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Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (1968)

by T. R. Fehrenbach

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589639,962 (4.03)9
Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state's readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans "have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds."… (more)
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Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
Reading this book is like listening to your favorite football team or baseball team's radio broadcast. If you are not bothered by the "homer" perspective of the broadcaster it is great. A little more objective perspective may be nice if you are not a fan of that team.
TR Fehrenbach is a Texas homer. So if you have lived your whole life in Texas and love the state like it if heaven on earth you will love this book. ( )
  vanjr | Oct 4, 2015 |
Lone Star is seven hundred sixty-seven pages of fascinating stories about Texas. It’s all here---the original peoples, the Spanish explorers, the Mexican settlers, the American settlers, the wars, and Texas as part of Mexico, Texas as an independent nation, and Texas as part of the United States. As I read along, I kept thinking how much reading these stories explains a lot about the way Texas is now---the conflicts on the border today mirroring conflicts on the border many years ago, the desire of Texans to be independent of a central government, the way the rainfall on the land has shaped the agriculture and ranching of the state. A compelling read. ( )
  debnance | Sep 27, 2015 |
Clearly the best book on the subject of the development of Texas up to the period of the early twentieth century, written in a very entertaining way by a true master of the art. Simply a great read. ( )
  Richard7920 | Aug 23, 2011 |
By far the best general history of Texas available to date: readable and accurate. This is a sterling classic! ( )
  davidveal | Aug 20, 2011 |
I had to keep reminding myself Fehrenbach was not actually in Texas 40,000 years ago because his book, Lone Staris so detailed, so expansive that it felt like he should have been. In 719 pages Fehrenbach details every aspect of Texas one could imagine. From practically primordial beginnings to present day the birth, growth and development of Texas is detailed. Everything from agriculture, architecture and attitude to wars (civil and great) is meticulously described. Other reviews have used the words expansive, panoramic, extensive, vast, comprehensive, detailed...and I would have to agree. Not a stone in Texas is left unturned when it comes to recounting the political, the people, the powers, the progression of the state. What sets this book apart from other histories of Texas is the fact that Fehrenbach is from Texas. One can hear the passion for his home state woven into every knowledgeable sentence. ( )
2 vote SeriousGrace | Mar 25, 2009 |
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To the memory of my maternal grandfather, Charles Columbus Wentz: Born in the worst era of this nation's past, named for a negro slave; cotton grower, cattleman, and latter-day empresario; he had always courage.
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THE AMERINDS
In the beginning, before any people, was the land: an immense region 265,000 square miles in area rising out of the warm muck of the green Gulf of Mexico, running for countless leagues of rich coastal prairies, forests, and savannahs; reaching out hugely 770 miles from boundary to boundary south to north and east to west, to enclose a series of magnificent, rising limestone plateaus, ending in the thin, hot air of blue-shadowed mountains.
FOREWORD
This book was put together from an enormous total of scattered and sometimes conflicting sources: general histories published in the United States and abroad; documents, manuscripts, and archives in English, Spanish, German, and French; historical and scientific quarterlies; private journals, family records, and letters; 19th century  newpapers and official papers of several governments.
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Here is an up-to-the-moment history of the Lone Star State, together with an insider's look at the people, politics, and events that have shaped Texas from the beginning right up to our days. Never before has the story been told with more vitality and immediacy. Fehrenbach re-creates the Texas saga from prehistory to the Spanish and French invasions to the heyday of the cotton and cattle empires. He dramatically describes the emergence of Texas as a republic, the vote for secession before the Civil War, and the state's readmission to the Union after the War. In the twentieth century oil would emerge as an important economic resource and social change would come. But Texas would remain unmistakably Texas, because Texans "have been made different by the crucible of history; they think and act in different ways, according to the history that shaped their hearts and minds."

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