From Tehran to the Permian is Scott Sheffield’s memoir on leading the Permian Basin shale revolution that made America the world’s top oil producer as founder and CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources — and on the FTC’s 2024 collusion accusations that barred him from ExxonMobil’s board after its $59.5 billion acquisition.

The Barber, the Astronaut, & the Golf Ball is Barbara Radnofsky and Ed Supkis’s account of the friendship between Apollo 14 commander Alan Shepard and his barber, Carlos Villagomez. Shepard gave Villagomez an autographed golf ball after the mission. Whether that particular ball had been to the moon is the question the book chases.

Deconstructed: An Insider’s View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades is Loren C. Steffy and Stan Marek’s best-selling account of illegal immigration inside the American construction industry. Marek runs one of the largest specialty subcontracting firms in the country and has watched, over forty years, construction work go from a middle-class career to something that traps undocumented workers without overtime or healthcare.

Published by Texas A&M University Press

The first definitive biography of George Mitchell, “the father of fracking,” who perfected drilling techniques that transformed America from being oil-dependent to a major producer. Yet he also created The Woodlands, pioneering sustainable community development. Steffy examines the “Mitchell Paradox”—his conflicting legacy in energy innovation and environmental protection.

The Man Who Thought Like a Ship is Loren C. Steffy’s biography of his father, J. Richard Steffy — a small-town Pennsylvania electrician with no advanced degrees who taught himself to reconstruct ancient ships from their fragments, and became the world’s leading authority on how they were built.

Richard Coke: Texan is a biography by Rosser Coke Newton, Sr., an indirect descendant of its subject. As governor, Coke brought Texas out of Reconstruction — a young Virginia lawyer who settled in Waco, served in the Civil War, and took office only after his predecessor occupied the Capitol with armed men rather than leave it.

A compelling historical biography that offers an in-depth look at one of Texas’ most influential and controversial figures during the tumultuous mid-19th century. In The Old Alcalde, John Adams, Jr. offers a balanced and nuanced portrayal of a controversial figure — Oran Milo Roberts — Texas jurist, secessionist, and governor, and one of the most consequential figures of the state’s nineteenth century. Adams follows him from an Alabama boyhood to the bench, through the convention that took Texas out of the Union, and into the governor’s office.

Voices of Camptown unlocks the stories lying beneath an overgrown cemetery in Washington County, Texas, and reconstructs the lives buried there — the churches, schools, and businesses African Americans built after Emancipation, under Reconstruction and then Jim Crow. The authors, Charles Swenson, Tina B. Henderson, and Robert R. Bubb, present more than a local history. Voices of Camptown is a celebration of community, resilience, and the enduring power of remembrance. It reveals the overlooked story of the “Birthplace of Texas Independence”— where half the population received their independence only following the Civil War.