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Texas & Southwest books roundup: A little history, a little music, a memoir and some fiction

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Si Dunn
"The Last Camel Charge: The Untold Story of America's Desert Military Experiment" by Forrest Bryant Johnson
"The Last Camel Charge: The Untold Story of America's Desert Military Experiment" by Forrest Bryant Johnson
"In the Country of Empty Crosses: The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico" by Arturo Madrid
"In the Country of Empty Crosses: The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico" by Arturo Madrid
"Ground Pounder: A Marine's Journey Through South Vietnam, 1968-1969" 
by Gregory V. Short
"Ground Pounder: A Marine's Journey Through South Vietnam, 1968-1969" by Gregory V. Short
"Sophie's Diary: A Mathematical Novel," 
by Dora Musielak
"Sophie's Diary: A Mathematical Novel," by Dora Musielak

The Last Camel Charge

The Untold Story of America’s Desert Military Experiment

Forrest Bryant Johnson

(Berkley, $25.95)

The U.S. Army employed camels as transportation and pack animals during the mid-19th century in the American West and tried to develop “a U.S. camel cavalry, a true camel corps,” the author of this fascinating history work notes. Initially based near San Antonio, elements of the fledgling camel corps soon became involved in expeditions and fighting in several areas, including a victorious camel charge against Mojave Indians in the Arizona Territory and naval lieutenant Edward Beale’s successful opening of a wagon trail from Texas to California. The Civil War ended the camel corps experiment, yet Union and Confederate forces both used camels during the conflict, the author shows.

In the Country of Empty Crosses

The Story of a Hispano Protestant Family in Catholic New Mexico

Arturo Madrid

(Trinity University, $24.95)

The end of America’s 1848 war with Mexico changed Arturo Madrid’s ancestors from Mexican to U.S. citizens overnight. His predecessors had been in New Mexico since before the Pilgrims landed in New England, and they had Spanish-Mexican roots. Illustrated with photographs by Miguel Gandert, this complex but important family portrait examines the flow of life and history within a community of Mexican-Americans who are Protestants among Catholics and Hispanics among Anglos.

KD

A Jazz Biography

Dave Oliphant

(Wings Press, $19.95)

Using the music of poetry, Texas poet and jazz historian Dave Oliphant has created a fine and unique biography of jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham. It is written completely in rhyming quatrains. Dorham, also a Texan, was internationally famous at the time of his death in 1972 at age 48.

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Ground Pounder

A Marine’s Journey Through South Vietnam, 1968-1969

Gregory V. Short

(University of North Texas, $29.95)

Retired Denton professor Gregory V. Short’s gritty memoir takes readers into the heart of close-quarters combat during some of the Vietnam War’s toughest battles. This new, re-titled edition illustrates how “overly aggressive World War II training” sometimes contributed to casualties as U.S. troops rushed headlong into North Vietnamese ambushes.

Sophie’s Diary

A Mathematical Novel

Dora Musielak

(Mathematical Association of America, $68.95)

The Mathematical Association of America recently has published the second edition of this intriguing “mathematical novel” written by a University of Texas at Arlington professor. Its story is built around a fictional diary and a real-life French mathematician, Sophie Germaine. It imagines Ms. Germaine writing down her own story while coming of age and learning mathematics amid social turmoil in 18th-century Paris.

Si Dunn’s latest book is a Vietnam War memoir, Dark Signals.

books@dallasnews.com

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