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Texas A&M University Press has released a paperback edition of Czech Voices: Stories from Texas in the Amerikn nrodn kalend. Originally published in 1991, Czech Voices comprises ten short memoir-essays written by some of the earliest Czech immigrants to Texas. Translated and edited by Clinton Machann and James W. Mendl, Jr., Czech Voices offers a clear window to the lives of Czech immigrants on a difficult frontier.Each of the ten autobiographical sketches had been published in the Amerikn nrodn kalend (a Czech-language magazine in Chicago. (That publication's founding by a freethinking political group explains the fact that many of the essays it published expressed some negative attitudes toward organized religion.) Several motifs and themes that run through the collection loom especially large: hardships of the immigrants, religious conflicts, the American Civil War, ethnic identity, farming practices, and attitudes toward the land.