Can anyone recommend a good book (not too slow) on Texas History for someone who grew up out of state? I'm interested both in general history and more in depth in the period from revolution to republic to annexation into the USA.

Thanks in advance

I don't mind also some fictional books in this setting

edit- I'm also in CA so they'll have to be books widely available, not just in CS.

[This message has been edited by bearamedic99 (edited 1/21/2007 8:30a).]

Lone Star Nation- HW Brand

The mark of success next year; beat at least two teams that end up in the top 25. We end up in the top 25. We win our bowl game if it is a tier two bowl, play well in a tier one bowl. We don't lose to anyone other than maybe Texas, OU, or Miami and in those games we don't get blown out. We are still in contention for the Big XII South with two games left. Is that asking too much or is it too demanding?

A personal favorite of mine is "The Evolution of a State or Recallations of Old Texas Days" by Noah Smithwick. It is one used in the Texas History classes at A&M and was penned by Smithwick's granddaughter as he told her the stories.

http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/smievo.html

I'll second Lone star Nation.

The definitive history is "Lone Star" by T.R. Fehrenbach. It's a big, long read, so maybe not what you're looking for.

Lone Star Nation, already mentioned, is fairly good.

Probably the best short history of the revolution is "Texian Illiad" by Stephen Hardin. That's pretty common. (note: illiad, like Homer - stupid Texags and their sans-serifs fonts)

There are a ton of good Alamo books out there. Walter Lord (who wrote an excellent Pearl Harbor book) has written a fairly good one "A Time to Stand" and Lon Tinkle's "13 Days to Glory" is good.

William Binkley's "The Texas Revolution" is not bad, and fairly short.

In terms of fiction, there's a lot out there. James A. Mitchener's "Texas" is a classic, but so is War and Peace, only War and Peace is shorter.

I found a pretty cool paperback called "Empire" by Terry Coleman, a British writer, at a kiosk in the Paris East train station. I've never seen it since. It's set in the Republic and goes into a lot of the nuances about how close Texas came to never being annexed. Being British, he plays it up a little, as that was something the British wanted, but in my other reading, that's something I think most people don't realize - how annexation and statehood was not foreordained, and how both the U.S. and Texas publics were moving away from that position for a time, before events pulled them back. The guy takes a few liberties with his portrayal of Sam Houston, but otherwise, it's a good read. Of course, when you're stuck in Paris and it's cold and raining, any book on Texas is a good read.

There's a ton of good stuff out there, and I myself have not read as much as I would like to. However, I have built up a huge collection, and one of these days, I will go on a binge.



[This message has been edited by aalan94 (edited 1/21/2007 9:06p).]

I'll second Fehrenbach but I remember it as a fast read, very immersive.

[This message has been edited by BQ78 (edited 1/22/2007 11:00a).]

Go w/ the Fehrenbauch book. It is long, but it's an easy read. Also, while it's long, it covers alot of material. If you're mostly interested in the history of colonization, revolution, and the nineteenth century (what most people think of for TX history), you can read that part and save the 20th century history for later.

I took a Texas History class and we used "Texas: The Lone Star State" by Richardson, Anderson, Wintz, and Wallace. It seems pretty comprehensive. It's got about 450 pages, but not difficult to read, and it's slightly smaller than normal size. It begins with the native peoples of Texas before the Spanish settled there, and goes up through 2004 in the ninth edition.

Lone Star Nation is phenomenal.

Texian Illiad is a good one specifically about the Revolution. Evenhanded and thorough. I forget who the author is though. My copy is at home or I would check.

Stephen Hardin wrote Texian Illiad.

I second the Texian Iliad. I'm a 7th grade TX Hist. teacher, and that book is considered the bible of TX hist among schools.

Fehrenbach's history (Lone Star) is sweeping literature... a classic.

I've been reading Fehrenbach for a few weeks now. It is excellent.


On a related note, Fehrenbach slightly goes into how all of the indian tribes are all kind of related to eachother. does anyone know of a good book that tells how (we think) the tribes of the americas came down, developed culturally and geographically?

I agree with the recommendations for Fehrenbach's "Lone Star".

I also recommend two other titles mentioned above ("Evolution of a State" by Smithwick and "Texian Iliad" by Hardin) as well as these: "The Raven" by James, "Recollections of Early Texas" by Jenkins, "Rip Ford's Texas" by Ford, "Taming the Nueces Strip" by Durham, "Indians of Texas" by Newcombe, and "The Texas Rangers" by Webb.

All of the titles in the previous paragraph are published by, ahem, The University of Texas Press.

A few chapters into the Texian Illiad, it looks like a winner. I wish I could read it at work instead of wasting time on Texags. hahahaha

The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch (he's an Aggie too)is a great read about life in the late 1800's in Texas.

I'd just like to throw out that I've read Fehrenbauch's books on the Comanche and on Mexico. I really enjoyed them both as I did Lone Star. I'd recomend the Comanche book first, though. I think I just like his approach to history and historical writing.

[This message has been edited by RoseRichAg01 (edited 2/15/2007 10:46a).]

Another vote for Fehrenbach's Lone Star and Comanches.

Well, I finished the Texian Iliad and I have mixed reviews. The first part was incredibly detailed and descriptive (up to the Alamo). The Alamo wasn't as detailed as I had hoped, but the description of the events surrounding Fannin and Goliad was disappointing. The rest of the book seemed to be hurried through. I would have really liked for him to elaborate on the quarrels between Houston and others more than merely saying that they hated his guts for the rest of their lives.

But I have the luxury of critiquing someone else's work and doing no research of my own. He did seem more interested in documenting every single statement and not stepping on cultural toes rather than simply giving a historical narrative of what was happening.

I think the reason he didn't do so much on the Alamo is that there are 8 billion books on it alone.

What I want to see is a real good history of the Republic. There are a few out there, but they're mediocre. Most people seem to regard the Republic as a non-entity, and take it for granted that we would be annexed, when that was far from certain.

There are a ton of interesting happenings during the Republic period, from military (Mier, Santa Fe, the Mexican invasion of 1842, etc.) to the political (the fascinating presidency of the anti-annexation president Mirabeau Lamar, for example).

Lone Star Nation is ON SALE at Barnes and Noble for 10 bucks here in Austin. I don't know if that is everywhere.

nobody has mentioned Cantrell's book "Stephen F Austin, Empresario of Texas."

excellent insight into the pre-revolutionary time in Texas. and Cantrell is an Aggie - you need to read that book if you haven't already


I haven't run across a detailed Republic period book either. About all you find on that period revolves around Rangers and Indian fights.

Has anybody read "Eighteen Minutes" by Stephen Moore? I picked it up tonight at Border's. It's supposed to be the story of the San Jacinto campaign told through the words of participants on both sides.

Eighteen Minutes

not an accurate quote, but something like
"Fred Smith enlisted on the afternoon of March 12th along with 7 other men, 4 cousins, 2 brothers, and a guy named Snoot from down the river and then he transferred to Waldo's company that was at the ferry crossing below the ford above the town, and then they got sick and then they got lost and then all met up at San Jacinto but Fred might have been with this other company because he got thrown by a horse, except he didn't have a horse and its only in his self written history 50 years later that anybody mentions him and a horse."



or something like that
A deeply and well researched account of who come from where and how they got to where they were and what they did. But not much on excitement.

as a friend of mine says - an accurate, but not very compelling version of the story



[This message has been edited by TheSheik (edited 3/14/2007 3:00p).]

Yeah, only one night into it and I can see that your description is probably right.