This absorbing biography, written by Kleberg's top assistant of many years, captures both the life of the man and the spirit of the kingdom he ruled, offering a rare, insider's view of life on a fabled Texas ranch.

“Combines a biography of Kleberg . . . with the story of the postwar boom years that changed the King Ranch . . . into an international corporate agribusiness.” —Houston Chronicle Ranching on the vast scale that Texas is famous for actually happened at King Ranch, a sea of grass that ultimately spread its pastures to countries around the globe under the fifty-year leadership of Bob Kleberg. This absorbing biography, written by Kleberg's top assistant of many years, captures both the life of the man and the spirit of the kingdom he ruled, offering a rare, insider's view of life on a fabled Texas ranch. John Cypher spent forty years (1948–1988) on King Ranch. In these pages, he melds highlights of Kleberg’s life with memories of his own experiences as the “right hand” who implemented many of Kleberg's grand designs. In a lively story laced with fascinating anecdotes, Cypher both recounts his worldwide travels with Kleberg as the ranch expanded its holdings around the world, and describes timeless, traditional tasks such as roundup at the home ranch in Kingsville. Chronicling Kleberg’s accomplishments as well as his legendary lifestyle, which included friendships not merely with the rich and famous but also with Queen Elizabeth, who shared his love of horse racing, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in ranching and one of its most famous practitioners. “Cypher[‘s] easy conversational style makes life on a working ranch, the care and feeding of visiting celebrities and the field of international agribusiness both understandable and entertaining.” —San Antonio Express-News “Probably the best of what will ever be known of the inner Bob Kleberg.” —East Texas Historical Journal

Waiting for Daylight consists of photographs taken while working cattle from horseback on the King Ranches in South Texas, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. The photographs capture an era when people lived out their lives on lands that were often inhospitable with great herds of red cattle and fine cow horses. These beautiful, historic images communicate a feeling of constant renewal combined with the sense of suspended time.

In this tribute to a pioneer conservationist, Duane M. Leach celebrates the life of an exceptional ranch manager on a legendary Texas ranch, a visionary for wildlife and modern ranch management, and an extraordinarily dedicated and generous man. Caesar Kleberg went to work on the King Ranch in 1900. For almost thirty years he oversaw the operations of the sprawling Norias division, a vast acreage in South Texas where he came to appreciate the importance of rangeland not only for cattle but also for wildlife. Creating a wildlife management and conservation initiative far ahead of its time, Kleberg established strict hunting rules and a program of enlightened habitat restoration. Because of his efforts and foresight, by his death in 1946 there were more white-tailed deer, wild turkey, bobwhite quail, javelinas, and mourning dove on the King Ranch than in the rest of the state. Kleberg’s legacy lives on at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute in Kingsville, where a research program he helped found has gained recognition far beyond the pastures of Norias.

Kingsville is located in the northern part of the Wild Horse Desert region of South Texas. The storied history of this Texas town is part of Western lore. The region was originally a patchwork of large Spanish land-grant ranches, and the ranchers needed a way to bring their cattle to market. The legal contract made between King Ranch manager Robert Kleberg and railroad builder Benjamin Yoakum secured the general office, shops, and roundhouse of the St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico Railway with a handshake. Laborers, skilled workers, merchants, and farmers soon flocked to this barren area to build Kingsville and make a home for their families. Kingsville became a railroading community, college town, center of the oil industry, and home to the Naval Air Station at Kingsville. Modern Kingsville is an intellectual center for ranch management, a home to state-of-the-art training for naval aviators, and an ecotourism center for birding and wildlife enthusiasts.

