The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens

T. Boone Pickens, legendary Texas oilman and infamous corporate raider from the 1980s, climbed the steps of the Reeves County courthouse in Pecos, Texas in early November 2016. He entered the solitary courtroom and settled into the witness stand for two days of testimony in what would be the final trial of his life. 
Pickens, who was 88 by then, had made and lost billions over his long career, but he’d come to Pecos seeking justice from several other oil companies. He claimed they cut him out of what became the biggest oil play he’d ever invested in—in an oil-rich section of far West Texas that was primed for an unprecedented boom. After years of dealing with the media, shareholders and politicians, Pickens would need to win over a dozen West Texas jurors in one last battle. 
To lead his legal fight, he chose an unlikely advocate—Chrysta Castañeda, a Dallas solo practitioner who had only recently returned to the practice of law after a hiatus borne of disillusionment with big firms. Pickens was a hardline Republican, while Castañeda had run for public office as a Democrat. But they shared an unwavering determination to win and formed a friendship that spanned their differences in age, politics, and gender. 
In a town where frontier justice was once meted out by Judge Roy Bean—“The Law West of the Pecos”—Pickens would gird for one final courtroom showdown. Sitting through trial every day, he was determined to prevail, even at the cost of his health. 
The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens is a high-stakes courtroom drama told through the eyes of Castañeda. It’s the story of an American business legend still fighting in the twilight of his long career, and the lawyer determined to help him make one final stand for justice.

Biographies & Memoirs

Castañeda, Chrysta

Steffy, Loren C.

Professionals & Academics

Stoney Creek Publishing Group

Deconstructed: An Insider's View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades

Illegal immigration is among the most challenging and divisive issues facing America. With few changes in immigration laws since 1986, the undocumented population has swelled to an estimated 11 million.&nbsp; Deconstructed unravels these economic issues and their human toll through the eyes of Houston businessman Stan Marek, who's watched the immigration crisis unfold over 40 years. A descendant of Czech immigrants himself, Marek runs one of the largest specialty subcontracting firms in the U.S. He has seen construction work devolve from offering middle-class careers to trapping illegal immigrants in the shadows of the economy-- paid in cash, without overtime or access to health care. Marek sees a burgeoning crisis for his industry, the national economy and the undocumented immigrants themselves - a crisis he has vowed to prevent.&nbsp; In Deconstructed, award-winning business journalist Loren Steffy traces Marek's own family history, intertwined with changes in immigration law for more than a century. Steffy examines the economic forces driving illegal immigration and outlines solutions that could enhance our economy, the construction business, and the lives of immigrants.

Marek, Stan

Community & Culture

The Big Empty

Product Description 
When Trace Malloy and Blaine Witherspoon collide on a desolate West Texas highway, their fender bender sets the tone for escalating clashes that will determine the future of the town of Conquistador. 
 Malloy, a ranch manager and lifelong cowboy, knows that his occupation—and his community—are dying. He wants new- millennium opportunities for his son, even though he himself failed to summon the courage to leave familiar touchstones behind. 
 Witherspoon, an ambitious, Lexus-driving techie, offers a solution. He moves to Conquistador to build and run a state-of-the-art semiconductor plant that will bring prestige and high-paying technology jobs to revive the town—and advance his own career. 
 What neither man anticipates is the power the “Big Empty” will wield over their plans. The flat, endless expanse of dusty plain is as much a character in the conflict as are the locals struggling to subsist in this timeworn backwater and the high-tech transplants hell-bent on conquering it. 
 While Malloy grapples with the flaws of his ancestors and his growing ambivalence toward the chip plant, Witherspoon falls prey to construction snafus, corporate backstabbing, and financial fraud. As they each confront personal fears, they find themselves united in the search for their own version of purpose in a uniquely untamable Texas landscape.\nThe Big Empty, the debut novel from longtime journalist and nonfiction author Loren C. Steffy, combines a sweeping appreciation for history and the struggles of small-town America with an examination of technology and the social and economic changes that come over time. 
 Review 
"The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy's story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax." \n-- The Epoch Times\n"Like the titular land itself, Steffy's novel is uncompromising in spotlighting the strains that the drive toward material achievement puts on the individual in the face of nature's whims." 
—\nSouthern Review of Books 
 About the Author 
LOREN C. STEFFY is the author of five nonfiction books and a writer- at-large for 
Texas Monthly. He’s also an executive producer for Rational Middle Media and a managing director for 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint. He had been a business journalist for more than 30 years at publications such as Bloomberg News, the Houston Chronicle and Forbes.com. His award-winning writing has been published in newspapers and other publications worldwide. He lives in Wimberley with his wife, three dogs and an ungrateful cat.

