soils around them; how these relationships intersect with transnational racial assemblages in a place forged by global capitalism; and how liberatory possibility is created in these places. Alumni 47 SOUTHWESTERN