In 1947, a South Dakota man who had enjoyed Bugbee’s art in Cattleman magazine wrote him asking “if you have all of your pictures in a book,” adding that “if you do—we want to buy one.”
Harold D. Bugbee became known nationally in the 1940s and 1950s, writes biographer Michael R. Grauer, for his illustrations for books on western history and magazines devoted to ranching and farming. Bugbee was art curator for the Panhandle-Plains Historical Society from 1951 until his death in 1963, and a good many of his paintings are in the Canyon museum’s collection.
Bugbee’s life and cowboy art are featured in Grauer’s richly illustrated biography, Making a Hand (Texas A&M University Press, $35 hardcover). The book includes more than thirty full-color plates depicting cowboy life.
In 1947, a South Dakota man who had enjoyed Bugbee’s art in Cattleman magazine wrote him asking “if you have all of your pictures in a book,” adding that “if you do—we want to buy one.”
“More than seventy years in the wanting,” writes Grauer, “here is such a book,” published as part of the “American Wests” series sponsored by West Texas A&M University.
Jodi Thomas: Popular Texas novelist Jodi Thomas has two new books out this Christmas season. Her latest novel, Christmas in Winter Valley (HQN, $7.99 paperback), is another heartwarming, uplifting story in her Ransom Canyon series. Thomas’s stories are classified as romances—and romance is certainly a significant theme—but I find them to be just good, wholesome, small-town Texas tales.
Thomas also has teamed up with two other romance writers—Celia Bonaduce and native Texan Racheal Miles—in a trilogy of holiday historical novellas set in 1859 in Dallas, A Texas Kind of Christmas (Kensington, $15.95 paperback).
Women’s Insights: Women Amplified is a collection of insightful quotations gleaned from speakers at the Texas Conference for Women over the past twenty years, compiled and edited by Lisa Bennett (Greenleaf Book Group, $21.95 hardcover.)
Bennett organized the quotations into twenty categories, beginning with “Assume You Belong—and Believe in Yourself” through “Write Your Own Story.” A few other sections: “Dream Big. Find Your Courage. Take Chances.”, “Give Yourself Permission to Focus on Happiness,” and “Swear Off Perfectionism: Go for Growth.”
Among the speakers quoted are philanthropist Melinda Gates, actress Viola Davis, university president Ruth Simmons, author Suze Orman, corporate executive Carly Fiorina, and basketball coach Jody Conradt.
According to the book, more than 100,000 women and men have participated in the Texas Conference for Women since 2000. Read more at TXConferenceforWomen.org or on Facebook.
Glenn Dromgoole compiled and edited collections of “West Texas Christmas Stories” and “West Texas Stories.” Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