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

"The Big Empty captures a moment when Big Tech seemingly promised everything. By turns funny and painful, Steffy's story builds like an accelerating freight train, reaching a fast-paced climax."--The Epoch Times "Like the titular land itself, Steffy's novel is uncompromising in spotlighting the strains that the drive toward material achievement puts on the individual in the face of nature's whims."--Southern Review of Books When Trace Malloy and Blaine Witherspoon collide on a desolate West Texas highway, their fender bender sets the tone for escalating clashes that will determine the future of the town of Conquistador.&nbsp; Malloy, a ranch manager and lifelong cowboy, knows that his occupation--and his community--are dying. He wants new-millennium opportunities for his son, even though he himself failed to summon the courage to leave familiar touchstones behind. Witherspoon, an ambitious, Lexus-driving techie, offers a solution. He moves to Conquistador to build and run a state-of-the-art semiconductor plant that will bring prestige and high-paying technology jobs to revive the town--and advance his own career. While Malloy grapples with the flaws of his ancestors and his growing ambivalence toward the chip plant, Witherspoon falls prey to construction snafus, corporate backstabbing, and financial fraud. As they each confront personal fears, they find themselves united in the search for their own version of purpose in a uniquely untamable Texas landscape.

Silver Winner, IBPA Ben Franklin Award The true story of an aging oil tycoon, once a household name, who hires a Dallas attorney setting up her own practice to help him recover a lost fortune in West Texas. T. Boone Pickens, legendary Texas oilman and infamous corporate raider from the 1980s, climbed the steps of the Reeves County courthouse in Pecos, Texas in early November 2016. He entered the solitary courtroom and settled into the witness stand for two days of testimony in what would be the final trial of his life. &nbsp; Pickens, who was 88 by then, had made and lost billions over his long career, but he'd come to Pecos seeking justice from several other oil companies. He claimed they cut him out of what became the biggest oil play he'd ever invested in--in an oil-rich section of far West Texas that was primed for an unprecedented boom. After years of dealing with the media, shareholders and politicians, Pickens would need to win over a dozen West Texas jurors in one last battle.&nbsp; To lead his legal fight, he chose an unlikely advocate--Chrysta Castañeda, a Dallas solo practitioner who had only recently returned to the practice of law after a hiatus borne of disillusionment with big firms. Pickens was a hardline Republican, while Castañeda had run for public office as a Democrat. But they shared an unwavering determination to win and formed a friendship that spanned their differences in age, politics, and gender. &nbsp; In a town where frontier justice was once meted out by Judge Roy Bean--"The Law West of the Pecos"--Pickens would gird for one final courtroom showdown. Sitting through trial every day, he was determined to prevail, even at the cost of his health.&nbsp; The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens is a high-stakes courtroom drama told through the eyes of Castañeda. It's the story of an American business legend still fighting in the twilight of his long career, and the lawyer determined to help him make one final stand for justice.

Review\n"A clear-headed, cogent, and essential explanation of the many problems posed by the prevalence of undocumented workers in the construction industry, grounded in a review of the schizophrenic, often xenophobic history of U.S. immigration policies.” -- Patricia Bernstein, author of Ten Dollars to Hate: The Texas Man Who Fought the Klan ― Cover blurb Published On: 2020-10-29\n“In this engrossing analysis, Loren Steffy tells the story of how Stan Marek came to be one of Houston’s most highly respected and tenacious advocates for rational immigration reform. The compelling stories and persuasive arguments in this excellent book are a must-read for anyone concerned about the prospects for Houston and America as the twenty-first century unfolds.” 
-- Stephen L. Klineberg, Ph.D., professor emeritus of sociology at Rice University, author of Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America ― Cover blurb Published On: 2020-10-29\nIllegal immigration is among the most challenging and divisive issues facing America. With few changes in immigration laws since 1986, the undocumented population has swelled to an estimated 11 million. 
Deconstructed unravels these economic issues and their human toll through the eyes of Houston businessman Stan Marek, who’s watched the immigration crisis unfold over 40 years. A descendant of Czech immigrants himself, Marek runs one of the largest specialty subcontracting firms in the U.S. He has seen construction work devolve from offering middle-class careers to trapping illegal immigrants in the shadows of the economy— paid in cash, without overtime or access to health care. Marek sees a burgeoning crisis for his industry, the national economy and the undocumented immigrants themselves - a crisis he has vowed to prevent. 
In Deconstructed, award-winning business journalist Loren Steffy traces Marek’s own family history, intertwined with changes in immigration law for more than a century. Steffy examines the economic forces driving illegal immigration and outlines solutions that could enhance our economy, the construction business, and the lives of immigrants.

