In this biography, Randolph B. Campbell explores the life of Sam Houston and his important role in the development of the Southwest. Paperback, brief, and inexpensive, each of the titles in the Library of American Biography Series focus on a figure whose actions and ideas significantly influenced the course of American history and national life. In addition, each biography relates the life of its subject to the broader themes and developments of the times.

Against the tumultuous backdrop of early Texas history, Williams sketches a vivid portrait of a truly American legend. Map.

Like its ground-breaking predecessor, the first general survey of Tejanos, this completely up-to-date revision is a concise political, cultural, and social history of Mexican Americans in Texas from the Spanish colonial era to the present. Professor De Len is careful to portray Tejanos as active subjects, not merely objects in the ongoing Texas story. Complemented by a stunning photographic essay, a helpful glossary, and meticulously annotated, this work continues to be ideal reading for anyone wanting to learn about the most influential ethnic group in Texas.

The New York Times bestseller now in paperback with a new epilogue. In March 1836, the Mexican army led by General Santa Anna massacred more than two hundred Texians who had been trapped in the Alamo. After thirteen days of fighting, American legends Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett died there, along with other Americans who had moved to Texas looking for a fresh start. It was a crushing blow to Texas’s fight for freedom. But the story doesn’t end there. The defeat galvanized the Texian settlers, and under General Sam Houston’s leadership they rallied. Six weeks after the Alamo, Houston and his band of settlers defeated Santa Anna’s army in a shocking victory, winning the independence for which so many had died. Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers recaptures this pivotal war that changed America forever, and sheds light on the tightrope all war heroes walk between courage and calculation. Thanks to Kilmeade’s storytelling, a new generation of readers will remember the Alamo—and recognize the lesser known heroes who snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

In Sleuthing the Alamo, historian James E. Crisp draws back the curtain on years of mythmaking to reveal some surprising truths about the Texas Revolution--truths often obscured by both racism and "political correctness," as history has been hijacked by combatants in the culture wars of the past two centuries. Beginning with a very personal prologue recalling both the pride and the prejudices that he encountered in the Texas of his youth, Crisp traces his path to the discovery of documents distorted, censored, and ignored--documents which reveal long-silenced voices from the Texan past. In each of four chapters focusing on specific documentary "finds," Crisp uncovers the clues that led to these archival discoveries. Along the way, the cast of characters expands to include: a prominent historian who tried to walk away from his first book; an unlikely teenaged "speechwriter" for General Sam Houston; three eyewitnesses to the death of Davy Crockett at the Alamo; a desperate inmate of Mexico City's Inquisition Prison, whose scribbled memoir of the war in Texas is now listed in the Guiness Book of World Records; and the stealthy slasher of the most famous historical painting in Texas. In his afterword, Crisp explores the evidence behind the mythic "Yellow Rose of Texas" and examines some of the powerful forces at work in silencing the very voices from the past that we most need to hear today. Here then is an engaging first-person account of historical detective work, illuminating the methods of the serious historian--and the motives of those who prefer glorious myth to unflattering truth.

Catarino Garza’s Revolution on the Texas-Mexico Border rescues an understudied episode from the footnotes of history. On September 15, 1891, Garza, a Mexican journalist and political activist, led a band of Mexican rebels out of South Texas and across the Rio Grande, declaring a revolution against Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz. Made up of a broad cross-border alliance of ranchers, merchants, peasants, and disgruntled military men, Garza’s revolution was the largest and longest lasting threat to the Díaz regime up to that point. After two years of sporadic fighting, the combined efforts of the U.S. and Mexican armies, Texas Rangers, and local police finally succeeded in crushing the rebellion. Garza went into exile and was killed in Panama in 1895. Elliott Young provides the first full-length analysis of the revolt and its significance, arguing that Garza’s rebellion is an important and telling chapter in the formation of the border between Mexico and the United States and in the histories of both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the borderlands were a relatively coherent region. Young analyzes archival materials, newspapers, travel accounts, and autobiographies from both countries to show that Garza’s revolution was more than just an effort to overthrow Díaz. It was part of the long struggle of borderlands people to maintain their autonomy in the face of two powerful and encroaching nation-states and of Mexicans in particular to protect themselves from being economically and socially displaced by Anglo Americans. By critically examining the different perspectives of military officers, journalists, diplomats, and the Garzistas themselves, Young exposes how nationalism and its preeminent symbol, the border, were manufactured and resisted along the Rio Grande.

Elizabeth Crook's vast yet intimate novel of the Texas Revolution takes us beyond the traditional setpieces of the Alamo and San Jacinto to the other places where the war was fought—to the forest traces and prairies and Gulf Coast beaches, and to the hearts of the novel's vibrant characters. Among them: Domingo de la Rosa—the great Tejano ranchero, implacable and devout, for whom the fight against the Anglo "heretics" is nothing less than a holy war. Hugh Kenner—a physician whose son has run away to the war. Hugh will discover the heroic strength of his compassion, and also its brutal cost. Katie Kenner—Hugh's restless daughter, a refugee caught up in the massive human stampede known as The Runaway Scrape, who finds herself in love with a foreigner and responsible for the life of an orphan baby. Adelaido Pacheco—a dashing tobacco smuggler loyal to no cause but his own, a man without a country and in peril of becoming a man without a soul. Crucita Pacheco—Adelaido's beautiful sister who has lost her family, all but Adelaido, in the cholera epidemic of 1832. Feeling that God has forsaken her, she enters Domingo de la Rosa's employ as a spy against the Anglo rebels, and discovers an improbable love. Through these people and others, Promised Lands brings a myth-encrusted chapter of American history to authentic life. Elizabeth Crook demonstrates once again a stunning command of her period and a passionate regard for her characters. Promised Lands bears the hallmark of a master novelist: a grand vision, rendered on an unforgettably human scale.