A Quebecer, a Scot, an Englishman, an Irishman, some Yankees, some Southern gents, a couple of Tejanos...listening to the duelling accents alone would have been well worth the price of admission. Some had led the quiet lives of family men. Others were known for drunkenness, noted for bravery, celebrated for military acumen and one was notorious for castrating a couple of guys back in his home state. Five signers resided on land that was technically in Arkansas. Two fathers who lost sons at the Alamo saddled up next to the father of the man who had burned their bodies. A couple of signers had...

In 1861 the Hill boys of Hill's Prairie (near Bastrop, Texas) rode off to war. They had signed on with Col. Benjamin Franklin Terry's 8th Texas Cavalry, better knows as Terry's Texas Rangers, one of the most celebrated Confederate regiments of the Civil War. They fought in approximately 275 engagements in seven states. The missives contained in this volume were penned by John, Robert and D.O. Hill to their sister, Mary Scott Hill, during the War Between the States. The letters show the daily camp life of the soldiers of the Confederacy, their privations, their worries for one another, for...

Sandwiched like a middle child between the fall of the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto, Goliad never gets the attention it deserves in the canon of Texas history. The rallying cry at San Jacinto, after all, was "Remember Goliad Remember the Alamo " But we only seem to have remembered the latter. Goliad has been called "the other Alamo," and many today think the Presidio is also a mission rather than an historical military fortification. In recent years, the massacre that took place at Presidio La Bahia on March 27, 1836 has been twisted into a politically correct "lawful execution" by...

How different might our maps look today were it not for the gun? Would there be a Texas were it not for improvements in firearm technology? Texas Independence was won by the gun...and kept by the gun. Firearms put food on the table and kept marauding Indians out of frontier dooryards. In this book, Carroll Holloway introduces us to the men who made the guns that shaped Texas. He walks us through firearm technology throughout our Lone Star history, from Spanish & Mexican rule, through the weapons of the Texas Revolution and the Republic. This non-technical treatise demonstrates clearly the...

The real story of the men who discovered the Black Giant - the grand East Texas oil field in 1930. Lore tells us that Dad Joiner and Doc Lloyd believed East Texas was floating on a vast ocean of oil. Joiner supposedly spent his last dime bringing in the discovery well, based on his faith in Lloyd's geological findings. The truth is that neither man believed there was oil there or intended to find it. Each man had lead a shady life of scams and lies. Tales of vigilante murder, bad poetry, polygamy and quack medicine abound in this surprising history of Dad and Doc. The lore is debunked and the...

Some writers can relay the facts, but they can't tell the story. Others can spin a yarn, but stretch the truth and omit details. John Myers clothes dry bones in living flesh, and makes it sweat, bleed and speak the truth. His book, The Alamo, is a pure pleasure. He researched and wrote it just after WWII, while working at the San Antonio Evening News. It was the first complete history of the Alamo. It delves into the history of the structure itself. It covers the backgrounds of the principal players we associate with the Alamo saga. And it gives a detailed, blow by blow account of the siege...