Tired, disoriented, and confused, Robert East was no match for the wolves when they arrived. Robert East loved his older brother, Tom, but always resented Tom’s favored role in the family cattle business based at their San Antonio Viejo ranch near Hebbronville, Texas, just north of the Rio Grande. Tom was a figure to be reckoned with, a cattleman with ambitions to supplant their Uncle Bob Kleberg, head of the enormous King Ranch, as the leading cattle raiser in Texas. Robert, by contrast, was a cowboy who cared little for what occurred beyond the San Antonio Viejo’s main gate. Handsome and ornery, with no head for business, he nevertheless chafed in his brother’s shadow until 1984, when Tom died young of a heart attack, just as their father, Tom East, Sr., had 40 years earlier. Suddenly Robert was the new and untested patrón of 250,000 acres of East Family ranchland—and the majority owner of the ocean of natural gas pooled beneath East rangeland. It was his turn to issue the orders. Robert’s contentious nature drove the Easts into bitter intra-family legal hostilities that persisted for a decade. He lost his beloved sister, Lica, to cancer, and as old age advanced, he found himself alone and isolated on a remote ranch with only an unreliable foreman and a scattering of vaqueros and other workers for company. The physical wear and tear from decades of working cattle on horseback began to show. Robert’s knees gave out, and he developed serious cardiovascular problems. His doctors prescribed pain pills, sedatives, and medications for his chronic depression. In 2000, drillers hit the most productive gas well in the U.S, if not the world, on East property, making the rich old man suddenly and spectacularly wealthy beyond his comprehension. Soon enough the wolves began to circle, and Robert’s grotesque final days were at hand.

"Centennial series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A & M University ; no. 49." The story about America's largest and most progressive cattle ranch.

A larger-than-life narrative of the making of the classic film, marking the rise of America as a superpower, the ascent of Hollywood celebrity, and the flowering of Texas culture as mythology. Featuring James Dean, Rock Hudson, and Elizabeth Taylor, Giant is an epic film of fame and materialism, based around the discovery of oil at Spindletop and the establishment of the King Ranch of south Texas. Isolating his star cast in the wilds of West Texas, director George Stevens brought together a volatile mix of egos, insecurities, sexual proclivities, and talent. Stevens knew he was overwhelmed with Hudson’s promiscuity, Taylor’s high diva-dom, and Dean’s egotistical eccentricity. Yet he coaxed performances out of them that made cinematic history, winning Stevens the Academy Award for Best Director and garnering nine other nominations, including a nomination for Best Actor for James Dean, who died before the film was finished. In this compelling and impeccably researched narrative history of the making of the film, Don Graham chronicles the stories of Stevens, whose trauma in World War II intensified his ambition to make films that would tell the story of America; Edna Ferber, a considerable literary celebrity, who meets her match in the imposing Robert Kleberg, proprietor of the vast King Ranch; and Glenn McCarthy, an American oil tycoon; and Errol Flynn lookalike with a taste for Hollywood. Drawing on archival sources Graham’s Giant is a comprehensive depiction of the film’s production showing readers how reality became fiction and fiction became cinema.

Winner, San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2011 Texas's King Ranch has become legendary for a long list of innovations, the most enduring of which is the development of the first official cattle breed in the Americas, the Santa Gertrudis. Among those who played a crucial role in the breed's success were Librado and Alberto "Beto" Maldonado, master showmen of the King Ranch. A true "bull whisperer," Librado Maldonado developed a method for gentling and training cattle that allowed him and his son Beto to show the Santa Gertrudis to their best advantage at venues ranging from the famous King Ranch auctions to a Chicago television studio to the Dallas–Fort Worth airport. They even boarded a plane with the cattle en route to the International Fair in Casablanca, Morocco, where they introduced the Santa Gertrudis to the African continent. In The Master Showmen of King Ranch, Beto Maldonado recalls an eventful life of training and showing King Ranch Santa Gertrudis. He engagingly describes the process of teaching two-thousand-pound bulls to behave "like gentlemen" in the show ring, as well as the significant logistical challenges of transporting them to various high-profile venues around the world. His reminiscences, which span more than seventy years of King Ranch history, combine with quotes from other Maldonado family members, co-workers, and ranch owners to shed light on many aspects of ranch life, including day-to-day work routines, family relations, women's roles, annual celebrations, and the enduring ties between King Ranch owners and the vaquero families who worked on the ranch through several generations.