I just finished H.W. Brands’ Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence and Changed America. This book is a history of Texas from the first American colonization of Texas until the annexation, with a brief chapter on post-annexation Texas to the Civil War. Brands has a highly readable style of writing, and this is makes for a very fast read. Even though the book itself is 526 pages, it only took me about a week and ½ of evening reading to get through it.

Brands hits the high points of the Mexican and Republic eras, but rarely gets into too much detail except with some of the major characters, such as Austin, Travis, and Houston. Other famous players, such as Bowie, Crockett, and Santa Anna, receive briefer, but interesting, treatment. I was pleased to see that Brands did not attempt to destroy such traditional heroes as Houston, Bowie, and Travis as is popular with historical revisionists like Jeff Long (Duel of Eagles). He takes a realistic approach to those men and acknowledges that they were not the saints of early Texas legend, but also showcases their attributes.

Brands also does not delve far into controversial issues, such as the death of Crockett at the Alamo, or the bickering between Mexican Generals Filisola and Urrea after San Jacinto. Similarly, he glosses over complex actions, such as the Texian victory at San Jacinto without examining the reasons behind the Mexican Army’s total collapse.

I think that for what it is, a popular history for a broad audience, it is a very good book. It is readable, informative, and balanced. I could recommend this for anyone getting started in or interested in a broad overview of Texas history


[This message has been edited by DevilYack (edited 6/28/2008 1:11p).]

I forgot to add one criticism I had of the book. It's not really about "How a Ragged Army won the Battle for Texas Independence and Changed America." Brands did not examine the battles of the Revolution in detail, and spent comparatively little time on the Revolution itself compared to the words spent describing the settlement of Texas. It's much more of a general history. I would probably subtitle it "How Anglo-americans Settled Texas and its Subsequent Revolution."

I am always a bit cynical of professors who churn out books year after year. From your review it sounds like he didn't do enough research to really contribute anything new to the debates, or am I reading too much into this?

It's not original research. He has a long list of sources in the back of the book, but there aren't typical footnotes in the text. I think this is primarily an overview of Texas history targeted at people who don't read scholarly history books.

It's a nice, fast read, though. That's coming from someone who enjoys reading weird things like Filisola's tortured rants.

Edit: I think that he does talk about some of the contentious issues. For example, he discusses (briefly) why the Mexican Army performed so poorly during the revolution (30 odd years of civil war between the Federalists and Centrists) and he examines the Adams-Jackson arguments regarding admitting Texas to the Union. He just doesn't get into them very deeply.

[This message has been edited by DevilYack (edited 6/30/2008 2:24p).]

When was the last time he did original research?

Don't get me to lying.