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Civil War in the Southwest: Recollections of the Sibley Brigade (Canseco-Keck History Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Civil War In The Southwest: Recollections Of The Sibley Brigade by Civil War scholar and historian Jerry Thompson presents eighteen distinctive episodes written by members of General Henry Hopkins Sibley's command who fought and traveled more than eight thousand miles through snake-infested bayous to snow-capped mountains to fight and die in more than sixteen major battles of the American Civil War. The brigade consisted of young, zealous Texans who sought to invade New Mexico Territory as a step toward the Confederate conquest of Colorado and California in order to seize their resources (including the gold fields) in support of the South. This compendium of eye witness accounts is positively riveting and is enthusiastically recommended as a unique, invaluable contribution to Civil War Studies supplemental reading lists and reference collections.

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Texas Humoresque: Lone Star Humorists from Then Till Now Review

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(More customer reviews)I expected a few more aphorisms in this book. I guess it was good for what it turned out to be; a review of notable texans. I expected more humor.

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Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanches, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier Review

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(More customer reviews)I must say I've read just about every book on the US Army in the 1850's...and while this book is OK it was little more than the original book by Col. Simpson "Cry Comanchee". I was surpirsed that this book was three times as thick and really offered almost NO new information...furthermore I was very trouble by the author's attmepts to make his work into an easy read novel...a very scarry trend in history today in order to reach the greater public. He describes the gut feelings of men who never left a record of how they felt that morning, nor that they knew this patrol would be different from the rest...I was disappointed as I realized that all the additional pages were filler about conjections of peoples emotions that have been long gone. He even talks about the troopers packing their saddlebags...a quick look at the VERY published inspector General reports of the 2nd shows the companies had no saddlebags! There is little academic research, there has been alot of information of the arms, equipments, etc of the old 2nd Cavalry (now 5th Cavalry) come to light in the last 20 years and it is obvious the author has not spent any real time at the US Cavalry Museum nor researched and primary sources that Col. Simpson didn't already. All in all I am not usually this harsh, but I did pay full price (which was TWICE what I paid for a new copy from the pubilsher of the long out of print "Cry Comanchee") and was very upset. The original publisher still has several copies of "CC" for sale and I sadly must suggest you go to them and buy that book instead.

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The Stories of I. C. Eason, King of the Dog People Review

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(More customer reviews)I originally stumbled across this book when I typed 'Eason' in the computer at our local library while randomly searching for books. When I read the description I knew that these were my relatives. My family is from all over Texas from before it was a part of the US. This part of the family is from East Texas. My Grandpa Eason last lived in Thicket, TX.
I give this a 5 star rating, not because I'm a relative, but because it is rich with the history and language I know from when I lived near Houston 30+ years ago.

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Buffalo Days: Stories from J. Wright Mooar (Texas Heritage Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Good personal reminiscence. Very good end notes. Certainly not politicaly correct but a very good view of the prevaling mind set of the nineteenth century buffalo hide trade.

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"Because he has been criticized as a destroyer, a ruthless killer, and wastrel of a great game resource of a Nation, the buffalo hunter appeals to the bar of history for his vindication. . . . Within four years we opened up a vast empire to settlement, and put the Indians forever out of Texas."J. Wright Mooar tells the story of the buffalo hunter, from the hunter's perspective, in this first-person account published more than seventy years ago in several installments in Holland's, The Magazine of the South. Mooar was more than eighty years old when he sat down with Methodist minister/educator James Winford Hunt and recounted his years as a buffalo hunter.He describes how buffalo hunting became a huge business that thrived for less than a decade in the 1870s and makes the case that the buffalo hunter, more than anyone else, opened the way for white settlement by eradicating the Indians' source of food."Buffalo hunting was a business and not a sport. It required capital, management, and a lot of hard work. Magazine writers and others who claim that the killing of the buffalo was a national calamity and was accomplished by vandals simply expose their ignorance, and I resent such an unjust judgment upon us."If it had not been for the work of the buffalo hunters, the wild bison would still graze where Amarillo now is, and the red man would still reign supreme over the pampas of the Panhandle of Texas."Any one of the families killed and homes destroyed by the Indians would have been worth more to Texas and to civilization than all the millions of buffalo that ever roamed from the Pecos River on the south to the Platte River on the north.""Here is an odyssey of hairbreadth escapes from death with wild Indians, wilder white men, and thundering herds of wild buffalo," writes J. W. Hunt, founding president of Abilene's McMurry College (now University), in his introduction.Illustrated by Texas folklore artist Granville Bruce, the stories of J. Wright Mooar make for lively reading and continuing debate.

