History passed in review along the highways of Texas in the century 1761–1860. This was the century of exploration and settlement for the big new land, and many thousands of people traveled its trails: traders, revolutionaries, missionaries, warriors, government agents, adventurers, refugees, gold seekers, prospective settlers, land speculators, army wives, and filibusters. Their reasons for coming were many and varied, and the travelers viewed the land and its people with a wide variety of reactions. Political and industrial revolution, famine, and depression drove settlers from many of the countries of Europe and many of the states of the United States. Some were displeased with what they found in Texas, but for many it was a haven, a land of renewed hope. So large was the migration of people to Texas that the land that was virtually unoccupied in 1761 numbered its population at 600,000 a century later. Several hundred of these travelers left published accounts of their impressions and adventures. Collectively the accounts tell a panoramic story of the land as its boundaries were drawn and its institutions formed. Spain gave way to Mexico, Mexico to the Republic of Texas, the Republic to statehood in the United States, and statehood in the Union was giving way to statehood in the Confederate states by 1860. The travelers’ accounts reflect these changes; but, more important, they tell the story of the receding frontier. In Travelers in Texas, 1761–1860, the author examines the Texas seen by the traveler-writer. Opening with a chapter about travel conditions in general (roads or trails, accommodations, food), she also presents at some length the travelers’ impressions of the country and its people. She then proceeds to examine particular aspects of Texas life: the Indians, slavery, immigration, law enforcement, and the individualistic character of the people, all as seen through the eyes of the travelers. The discussion concludes with a “Critical Essay on Sources,” containing bibliographic discussions of over two hundred of the more important travel accounts.

Revised and updated, this popular history by an award-winning author brings the story of Texas into the twenty-first century. Since its publication in 1989, Texas, A Modern History has established itself as one of the most readable and reliable general histories of Texas. David McComb paints the panorama of Lone Star history from the earliest Indians to the present day with a vigorous brush that uses fact, anecdote, and humor to present a concise narrative. The book is designed to offer an adult reader the savor of Texan culture, an exploration of the ethos of its people, and a sense of the rhythm of its development. Spanish settlement, the Battle of the Alamo, the Civil War, cattle trails, oil discovery, the growth of cities, changes in politics, the Great Depression, World War II, recreation, economic expansion, and recession are each a part of the picture. Photographs and fascinating sidebars punctuate the text. In this revised edition, McComb not only incorporates recent scholarship but also tracks the post–World War II rise of the Republican Party in Texas and the evolution of the state from rural to urban, with 88 percent of the people now living in cities. At the same time, he demonstrates that, despite many changes that have made Texas similar to the rest of the United States, much of its unique past remains. “Contrary to popular belief, there is more to Texas history than the Alamo and oil gushers. This book takes us from the early Indians of the area through to modern times when people began to realize the exploitation of natural resources and pollution were ruining the state’s natural beauty. The author offers many stories and an ample helping of anecdotes and folklore to paint an accurate portrait of the state and the people who have made it great.” —American West

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.

Texas pride, like everything else in the state, is larger than life. So, too, perhaps, are the state’s challenges. Lone Star Tarnished, Third Edition approaches public policy in the nation’s most populous "red state" from historical, comparative, and critical perspectives. The historical perspective provides the scope for asking how various policy domains have developed in Texas history, regularly reaching back to the state’s founding and with substantial data for the period 1950 to the present. In each chapter, Cal Jillson compares Texas public policy choices and results with those of other states and the United States in general. Finally, the critical perspective allows us to question the balance of benefits and costs attendant to what is often referred to as "the Texas way" or "the Texas model." This is used best as a supplementary text for instructors of a course on Texas Politics who want to stress history, political culture, and public policy. Jillson delves deeply into eight substantive policy chapters, covering the most important policy areas in which state governments are active. The third edition includes completely rewritten first and second chapters, as well as updates throughout the book and revised figures and tables. Also new to the third edition is a completely new chapter on higher education in Texas. Through Jillson’s lively and lucid prose, students are well equipped to analyse how Texas has done and is doing compared to selected states and the national average over time and today. Readers will also come away with the necessary tools to assess the many claims of Texas’s exceptionalism. New to the Third Edition Highlights major new actors in Texas politics, including Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, George P. Bush, and a higher profile Ted Cruz. Notes key policy developments in education, health care, transportation, energy and more resulting from the 2015 and 2017 legislative sessions and the arrival of the new Republican Trump administration in Washington. Updates all tables and figures in the book, including a dozen new ones, assessing how Texas is doing in income, education, human services, transportation, energy, and the environment. Includes an entirely new chapter on "Higher Education in Texas."

