About book Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans (2000)
Like Michener's novels, T.R. Fehrenbach starts at the beginning. I mean the beginning. As in the Ice Age. This makes Lone Star a broad, ambitious history, but also saps its strength towards the end. Up to and through the Civil War, there is a lot of great detail, fascinating personages, and rollicking stories. Then we get to the last couple hundred pages dealing with Texas in the 20th century and we get broad strokes, no personalities, and vague racism. (The book was originally written in 1968, but updated in 2000. As far as I can tell, the only thing that was updated was a mention that George W. Bush became president Whohoo!).I liked Lone Star a great deal, but my joy is duly tempered. The greatness of the first half just barely supports the sub-par second half. As the author admits, Texas history up till the Civil War is a great adventure. Once the Civil War and Reconstruction rolls around, the moral atmosphere becomes cloudy. It's less easy to view segregation and Indian hunting through the prism of adventure. This book's great attribute is the skill of its writer. Fehrenbach has never gotten the acclaim of a Shelby Foote (perhaps because he never appeared on a kick-butt documentary), but he shares a lot of Foote's abilities. He is a great writer. Take a load of this passage: The land, the climate, the sense of endlessness yet constant change made all who came there hospitable, patriotic, violent, and brave. In the Indian it produced mysticism, as he wailed his death songs to the earth, the cold moon, and sun. In the Hispanic breast it made a communion with Nature, a poetry, a willingness to ride the broad vistas, pause under moss-hung oaks, and be. The Anglo had no eye for beauty, less feel for rock-ribbed soil. Yet the land was too big even for big men to develop and destroy. He fenced it, damned it, threw his cattle over it in prodigal hordes; he farmed it, and in drought and shattering hail and cold, cursed Nature and Nature's God. Yet all these acts were in their own way acts of love. The Anglo-Saxon laced his soil with his own and other men's blood; it would take his bones, and monstrous artifacts, and still remain. The sun would remain, while men must die. The moon would rise again, while civilizations fell. In the end would be the earth. Texas, under any name, would go on forever. It's high-blown, overly generalized, and clearly ethnocentric. It's also interesting, powerful, vigorous. Or take this brief, weighted description of William Travis, the young lawyer-turned soldier who commanded the Alamo:Buck Travis was one of those most fortunate of men; on the grim stone walls of the Alamo he had found his time and place. He was between twenty-five and twenty-seven years of age.Lone Star traces Texas from the dinosaurs, through the Texas Revolution, its short-lived status as a Republic, and its history as an independent-minded state. I loved the writing. I loved how he made certain characters come alive: Travis, Sam Houston, Texas Ranger Jack Hays. I quibble a little with the historical facts. For instance, Fehrenbach clings to the old chestnut that the Alamo was defended by 180 men, a figure that comes from San Antonio's alcalde, who counted bodies inside the fort. This number doesn't count those who attempted to escape, and were cut down by Ramirez y Sesma's lancers (in total, it seems there were some 250 defenders). Also, Fehrenbach relates some truly unbelievable casualty figures. He relates numerous battles where the Texas Rangers met with the Comanche, and the Comanche end up losing 30 dead or 60 dead warriors. Come on! Be critical of your sources. For instance, there is one Ranger attack on a village of 60 families with 125 warriors. Two warriors per family? Really? Indian demographics have never allowed for such a thing. Nor for the ability to sustain the kind of losses that Fehrenbach reports, undoubtedly relating verbatim the wide-eyed reports of the Rangers (and could there be a worse witness than a man under the duress of battle who also happens to be virulently racist and have a vested interest in inflating the casualty lists?) Another big problem I had was the treatment of blacks and Mexicans throughout the book. It's not overtly racist; indeed, Fehrenbach does seem to try for fairness in a 60's sort of way. However, there is constant patronization of these groups, especially blacks. I read these passages without anger, calmed by the presidency of Barack Obama and hopes for a post-racial, enlightened America. Still, some of the crap Fehrenbach is peddling - about how integration is against human nature - is ignorant garbage no matter what era you're in. For instance, at one point, Fehrenbach chides the Federal government and the Supreme Court for its "dangerous experimentation." At this point, I nearly quit. That's what you call integration? I'm sorry, for a second there, I thought that laws forcing employees to pay their workers, allowing people the right to vote and own property, and to enter public buildings, were a good and noble thing. You know, basic human and legal rights. I guess I was wrong. They were dangerous experiments.Okay, so maybe these parts made me a little angry. They are incredibly ignorant. I'll chalk it up to the period in which this book was originally written. On the whole, this is a good story well told. I think of Texas as a sort of American Jerusalem. It is the place you can go where your sins will be forgiven and you can begin anew. The Anglo men who originally swarmed over its borders were failures: they ran from broken marriages, lost loves, failed businesses, lost elections. They were men like Travis, a modest lawyer looking for greatness; or Houston, who'd lost his chance for the presidency after his wife left him; or Crockett, who dared challenge Andy Jackson and lost his place in Congress. By any measure, these were middle aged losers who found, inconceivably, a second chance to reach for the stars. Texas gave them a chance for success, for immortality. The State embodies the American ethos that the smallest among us can reach great heights; that it is not who you are, but what you might become; and that while you are alive, there's still a second chance out there. Or a third. Or a fourth.
I bought this book because after emigrating to Texas 15 years ago, I thought it was time to find out more about the state's history. I have always been fascinated with its early years and especially the settler's relationship with the Comanches. The book is hefty--almost 800 pages--and covers a lot, but doesn't cover everything. It didn't mention the hurricane that destroyed Galveston in 1900, and says nothing about Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. It does--to my joy--talk about the Battle of Plum Creek, which was the last major excursion of Comanches into eastern Texas. Fehrenbach does a good, interesting job in the first half of the book, but tends to get bogged down with politics and personal essaying in the second half. The book does an excellent job of helping the reader understand why Texas is the way it is today. I found great joy in learning the historical background of many of the cities and regions that I have visited over the past 15 years.If you want to know about Texas, this is the book to read. I give it four and a half stars.
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I was really spoiled when it came to learning Texas history. Unlike most people, I first encountered Texas history by reading original documents in Houston, Galveston and Austin. Now that I'm a Texile, I've started looking at secondary sources. I have a graduate degree in History, and I take any scholar's work with a grain of salt. This is a great addition to Texas history. I read it as an e-book, which turned out to be really stupid decision on my part. The long blocks of texts are difficult to read in an electronic format. Next time, I'm going with a print version.
—Laura Finger
Lone Star is a densely detailed history of Texas up to the late 20th century. Fehrenbach begins with native peoples before the arrival of the Spanish. He spends most of the book in the 19th century circling back and forth among national and state concerns and realities connecting well how majority attitudes and politics developed in the state in often striking juxtaposition to the nation. His presentation of the 20th century is sketchy with only broad strokes but perhaps he was too close to this period to have more fully digested it. His writing is sometimes more detailed history with specific dates and characterization of key figures and sometimes more essay depicting the times more broadly. This book is an excellent starting point from which to consider Texas as distinctly American and yet among the states, unique.
—Ann
Lone Star is an excellent history of the state of Texas. Fehrenbach was born in San Benito - has to know what he is talking about! He has written a dozen or so historical works, and was head of the Texas History Commission (I forget the exact title of the organization).I read this book on my iPad. This is the 1968 edition, revised in 2002. Wish he would revise it again - he must be in his mid-eighties. I will keep it on my iPad because I'm sure to refer to it from time to time.If you're going to buy a history of Texas - this is the one.
—Dac Crossley
