04/21/08 - Second Calvert Book Prize awarded for book series on postcards of Texas

Contact: Teresa Laffin, publicity & advertising manager, Texas A&M University Press, 979-845-1436 or tdl@tampress.tamu.edu.

John Miller Morris, associate professor of political science and geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was awarded the second annual Robert A. Calvert Prize at the 2008 meeting of the Texas State Historical Association in Corpus Christi in March. Morris's winning project is a series of seven volumes, approximately 200 pages each, of "real photo postcards" of Texas that were produced, sold, and sent at the turn of the twentieth century. Each volume focuses both geographically on a region and thematically on the subjects of the photographs of that region. The first, tentatively titled Taming the Land: The Lost Postcard Photographs of the Texas High Plains, will be published in 2009 by Texas A&M University Press.

The Calvert Book Prize an award created in honor of Robert A. Calvert, professor of history, who died on Nov. 30, 2000. It was created through a $25,000 endowment to the Texas A&M Foundation during One Spirit One Vision – The Texas A&M Campaign.

The Calvert Prize provides a cash award and recognizes the best book manuscript accepted the preceding year by the Texas A&M University Press on the history of the American South, West, or Southwest. The Calvert Prize hopes to encourage the submission of better manuscripts as well as improve the quality of books about the Southwest.

“As a trusted advisor and committed participant in the Press’s program, Bob Calvert left a legacy here that we believed should be not only recognized, but also perpetuated,” said Mary Lenn Dixon, editor-in-chief at the Texas A&M University Press. “An endowed prize that would help the Press continue to attract manuscripts of the sort he supported seemed an ideal way to do that.” The Department of History was crucial in established the prize since they conducted the campaign to create the endowment.

Last year's Calvert Prize winner, Paul Cool’s Salt Warriors: Insurgency on the Rio Grande, was published to critical acclaim this spring.

John Miller Morris specializes in the historical geography of the Southwest and is the author of three books, including the multiple award winner El Llano Estacado: Exploration and imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico, 1536–1860. Subsequent volumes in the collection will focus on other regions of the state such as the South Plains, the Trans-Pecos, and the Hill Country.

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