Episode 3 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz.

If there was anything more improbable in Texas history than the Lipan-Comanche alliance orchestrated by José Francisco Ruíz in 1816, it was the peace brokered WITH the Lipanes and Comanches on behalf of the newly-independent Mexican empire in 1822. It would culminate in one of the most memorable scenes in Texas history, the journey of Ruíz and a handful of Lipan and Comanche chiefs to the halls of Monteczuma for a three-way peace that Texas would never truly be able to enjoy...

Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale. 

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 2 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz.

José Francisco Ruíz would remain a focus of Spanish royalist vengeance after the Battle of Medina. For good reason. From his exile in Louisiana, Ruíz orchestrated a proxy war by his Lipan and especially Comanche allies against Spanish royalists' fragile hold on Texas. It would bring Spain to the brink of abandoning Texas. Eventually royalists would have no choice but to ask Ruíz to bring peace to the frontier that he had incited to total war.

Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale.    

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 1 of Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz.

The Battle of Medina left José Francisco Ruíz the highest-ranking Tejano revolutionary in the state...and its most wanted man. What drove him to abandon a promising future in the Spanish army and turn on his old comrades-in-arms?  And what price would he have to pay for this change of heart?

Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale. 

www.BrandonSeale.com

Intro to Brandon Seale's podcast (in collaboration with Art Martínez de Vara) on the life and times of José Francisco Ruíz.

José Francisco Ruíz lived through the most turbulent years of Texas history. What was it about Ruíz that always seemed to place him at the center of the action? What made him the man to whom Tejanos, Anglos, and Native Americans all turned in uncertain times? Join us to find out what made José Francisco Ruíz "The Man for Texas."

Click here to purchase the complete audiobook of "Tejano Patriot" by Art Martínez de Vara and read by Brandon Seale. 

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 11 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Winter Storm Uri. Texas's unique legal system. And Juneteenth. All together in one episode.

Sources:
McKnight, Joseph W. “The Spanish Legacy to Texas Law.” The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Jul 1959): 222-241.
McKnight, Joseph W. “The Spanish Legacy to Texas Law.” The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Oct 1959): 299-323. 

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 10 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Southwest Airlines was born of a uniquely Texan model of regulation and a uniquely Texan appreciation for the challenges of distance. More than that, however, it came to represent Texan ascendancy onto the national political and economic scene, in ways that discomforted the old coastal centers of power, and found them agitating against the Texas model in ways that recalled nineteenth century Texans' efforts to rein in coastal economic power. In the end, however, Southwest airlines democratized the skies and paved the way for broader regulatory reforms across other industries...some with more mixed results than aviation.

Sources:
Dockery, Christy. “Southwest Airlines: A Texas Airline in an Era of Deregulation.” Master’s Thesis, Texas Tech University, 1996.

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 9 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Jack Kilby's integrated circuit set off the "Second Industrial Revolution" and I want to believe that it was the product of Texans' finely-tuned attention to energy density, going back to the likes of Gail Borden and every plains Indian that ever sat a horse. And yet, is the integrated circuit perhaps a better example of land-obsessed Texans' failing to appreciate the potential of the twentieth century's greatest invention?

Photo available at TexasInstruments.com.

Sources:
Reid, T.R. The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution (1985).

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 8 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Texas's first true industrial "cluster" might have been ice-making. In the twentieth century, Texans lead the way in applying the science of refrigeration to human comfort and notched many significant firsts in the history of air conditioning. Most Texans' first experience with air conditioning was in movie theaters, and the movie industry repaid their patronage with an entire genre of films (the "Western") that helped make Texas "cool" in a way that it never had been before. The homogenizing effects of cinema worsened the marginalization of some Texas communities, however, even as it drove a massive wave of immigration from other U.S. states.

Photo courtesy of Friedrich Air Conditioning.

Sources:

Arsenault, Raymond. “The End of the Long, Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture.” The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Nov 1984): 597-628.

Cooper, Gail. Air Conditioning America: Engineers and Controlled Environment, 1900-1960 (1998).

Swanson, Philip. “Remember the Alamo? Mexicans, Texans, and Americans in 1960’s Hollywood.” Iberoamericana, Año 11, No. 44 (Dic 2011): 85-100.

Woolrich, W.R. The Men Who Created Cold. New York, NY: Exposition Press, 1967.

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 7 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Anthony Lucas's gusher at Spindletop marked "a new era of civilization," yet was the product of the humility, persistence, and practical genius of three Waco-area farm boys. Oil rapidly transformed the Texas economy from stubbornly agrarian and colonial into a first-world industrial power. For the first time in Texas history, Texans began to accumulate capital and were set on a countercyclical trajectory from the rest of the U.S. economy in a way that would only reinforce Texans' contrarian impulses.

Cover photo by John Trost, available online at the American Petroleum Institute.

Sources:
Linsley, Judith Walker, Ellen Walker Rienstra, Jo Ann Stiles. Giant Under the Hill: A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, TX in 1901 (2002).
Soday, Frank J. “The Petrochemical Industry.” The Analysts Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Q3 1951): 17-24.
Spratt, John Stricklin. The Road to Spindletop: Economic Change in Texas, 1875-1901. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1955.

www.BrandonSeale.com

Episode 6 of Brandon Seale's podcast on the Engines of Texas History.

Railroads made Texans wealthier than they had ever been. They brought labor-saving and efficiency improving implements like riding plows, threshers, mechanical harvesters, and soon, tractors, which collectively lifted the standard of living of most Texans far beyond anything their parents could have imagined. And Texans hated them for it! Texans very conflicted feelings toward the "Iron Horse" exposed an irreconcilable tension between their frontier regulatory model and their unshakable conviction that land was the only proper basis for wealth.

Cover art of Texas's first locomotive - the "General Sherman" - available online at Houston Metropolitan Research Center, HPL.

Sources:
Reed, S.G. The History of the Texas Railroads. Kingsport, TN: Kingsport Press, 1941.

www.BrandonSeale.com