Reinterprets borderlands history from the Mexican perspective.

Few American cities enjoy the likes of San Antonio's visual links with its dramatic past. The Alamo and four other Spanish missions, recently marked as a UNESCO World Heritage site, are the most obvious but there are a host of landmarks and folkways that have survived over the course of nearly three centuries that still lend San Antonio an "odd and antiquated foreignness." Adding to the charm of the nation's seventh largest city is the San Antonio River, saved to become a winding linear park through the heart of downtown and beyond and a world model for sensitive urban development. San Antonio's heritage has not been preserved by accident. The wrecking balls and headlong development that accompanied progress in nineteenth-century San Antonio roused an indigenous historic preservation movement—the first west of the Mississippi River to become effective. Its thrust has increased since the mid-1920s with the pioneering work of the San Antonio Conservation Society. In Saving San Antonio, Texas historian Lewis Fisher peels back the myths surrounding more than a century of preservation triumphs and failures to reveal a lively mosaic that portrays the saving of San Antonio's cultural and architectural soul. The process, entertaining in the telling, has reverberated throughout the United States and provided significant lessons for the built environments and economies of cities everywhere.

Marriage, divorce, birth, baptism, and census records are the essential records of a community. Through them we see who marries, who divorces, and how many children are born. Sal Acosta has studied a broad base of these vital records to produce the largest quantitative study of intermarriage of any group in the West. Sanctioning Matrimony examines intermarriage in the Tucson area between 1860 and 1930. Unlike previous studies on intermarriage, this book examines not only intermarriages of Mexicans with whites but also their unions with blacks and Chinese. Following the Treaty of Mesilla (1853), interethnic relationships played a significant part in the Southwest. Acosta provides previously unseen archival research on the scope and tenor of interracial marriages in Arizona. Contending that scholarship on intermarriage has focused on the upper classes, Acosta takes us into the world of the working and lower classes and illuminates how church and state shaped the behavior of participants in interracial unions. Marriage practices in Tucson reveal that Mexican women were pivotal in shaping family and social life between 1854 and 1930. Virtually all intermarriages before 1900 were, according to Acosta, between Mexican women and white men, or between Mexican women and blacks or Chinese until the 1920s, illustrating the importance of these women during the transformation of Tucson from a Mexican pueblo to an American town. Acosta’s deep analysis of vital records, census data, and miscegenation laws in Arizona demonstrates how interethnic relationships benefited from and extended the racial fluidity of the Arizona borderlands.

This new study revolves around the Tonkawa tribe in the history of the Lone Star State and the greater Southwest. The chronological account allows readers to understand its triumphs and struggles over the course of a century or more, and places the story in a larger historical narrative of shifting alliances, cultural encounters and economic opportunity. From a coalition with the Lipan Apaches to the incorporation of Tonkawa scouts in the U.S. Army during the late nineteenth century, the author tells the story of these often overlooked people. By highlighting the role of the Tonkawas, Dr. McGowen provides a fresh appreciation of their influence in frontier history and renders their ultimate fate all the more heartbreaking. This book made possible in part by a grant from Summerfield G. Roberts Foundation.

A critical survey of over 150 years of Texas women writers, including fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, and dramatists.