Synopses & Reviews
"Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. Its concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience."
Larry McMurtry
Kings of Texas is the sprawling saga of the larger-than-life characters who founded, built, and expanded the most famous cattle ranch in American history. Renowned Texas scholar, writer, and storyteller Don Graham weaves a compelling multigenerational family drama into the complex social history of South Texas. The result is an intricate tapestry laced with thrilling tales drawn from decades of conflict arising from the Mexican War, the Civil War, and countless skirmishes between Texas Rangers and border bandits. From humble frontier jacales to the sleek offices of a multinational corporation, Kings of Texas tells an unforgettable story of vision, violence, greed, loyalty, and betrayal, set on a stage as vast as the American dream.
"A crisp history of the King Ranch . . . a good read about an era long gone."
Boston Globe
"This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the presentand a first-rate read."
H. W. Brands, author of The Age of Gold and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The First American
Review
* Full of myth and misunderstanding, there's a Texas for everyone... Graham writes about Texas recognizing the wide-open country that we love, while at the same time putting longitude and latitude in proper perspective... ""Kings of Texas"" is a pleasure to read. (
Austin American Statesman) ""is the right man for the task of chronicling this Jonesian expanse of archetypal Texana...a pleasure to read"". (Austin American-Statesman, January 19, 2003)
My mother grew up in Texas in the 1930s and recalls driving with her father for hours past seemingly endless miles of King Ranch Property. Covering 850,000 acres even today, a spread as big as the state of Rhode Island, the King Ranch has been an icon of Texas ranching culture since the 19th century. For six generations, descendants of founder Richard King ran the ranch and its various enterprises until Stephen Kleberg was voted out as ranch manager by the corporate board in 1998. The changing face of the King Ranch from family-run enterprise to corporate entity captures attention precisely because so many ranches and farms have already gone this rou te in the West, and here is the largest of them all following in their footsteps. Graham (literature, Univ. of Texas, Austin) has written several books on Texas life and culture. His latest is an easy-to-read popular narrative that complements another recent title of the King Ranch, John Cypher's Bob Kleberg and the King Ranch: A worldwide Sea of Grass& lt;/I> (1995) which is a amore scholarly look at this modern corporate empire. Highly recommended for Southwestern libraries, both public and academic. Charlie Cowling, SUNY at Brockport Lib. (Library Journal, March 1, 2003)
""A crisp history of the King Ranch... a good read about an era long gone.""--Boston Globe
Synopsis
Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS
""Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience.""
-Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize--winning Lonesome Dove
""This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present-and a first-rate read.""
-H.W. Brands, author of The Age of Gold and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The First American
Synopsis
Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS
"Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience."
-Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize--winning Lonesome Dove
"This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present-and a first-rate read."
-H.W. Brands, author of The Age of Gold and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The First American
About the Author
DON GRAHAM is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine and the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. He is also past president of the Texas Institute of Letters and the author of the critically acclaimed biography of Audie Murphy, No Name on the Bullet. Among Graham’s other works are Giant Country: Essays on Texas and Lone Star Literature: From the Red River to the Rio Grande: A Texas Anthology.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
1. Manifest Destiny’s Children.
2. The Quartermaster’s Depot.
3. The Preacher and The Preacher’s Daughter.
4. Sea of Grass.
5. Grandma’s Cattle.
6. His Majesty King Cotton.
7. Ricardo King, Owner of the Hacienda Gertrudis.
8. A Second Alamo.
9. The Great Cattle King of Texas.
10. Cause No. 1279.
11. Quieted in the Possession of His Lands.
12. The Succession.
13. The Unquiet Past.
14. Chapman v. King Ranch, Inc.
Bibliography.
Index.