"Fifty Miles and a Fight: Major Samuel Peter Heintzelman's Journal of Texas and the Cortina War," a rare and dramatic firsthand account of one of the most volatile and traumatic events in the long history of Texas--the Cortina War, chronicles the day-to-day activities of one of the most cultured, dedicated, and well-respected (although often vain) officers of the antebellum frontier army. It was while Heintzelman was at Camp Verde on September 28, 1859, that a daring thirty-five-year-old illiterate ranchero named Juan Nepomuceno Cortina sent shockwaves throughout Texas by brazenly leading...