This book attempts to do something not done before in Texas: bring together a summary of law, procedure, and forms to aid litigation counsel handling cases involving departing employees. Subjects include non-competition covenants, trade secrets, confidentiality agreements, and injunction practice. The ebook includes links to legal forms related to the topics covered in the books. The forms are for legal practitioners only.

Texas Litigators’ Guide to Departing Employee Cases: 2022

Shank, Mark A.

Business

Grinders: Baseball’s Intrepid Infantry tells the tales of the game's unheralded foot soldiers who took the hard knocks road, bouncing between the Show and obscurity, never quite achieving their dreams, all for a chance to play the game they love.\nOn a brutally humid summer night in 1960, a nine-year-old Mike Capps was sitting with his grandfather in the rickety, mosquito-infested Burnett Field across the Trinity River from the twinkling lights of the concrete and steel towers of downtown Dallas.\nWhen he glanced at his grandfather’s scoresheet, something caught his attention. His grandfather had made check marks alongside names of six or seven players for both clubs.\n“I also want you to pay attention to the names I have checked here,” his grandfather said. “These guys will travel back and forth between Dallas and Kansas City and Minneapolis and Boston all summer. You’ll even see their names in the box scores. They aren’t stars, but they are the engine that drives baseball’s bus.”\n“Drives baseball’s bus, drives baseball’s bus?”\nThe comment buried itself in Capps’ psyche for decades, and, sixty years later, formed the basic idea for this book. What his grandfather called baseball’s “engine” we now call “grinders.” The back-and-forth roller coaster ride between professional baseball’s minor leagues and its nirvana, Major League Baseball, remains perplexingly difficult for a multitude of great players and their families.\nPlayers like Deacon Jones, Brian Mazone, and Lorenzo Bundy battled their way to a chance in the big leagues and hung on as long as they could. Some shared the love of the game with their sons, who became Grinders in their own right. Grinders fill every roster at every level, plugging away year after year. Without their grit, determination, and persistence, there would be no stars. These are their stories.

Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry

History

Capps, Mike

Hartenstein, Chuck

Americas

Someday Belongs to Us

It’s never too late to find love on the high seas. 
As a 72-year-old author of more than thirty successful romance novels, Kate Caldwell had all but given up on finding her perfect love connection. To offset her loneliness, she spends her time writing and visiting with her granddaughter, Ellie, who lives near Kate’s Texas Hill Country home. While the first two books of her newest Passion series had been best-sellers, partly because of the help of her secret collaborator, Captain Edward Peregrine, Kate now faces a creative shut-down as she tries to start the third book. Her publisher is pressuring her to put more explicit love-making scenes in her novels, which goes against Kate’s principles. She believes love was more than just sex. At the same time, Edward seems to have abandoned her. Frustrated, Kate and Ellie embark on a two-week cruise to the Panama Canal in hopes that it will get Kate’s creative juices flowing again. 
Edward returns to Kate on the first night of the cruise. They settle their past differences and begin collaborating on the third book—The Fiery Passion of a Thousand Burning Suns. After Edward’s visit, Kate is finally making progress with her book and is well into the first draft after a few days. At her dinner table aboard the cruise ship, she meets two attractive and available men, David Mitchell, a professor traveling partly on business and partly for pleasure, and Marco Antonini, traveling with his sister. Both men offer Kate the love possibilities that she so desired, and they open up feelings that she had long suppressed. Little did Kate know that troubled waters lay ahead or that she was in for the adventure of her life as a merging of the time continuum brings forth conflicts and desires that upsets the tranquility of her life, yet brings her closer to realizing her dream of true love.

Literature & Fiction

Seaman, Margie

Genre Fiction

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Books by Stoney Creek Publishing Group

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Stoney Creek Publishing Group publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens

Deconstructed: An Insider's View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades

The Big Empty

The Big Empty

The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens

Deconstructed: An Insider's View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades

Texas Litigators’ Guide to Departing Employee Cases: 2022

Grinders: Baseball's Intrepid Infantry

Someday Belongs to Us

Someday Belongs to Us