Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire - Hardcover

Graham, Don

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0471394513 ISBN 13: 9780471394518

Publisher: Trade Paper Press, 2002

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 this title

From the Publisher:

"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 THE AGE OF GOLD and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN.

"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

From the Inside Flap:

It’s the stuff of tall tales, legends, and epic films like Red River and Giant. King Ranch, carved from the scrub and mesquite of the South Texas coastal plains and comprising more acreage than the state of Rhode Island, is the largest and most famous cattle ranch in American history. From cattle empire to oil empire to multilayered, media-shy corporation beset by legal battles and power struggles, King Ranch embodies the oldest dream of American wealth–the possession of land and the perpetuation of a dynasty.

Kings of Texas is the sprawling saga of the larger-than-life characters who founded, built, and expanded this vast holding. 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. It was the era, too, when great herds of longhorns were sent north up the Chisholm Trail. And all the while, King Ranch was expanding, growing ever more powerful and famous in the land.

You’ll meet the man who started it all–Richard King, the orphaned son of Irish immigrants who founded a dynasty in the middle of "heartbreak country," and who believed firmly in the dictum of his friend, Robert E. Lee–Buy land and never sell. You’ll follow King’s rise from riverboat pilot to rancher, his courtship of the daughter of a dour Presbyterian preacher, and his creation of an American version of a Spanish hacienda, sustaining generations of work and loyalty from Mexican vaqueros and their families, who became known as the Kineños, King’s people. And always, there were the struggles to acquire more land and to protect his holdings from cattle thieves, raiders, and, most threatening of all, lawsuits.

You’ll also meet a smart, ambitious young lawyer named Robert J. Kleberg, whose legal maneuverings protected King from a judgment won by Kleberg’s own client–the J. R. Ewing moment in this narrative. Kleberg then courted and married King’s daughter, Alice, and became patriarch of King Ranch after its founder’s death. Kleberg and King’s actions, however, would come back to haunt their descendants more than a century later, striking at the very heart of their empire.

The Ranch’s modern history begins with Bob Kleberg Jr., "a tornado of a man," who pushed the Ranch to stunning new levels of success. He expanded its holdings, produced the only new breed of cattle ever created in the new world, and developed a Triple Crown—winning racehorse. Hardworking, hardriding, and harddrinking, he made millions from oil leases and, with the help of his wife, Helen, took the Ranch global with operations in Cuba, South America, and Australia. His death in 1974 led to a troubled succession and, in 1998, Stephen J. ("Tio") Kleberg, the last of his family to run King Ranch, was fired in favor of a CEO with offices in Houston.

From humble frontier jacales to the sleek offices of a multinational corporation, Kings of Texas tells an unforgettable story of vision and violence; generosity and greed; loyalty and betrayal, set on a stage as vast as the American dream.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0471394513
• ISBN 13: 9780471394518
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304