Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes,

USMC (Ret.), and James A. Warren

(Henry Holt, $26)

One of our nation's most enduring war images shows World War II Marines raising a U.S. flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. Dallas native and Plano High School graduate Fred Haynes was a young captain with Combat Team 28, the unit that lifted the flag during the costliest battle in Marine Corps history. His fascinating and valuable book, co-written with historian James A. Warren, draws from unpublished material and more than 100 new interviews and provides fresh insights into the close-quarter "nightmare in hell" combat on Iwo Jima.

Toyia Pointer (Arcadia, $19.99, paperback)

In 160 years, the Dallas suburb of Carrollton has grown from wild prairie populated by bears, buffalo and nomadic Indians to a modern city of more than 120,000. This enjoyable new book in Arcadia's "Images of America" series presents dozens of historic photographs and short text segments that chronicle Carrollton's early settlers and steady growth.

Edra Ziesk

(SMU, $22.50)

Sebastian Bryant drives into the Kentucky hills to shoot some photographs for a book about America's bicentennial and quickly gets shot for trespassing. He has stepped across rural boundaries he can't see, or understand. His death and his killer's imprisonment soon cause other boundaries in the hills and community to become unsettled, and people start trespassing on one another's lives, in this engrossing , well-crafted third novel.

The Odyssey of an American Place

Benjamin Heber Johnson, photographs by Jeffrey Guskey

(Yale, $50)

Many Americans think of the Texas-Mexico border as a region of violence, poverty and crime. Yet it is also an area of enormous historical importance and quiet beauty. Roma, Texas, founded the same week as the border itself, is the focus of this elegant and intelligent study of a community where two nations have met for eight generations. The author is a Southern Methodist University history professor, and the photographer is a fine-arts photographer, filmmaker and rural physician.

John Kuhn

(Atriad Press, $19.95, paperback)

Texas had eccentricity long before it had electricity, argues Mineral Wells writer John Kuhn in this entertaining collection of essays. Mr. Kuhn profiles more than a hundred quirky Lone Star characters, ranging from politicians and athletes to business moguls, historical figures and a few oddballs who are just plain tough to categorize.

Si Dunn reviews books about Texas and the Southwest.

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