Lone Star

Lone Star

Author: T. R. Fehrenbach

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 949

ISBN-13: 1497609704

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The definitive account of the incomparable Lone Star state by the author of Fire & Blood: A History of Mexico. T. R. Fehrenbach is a native Texan, military historian and the author of several important books about the region, but none as significant as this work, arguably the best single volume about Texas ever published. His account of America's most turbulent state offers a view that only an insider could capture. From the native tribes who lived there to the Spanish and French soldiers who wrested the territory for themselves, then to the dramatic ascension of the republic of Texas and the saga of the Civil War years. Fehrenbach describes the changes that disturbed the state as it forged its unique character. Most compelling is the one quality that would remain forever unchanged through centuries of upheaval: the courage of the men and women who struggled to realize their dreams in The Lone Star State.


Big Wonderful Thing

Big Wonderful Thing

Author: Stephen Harrigan

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2019-10-01

Total Pages: 944

ISBN-13: 0292759517

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The story of Texas is the story of struggle and triumph in a land of extremes. It is a story of drought and flood, invasion and war, boom and bust, and of the myriad peoples who, over centuries of conflict, gave rise to a place that has helped shape the identity of the United States and the destiny of the world. “I couldn’t believe Texas was real,” the painter Georgia O’Keeffe remembered of her first encounter with the Lone Star State. It was, for her, “the same big wonderful thing that oceans and the highest mountains are.” Big Wonderful Thing invites us to walk in the footsteps of ancient as well as modern people along the path of Texas’s evolution. Blending action and atmosphere with impeccable research, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Harrigan brings to life with novelistic immediacy the generations of driven men and women who shaped Texas, including Spanish explorers, American filibusters, Comanche warriors, wildcatters, Tejano activists, and spellbinding artists—all of them taking their part in the creation of a place that became not just a nation, not just a state, but an indelible idea. Written in fast-paced prose, rich with personal observation and a passionate sense of place, Big Wonderful Thing calls to mind the literary spirit of Robert Hughes writing about Australia or Shelby Foote about the Civil War. Like those volumes it is a big book about a big subject, a book that dares to tell the whole glorious, gruesome, epically sprawling story of Texas.


The Texans

The Texans

Author: Time-Life Books

Publisher: Time Life Medical

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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Text and numerous illustrations trace the history of Texas during the nineteenth century.


Black Texans

Black Texans

Author: Alwyn Barr

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780806128788

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discusses each period of African-American history in terms of politics, violence, and legal status; labor and economic status; education; and social life. Black Texans includes the history of the buffalo soldiers and the cowboys on Texas cattle drives, along with the achievements of notable African-American individuals in Texas history, from Estevan the explorer through legislator Norris Wright Cuney and boxer Jack Johnson to state senator Barbara Jordan. Barr carries.


Texas

Texas

Author: Archie P. McDonald

Publisher: TX A&m-McWhiney Foundation

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13:

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Texas "a whole other country"-a slogan that promotes tourism as much within the Lone Star State as elsewhere-is familiar to native Texans and those adopted sons and daughters who "got here just as quickly as they could." Texas is as varied as East Texas timberland, hundreds of miles of seashore, prairies of the Central and High Plains, and the dry desert of far West Texas. When traveling abroad and asked, "Where are you from?" residents of forty-nine of the United States usually respond, "the USA." Nearly every citizen of the Lone Star State will answer "Texas!" The world encourages such chauvinism. Mass media celebrates and exploits Texas and Texans in television and motion pictures about the Alamo, Texas Rangers, the oil industry, and athletics, to name only a few genre. Texans' pride in their distinctiveness increases when their state is paraded-or satired-and they consciously "pass it on" to succeeding generations. But what does it mean to be a Texan? How did Texas come to be as it is? Texas: A Compact History provides answers to such questions about Texans and Texas. It tells the story of Texas history and provides thoughtful interpretations about the state's development, all with the general reader in mind-in a brief, easily read narrative. ARCHIE P. McDONALD is the author of numerous books dealing with various aspects of Texas history, including Back Then: Simple Pleasures and Everyday Heroes (State House Press, 2005)


A Texan's Story

A Texan's Story

Author: Walter Prescott Webb

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2020-09-24

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0806167866

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Walter Prescott Webb (1888–1963), a towering figure in Texas and western history and letters, published an abundance of books—but for decades the autobiography he’d written late in life sat largely undisturbed among his papers. Webb’s remarkable story appears here in print for the first time, edited and annotated by Michael Collins, an authority on Texas history. This firsthand account offers readers a window on the life, the work, and the world of one of the most interesting thinkers in the history, and historiography, of Texas. Webb’s narrative carries us from the drought-scarred rim of West Texas known as the Cross Timbers, to the hardscrabble farm life that formed him, to the bright lights of Austin and the University of Texas, where he truly came of age. Fascinating for the picture it summons of the Texas of his youth and the intellectual landscape of his career, Webb’s autobiography also offers intriguing insights into the way his epic work, The Great Plains, evolved. He also describes the struggle behind his groundbreaking history of that storied frontier fighting force the Texas Rangers. Along the way, Webb reflects on the nature of historical research, the role that Texas and the West have played in American history, the importance of education, and the place of universities in our national culture. More than a rare encounter with a true American character’s life and thought, A Texan’s Story is also a uniquely enlightening look into the understanding, writing, and teaching of western American history in its formative years.


Forget the Alamo

Forget the Alamo

Author: Bryan Burrough

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 198488011X

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A New York Times bestseller! “Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review "Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal “Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head. Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness. In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.


Texas Rising

Texas Rising

Author: Stephen L. Moore

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 0062394320

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The official nonfiction companion to HISTORY’s dramatic series Texas Rising (created by the same team that made the ratings record-breaker Hatfields & McCoys): a thrilling new narrative history of the Texas Revolution and the rise of the legendary Texas Rangers who patrolled the violent western frontier March 1836: The Republic of Texas, just weeks old, is already near collapse. William Barret Travis and his brave defenders of the Alamo in San Antonio have been slaughtered. Hundreds more Texan soldiers have surrendered at Goliad, only to be marched outside the fortress and executed by order of the ruthless Mexican general Santa Anna, a dictator denying Texans their freedom and liberty. General Sam Houston—a hard-drinking, hot-tempered opportunist—remains in command of a small band of volunteer colonists, mercenaries, and the newly organized Texas Rangers. They are the last hope for Texas to challenge the relentless advance of Santa Anna’s much larger Mexican Army—yet many of them curse Houston, enraged by his decision to retreat across Texas before the advancing enemy. The exhausted, outnumbered rebels will meet their destiny on an empty plain near the Gulf Coast next to the San Jacinto River—and make a stand that determines the fate of the young nation. “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember Goliad!” will be the battle cries, and the order of the day will echo Travis’s at the Alamo: Victory or death. Acclaimed Texas historian Stephen L. Moore’s new narrative history tells the full, thrilling story of the Texas Revolution from its humble beginnings to its dramatic conclusion, and reveals the contributions of the fabled Texas Rangers—both during the revolution and in the frontier Indian wars that followed.


The Handbook of Texas

The Handbook of Texas

Author: Walter Prescott Webb

Publisher:

Published: 1952

Total Pages: 1176

ISBN-13:

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Vol. 3: A supplement, edited by Eldon Stephen Branda. Includes bibliographical references.


Don't Mess with Texas

Don't Mess with Texas

Author: Tim McClure

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780972282512

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A behind the scenes look at the most successful antilittering campaign in history.