Lone Star Rising
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- £16.49
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- £16.49
Publisher Description
Here is the little-known, dramatic epic of heroes Sam Houston, Stephen Austin, and a host of others, who turned the Alamo into one of the most successful rallying cries in history.
All Americans, not just Texans, remember the Alamo. But the siege and brief battle at that abandoned church in February and March 1836 were just one chapter in a much larger story—larger even than the seven months of armed struggle that surrounded it. Indeed, three separate revolutionary traditions stretching back nearly a century came together in Texas in the 1830s in one of the great struggles of American history and the last great revolution of the hemisphere. Anglos steeped in 1776 fervor and the American revolution came seeking land, Hispanic and native Americans joined the explosion of republican uprisings in Mexico and Latin America, and the native Tejanos seized on a chance for independence. As William C. Davis brilliantly depicts in Lone Star Rising, the result was an epic clash filled not just with heroism, but also with ignominy, greed, and petty and grand politics.
In Lone Star Rising, Davis deftly combines the latest scholarship on the military battles of the revolution, including research in seldom used Mexican archives, with an absorbing examination of the politics on all sides. His stirring narrative features a rich cast of characters that includes such familiar names as Stephen Austin, Sam Houston, and Antonio Santa Anna, along with Tejano leader Juan Seguín and behind-the-scenes players like Andrew Jackson. From the earliest adventures of freebooters, who stirred up trouble for Spain, Mexico, and the United States, to the crucial showdown at the San Jacinto River between Houston and Santa Anna there were massacres, misunderstandings, miscalculations, and many heroic men.
The rules of war are rarely stable and they were in danger of complete disintegration at times in Texas. The Mexican army often massacred its Anglo prisoners, and the Anglos retaliated when they had the chance after the battle of San Jacinto. The rules of politics, however, proved remarkably stable: The American soldiers were democrats who had a hard time sustaining campaigns if they didn't agree to them, and their leaders were as given to maneuvering and infighting as they were to the larger struggle. Yet in the end Lone Star Rising is not a myth-destroying history as much as an enlarging one, the full story behind the slogans of the Alamo and of Texas lore, a human drama in which the forces of independence, republicanism, and economics were made manifest in an unforgettable group of men and women.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The dream of making the Texan lands of Mexico an independent republic dated from the 1820s. When that vast territory achieved independence in 1836, much blood had been gruesomely spilled and a huge slice of Mexico had been forever lost to that hapless young nation. Starting even before the 1820s, veteran historian Davis (Lincoln's Men, etc.) tells this story in sometimes wearying detail, but the book's merits make up for its occasional tedium. Unlike in previous accounts, here the tejanos (Spanish-speaking Mexicans who'd long lived in Texas) play a central role, along with the Anglo-Texans (Texians, in Davis's parlance) and non-Texan Mexicans. What's more, Mexico and its brilliant if erratic leader, Antonio Santa Anna, get their full due. And, yes, Davis doesn't forget to highlight tough-willed Stephen Austin and difficult Sam Houston. What ought to make the book most appealing to contemporary readers is Davis's success both in showing how three distinct peoples vied for and constructed the foundations of the modern Lone Star State and in illuminating the links and tensions among three distinct cultures and, in the end, three distinct polities: Mexico, Texas and the increasingly powerful U.S., whose role Davis scants. Despite its lack of a central argument, this book contains just about everything you'd ever want to know about its subject. Consequently, this encyclopedic rendering of an oft-told tale is likely to take its place among the invaluable modern works on Texas history. It will have to compete in the market, though, with H.W. Brands's Lone Star Nation, due in February.