by Michael Andrews, Photography by Paul Hester and Lisa Hardaway, Bright Sky Press, $49.95

This volume may never leave the coffee table for Texans who love courthouses—and there are legions of them. Michael Andrews, a native Texan and Washington, D.C., attorney (and board member of both the Center for American History and the National Trust for Historic Preservation at the University of Texas) selects 100 of the most architecturally important courthouses. Paul Hester, a faculty member of the Visual Arts Department of Rice University, and partner Lisa Hadaway traveled the state for a year to capture the images. For the center foldout of all these beauties, they chose Waxahachie's Ellis County Courthouse. Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, pens a foreword.

The Courthouses of Texas
By Mavis P. Kelsey, Sr. and Donald H. Dyal, Texas A&M University Press, $22.95

While the volume above may stay at home, this one travels—a 334-page glove compartment guide. One page is devoted to each structure, with "just-the-facts-ma'am" text. The Cass County courthouse in Linden, built in 1861, stands as the state's only surviving antebellum courthouse. El Paso County's rose in 1991. In between, on city streets and in the middle of small-town squares rise neoclassical and Romanesque beauties, Art Deco renditions, and spare, cubical modern-style boxes from the mid-20th century.