Sword of San Jacinto: A Life of Sam Houston - Hardcover

De Bruhl, Marshall

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394576233 ISBN 13: 9780394576237

Publisher: Random House, 1993

Synopsis

A portrait of Sam Houston recreates the life and career of the "Father of Texas," drawing on diaries, archival material, and letters to reveal the life and times of the frontiersman, soldier, statesman, and champion of native American rights. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo.

About this title

About the Author:

"Marshall De Bruhl has been a senior editor at several major New York publishing houses. During a twenty-five-year career he has specialized in history and biography, most notably as editorial director and contributor to the "Dictionary of American Biography" and the "Dictionary of American History". He divides his time between North Carolina and New York.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Close on the heels of John Hoyt Williams's Sam Houston (1992), freelance historian De Bruhl's biography of the colorful Texas hero also commemorates the 200th anniversary of Houston's birth--but this is a lackluster, inferior chronicle. All of the historical details are present in De Bruhl's account, but the overall sense of the man behind the legend is incomplete. Houston's Virginia origins and early adult years as a battle-scarred Indian fighter and Tennessee politician are dutifully recorded, as is the marital crisis that sent his political career into a tailspin, driving him westward in 1830 to live in drunken despair with his Cherokee friends. