FAMILY HISTORY The non-fiction book "Abe's Way" is the remarkable true story of an impoverished Jewish family who fled Russia at the turn of the 20th century and established an extensive department store and grocery empire on the Texas Gulf Coast. Over the years, this tight-knit cast of immigrants and its offspring parlayed their mercantile success into a major cotton, cattle, and light manufacturing conglomerate. They developed partnerships and struck agreements with an array of the Lone Star State's most legendary, intriguing, and colorful characters. By century's end, the forces of change, competition, family squabbles, suicide, and a fatal plane crash brought down the curtains on their epic business venture. Readers interested in United States history, particularly as it relates to the wave of immigration from Europe to America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, will certainly enjoy this book; as will those attracted to assimilation and the Jewish experience in America. If Texas history, cattle ranching, farming, and the culture of the American West are among your interests, then this book is for you. Business, entrepreneurship, and economic development are also key components of "Abe's Way," as are psychiatry, genius, patriotism, philanthropy, abuse, and the scourge of mental illness.