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Jeff Davis's Own: Cavalry, Comanches, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier Review

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(More customer reviews)Arnold has a gift for military history that while informative of facts is also a good read. He makes history interesting even to the casual reader. This book fills what is usually a gap in US military history and a blank in most accounts of R.E. Lees life. Who knew that Lee was an Indian fighter as well as hero of the Mexican American war and great American strategist. His account of Lee's personnel hand to hand fight with an Apache warrior reveals his personnel determination, courage, and humor is an insightful read. This is the second of many American military experience with insurgent, unconventional, gorilla warfare, others being the Seminole war in Florida, for that fact all the Indian wars, the War in the Philippines {part of the Spanish American war} Vietnam war, and now Iraq/Afghanistan. We win as long as we have the political will to do so. Enough of that. This is a really good book, I highly recommend it. A lot of info for a little known period in American Military History.

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Excitingly told and meticulously researched, this is an intriguing and colorful saga of the commanders who united to fight an enemy on its native ground, then divided again to face each other across the battlefields of their own homeland.

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The Borderland: A Novel of Texas Review

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(More customer reviews)this superb book is so big that it entices one to match its size in praising it. There are dozens of literally, fabulous, characters. texas rangers, europeans, actresses, generals, and, of course, native americans. i can't imagine that these warriors, sages, half-breeds, captives, politicians and womenfolk have ever been better drawn.the scenes of their meetings read like shrake was taking minutes as do the pow wows of the white invaders. in short, it is the entire mix that created the republic of texas from president lamar down to the boatman who takes them across their stygian river. this book has a heart as big as the state of texas and as much wisdom as i have ever encoutered on the page. and the story is told with vigour and humour , laced with a fair amount of blood, sweat and lust.it could easily be called "jacobean." and probably will be. certainly its last line will be quoted for a long, long time.

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Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is not only about Charles Goodnight, but it is an excellent source on the history of the Panhandle, especially the settlement of the Palo Duro Canyon. You'll learn about the land, the wildlife, and the men who came to tame them both. It's an excellent biography, and should be required reading for anyone who lives within a hundred mile radius of the Palo Duro canyon.

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Buffalo Wagons Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm not normally a lover of Westerns, but I have Mr. Kelton's granddaughter in a class I teach and she talked a lot about her author grandfather, so I finally gave in and purchased a copy of one of his books. I guess I owe the granddaughter a big "Thank you," as "Buffalo Wagons" is terrific! Gage Jameson is an unusually well-rounded character for the genre. A veteran buffalo hunter, he has seen the northern herd wiped out. While he mourns the loss of the old ways, he also acknowledges his own role in that loss. Furthermore, even as he heads south into Comanche country, he agonizes that he is contributing to more destruction of the world he loves. This does not stop him, though, for buffalo hunting is all he knows. The antagonists include the Comanches desperate to save their way of life, although they are certainly not romanticized, and some of the white men Jameson trusts to travel south with him. Kelton's vivid descriptions of the llano estacado take the reader to that inhospitable land, with all of its beauty and danger. The plot contains enough twists--always credible and logical--to keep the most particular reader satisfied. I am eager to read more of Kelton's Westerns and am highly recommending them to my students and friends.

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For Gage Jameson, the summer of 1873 has been a poor hunt. A year ago he felled sixty-two buffalo in one stand, but now the great Arkansas River herd is gone, like the Republican herd before it.In Dodge City, old hide hunters speak is awe of a last great heard to the south--but no hunter who values his scalp dares ride south of the Cimarron and into Comanche territory. None but Gage Jameson....

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Many a River Review

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(More customer reviews)I've followed "Pop" Kelton's novels since meeting up with him at Baylor University back in the early 1980s, and this is one of his very finest. The plot resembles D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm in that two siblings (brothers) are torn apart at an early age and we follow their separate adventures until the final pages of the novel. But what is startling here--for those like me who have a whole bookcase stocked with Kelton--is that he manages to do something rather unique here. He takes the best of his paperback style--finger-burning page-turning with loads of action, hard-knocks and bullets--and weds it to his hardcover style--meticulous historical sensibilities, fine dry humor, and utter believability. If you've found yourself getting a little sleepy with the last half-dozen or so novels, be prepared for a jolt. This one's a classic and a real corker, whether you're coming to Kelton for the first time or you're already carrying his brand.

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The Good Old Boys (Hewey Calloway) Review

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(More customer reviews)Elmer Kelton is in top form with "The Good Old Boys," a book I'll always remember for its remarkable characters and unusual story. Hewey Calloway struggles with the arrival of automobiles and technology... not unlike the struggle some of us have today with computers and a changed world.

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Dead Man's Walk Review

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(More customer reviews)This book in the Lonsesome Dove series in the first, in chronological order. Gus and Call, called 'young pups' by their elders, have joined the Texas Rangers, hoping for some adventure (and for Gus, a little brothel action and card playing). Soon after their expedition begins, they discover they are in way over their heads. The Commanches are, literally, on the warpath, and hate white people (with good reason, considering the way the white men treated them). They are also very smart, very fast, very skilled in riding and fighting, and VERY bloodthirsty. The main Chief, who even the most hardened soldiers are scared of, is Buffalo Hump, and he is introduced in an unforgettable lightning storm on the prarie, in one of the most vivid, terrifying scenes in the entire series (and if you've read the series, you know things can get VERY ugly). The men in charge of the expedition are either crazy, stupid, drunk, have a very short fuse, or all of the above. The trek starts out rather confident, looking forward to the challenges to come, but soon realize they are no match for the Indians. The Commanches set up a variety of clever, deadly, devastating traps, and soon their ranks are halved, then quartered, then...then it gets REALLY ugly.
This book was a page-turner, and had all the entertaining characters a reader comes to expect from the series. All of the books treat death as an everyday thing, but I think this is one of the most cold-blooded; do not read if you're sqeamish. There's not just one or two nasty scenes, either, they count many and come fast. This is an entertaining book, one that I couldn't put down, but not especially pleasant. A good read, don't get me wrong, but one that is emotionally gruelling.
I guess if you wanted to read the books in chronological order, this would be the one to start. I had planned to do that originally, after I read LD, but have found reading them in the order they were written is actually more satisfying; backstory is filled in, and you get a better perspective.
If you loved LD, read this and the other books in the series. If you're just starting out, read LD first; it may be the strongest, but it will give you an idea of just what a treat you're in for. No ccomplaints here-I put the bok down after reading the last page, and promptly walked right over to my new copy of Commanche Moon (I wisely bought them at the same time) and started in.
This author was born to write.

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Colonial Natchitoches: A Creole Community on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier (Elma Dill Russell Spencer Series in the West and Southwest) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a great book to get the whole picture of early Natchitoches, more than just born & died!

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Strategically located at the western edge of the Atlantic World, the French post of Natchitoches thrived during the eighteenth century as a trade hub between the well-supplied settlers and the isolated Spaniards and Indians of Texas. Its critical economic and diplomatic role made it the most important community on the Louisiana-Texas frontier during the colonial era.Despite the community's critical role under French and then Spanish rule,Colonial Natchitoches is the first thorough study of its society and economy. Founded in 1714, four years before New Orleans, Natchitoches developed a creole (American-born of French descent) society that dominated the Louisiana-Texas frontier. H. Sophie Burton and F. Todd Smith carefully demonstrate not only the persistence of this creole dominance but also how it was maintained. They examine, as well, the other ethnic cultures present in the town and relations with Indians in the surrounding area.Through statistical analyses of birth and baptismal records, census figures, and appropriate French and Spanish archives, Burton and Smith reach surprising conclusions about the nature of society and commerce in colonial Natchitoches.

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Holy Moly (Blanco County, Texas, Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)The death of backhoe operator Hollis Farley appears at first glance to be a tragic accident. Found underneath his overturned rig on land he was clearing to make way for a mega church near the Pedernales River, Hollis Farley died on the job. But, this is Blanco County where weird things happen and this one is another. Instead of being killed when the backhoe hit a boulder and flipped as first theorized, it turns out that he was shot in the back with an arrow capped with a broadhead hunting point.
As the case unfolds and Game Warden John Marlin's involvement increases, the facts and the people involved get stranger and stranger. Finding a dinosaur bone on the property of the planned mega church didn't get Hollis Farley killed. What he did afterwards just might have done the trick. With so many having a motive for doing the deed, it is up to John Marlin and Sheriff Bobby Garza to flush the real killer out before he or she strikes again.
Much like he did with "Gun Shy" Austin, Texas area writer Ben Rehder has penned another often funny novel that lets everyone in sight have it. This time his main target is the religious hypocrisy often found in the mega churches. It is tempting to speculate a bit as to which church served as inspiration but unnecessary. Considering past events across the country, this satiric novel could easily become too real in coming months as no doubt another religious leader of a mega church will be caught doing something very wrong. It is inevitable--much like news reports of Jesus sightings in recently washed windows and fried food products.
In the meantime what we have here is yet another often funny novel sent in Blanco County, Texas featuring a strange murder, a ton of offbeat characters, and the resulting twisted and often funny search for justice. The book is another tale of the weird, funny and often absurd that packs a punch to the mind and the gut. Beyond the continuing romance involving John Marlin there is no real character development to speak of regarding the returning characters. That romance is a minor factor in the book with most of the focus on the murder case and the cast of offbeat characters who are involved at various levels. The result is a good piece of work with plenty of comedy and mystery guaranteed to keep readers entertained to the very last page.Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2008

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