Fehrenbach
![LONE STAR 2ND EDITION Fehrenbach]( "LONE STAR 2ND EDITION Fehrenbach")
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Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> State & Local -> Southwest
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Best of its class 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 15 people found this review helpful.
My volume is the original 1968 version, so my comments do not emcompass whatever changes have been introduced in the recent edition. Nonetheless, Fehrenbach's book is simply the best of the breed with respect to a single volume history of Texas and its people.
If you are politically correct, you will not like the historical accuracy of this book. The author clearly gives the Scotch-Irish (Anglo-Celts) their due for pushing the frontier westwards, settling Texas, and giving it its "Texas" tradition. One reviewer speaks of the absence of the Hispanic contribution, but it must be remembered that at the time of the Texas Revolution, Anglos outnumbered Mexicans ten to one in Texas. Indeed, the growth of Mexican population figures in Texas is a post World War II phenomenon, and the current ethnic composition is of recent vintage. The author is historically correct to limit his coverage of Mexicans in Texas to south of the Nueces, San Antonio, the Rio Grande valley and Ybarbo's group until after World War II. Had the Mexicans been able to defeat the Lipan Apaches and Comanches, the history would have been different.
Another reviewer pans the book due to the author's leaving out a reference to a diary's author and then proceeds to allege the meeting in question was fictional. Based on this single case, he relegates the entire book to fictional status. It seems to me that there must be something else at work here.
The author tells it like it was. Attitudes such as the Indians losing their land because they didn't develop it were normal in the time period involved, and the choice to fight for the Confederacy did revolve more around fighting with and for kin and neighbors rather than an abstract idea like states rights or anything else. In addition, Texas had only recently joined the Union, and the belief that it had the right to secede from the Union was widespread (and probably judicially correct except that the Civil War eliminated that viewpoint in law for the forseeable future.) And yes, Indians, blacks and Mexicans were looked down upon as inferior in general by the Scotch-Irish almost until the book was first written. But saying that this attitude was prevalent doesn't make the author racist or inaccurate in his depiction of the reality of the times. Observations on Indian culture and civilization may offend the politically correct individual in the twentieth century, but that does not make them less accurate. Those who wish to make a counter argument should do so in their own work, not simply rant against a position without supporting observations or facts.
One negative reviewer has a legitimate criticism in bemoaning the lack on emphasis on water availability. This was particularly important west of Sweetwater and San Antonio, but one should recognize that any single volume will have omissions due to space. That does not make a book not worth reading -- only that it does not cover some reviewer's pet points. The author has done the best possible job of covering Texas history in 719 pages and should be commended.
This book is a "must" for any American interested in American History even if one does not agree with certain depictions or feels significant events or discussions are missing.
Editorial Review:
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."
