Patricia Bernstein, who holds a degree in American studies from Smith College, has managed her own public relations firm in Houston for the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in Smithsonian Magazine, Texas Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines. The First Waco Horror is her second book.

Until Los Mestenos was published in 1986, the history of cattle ranching in Texas focused almost exclusively on the nineteenth-century era of the great cattle drives. But even before the birth of George III or George Washington, the king's mensubjects of the Spanish crownhad established a vast cattle kingdom in Texas.
Jack Jackson chronicles in rich detail the hundred years of Spanish ranching, beginning a century before Mexico, and subsequently Texas, gained independence. From the introduction of livestock into the province by various early entradas (expeditions), to...

Carrier "Lexington," one of the most famous and formidable of the U.S. Navy warships, lies permanently berthed at Corpus Christi, Texas, her decks and cabins having been converted into a museum that pays tribute to her illustrious war and peacetime record and to the history of naval aviation. The last of the World War II-era aircraft carriers to retire from active duty, "Lexington" was decommissioned on November 8, 1991, after forty-eight years of service.
Entering World War II as the second of the great "Essex-"class carriers to be commissioned, "Lexington" destroyed more than one...

Battleship "Texas," visited by thousands of tourists each year at its berth at San Jacinto, is the lone survivor of the first generation of dreadnoughts, the world's most complex and dominating weapon of the early twentieth century. The ship, the only intact vessel of any nation to have survived both world wars, houses the largest surviving reciprocating engines. When the ship was commissioned in 1914, its class of ship was the most powerful in the world--the most complex product of an industrial nation just beginning to become a force in global events. Over the years the ship underwent a...