Loren C. Steffy

The political debate on illegal immigration is one of the most challenging and divisive issues facing America today. With few changes in immigration laws since 1986, the undocumented population has swelled to an estimated 11 million. Deconstructed unravels the economic impact and human cost of illegal immigration through the eyes of Houston businessman Stan Marek. A descendant of Czech immigrants, Marek runs one of the largest specialty subcontracting firms in the U.S. and has had a front-row seat as the immigration crisis has unfolded over the past 40 years. 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 has long warned of a looming tipping point--for his industry, the national economy, and undocumented immigrants themselves. It's a crisis he is determined 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.

Silver Winner, IBPA Ben Franklin Award The true story of an aging oil tycoon, once a household name, who hires a Dallas attorney with a new practice to help him recover a lost fortune in West Texas. In November 2016, 88-year-old T. Boone Pickens--legendary Texas oilman and notorious corporate raider of the 1980s--climbed the steps of the Reeves County courthouse in Pecos, Texas. He claimed he was shut out of the most lucrative oil venture of his career, and he had come to seek justice. Now, in what would be his last business showdown, it would be up to Pickens to persuade a jury of twelve West Texans to take his side. To lead his legal battle, he turned to an unlikely partner: Chrysta Casta eda, a solo attorney from Dallas and a former Democratic candidate for public office. Though separated by age, politics, ideology, and gender, the two found common ground in their determination to see justice served--and built a lasting friendship along the way. The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens is a high-stakes courtroom drama as retold by Casta eda. It's the story of an American business legend in the twilight of his long career and the lawyer determined to help him make one final stand for justice.

Upon George Mitchell's death in 2013, The Economist proclaimed, "Few businesspeople have done as much to change the world as George Mitchell," a billionaire Texas oilman who defied the stereotypical swagger so identified with that industry. In George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet, award-winning author Loren C. Steffy offers the first definitive biography of Mitchell, placing his life and legacy in a global context, from the significance of his discoveries to the lingering controversies they inspired. Mitchell will forever be known as "the father of fracking," but he didn't invent the drilling process; he perfected it and made it profitable, one of many varied ventures he pursued for years. Long before his company ever fracked a well, he pioneered sustainable development by creating The Woodlands, near Houston, one of the first and most successful master-planned communities. Its focus on environmental protection and livability redefined the American suburb. This apparent contradiction between his energy interests and environmental pursuits, which his son Todd dubbed "the Mitchell Paradox," was just one of many that defined Mitchell's life. Anyone who puts fuel in a tank or turns on a light switch has benefited from Mitchell's efforts. This compelling biography reveals Mitchell as a modern renaissance man who sought to make the world a better, more livable place, a man whose unbounded intellectual curiosity led him to support a wide range of interests in business, science, and philanthropy.

J. Richard “Dick” Steffy stood inside the limestone hall of the Crusader castle in Cyprus and looked at the wood fragments arrayed before him. They were old beyond belief. For more than two millennia they had remained on the sea floor, eaten by worms and soaking up seawater until they had the consistency of wet cardboard. There were some 6,000 pieces in all, and Steffy’s job was to put them all back together in their original shape like some massive, ancient jigsaw puzzle.He had volunteered for the job even though he had no qualifications for it. For twenty-five years he’d been an electrician in a small, land-locked town in Pennsylvania. He held no advanced degrees—his understanding of ships was entirely self-taught. Yet he would find himself half a world away from his home town, planning to reassemble a ship that last sailed during the reign of Alexander the Great, and he planned to do it using mathematical formulas and modeling techniques that he’d developed in his basement as a hobby.The first person ever to reconstruct an ancient ship from its sunken fragments, Steffy said ships spoke to him. Steffy joined a team, including friend and fellow scholar George Bass, that laid a foundation for the field of nautical archaeology. Eventually moving to Texas A&M University, his lack of the usual academic credentials caused him to be initially viewed with skepticism by the university’s administration. However, his impressive record of publications and his skilled teaching eventually led to his being named a full professor. During the next thirty years of study, reconstruction, and modeling of submerged wrecks, Steffy would win a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and would train most of the preeminent scholars in the emerging field of nautical archaeology.Richard Steffy’s son Loren, an accomplished journalist, has mined family memories, archives at Texas A&M and elsewhere, his father’s papers, and interviews with former colleagues to craft not only a professional biography and adventure story of the highest caliber, but also the first history of a field that continues to harvest important new discoveries from the depths of the world’s oceans.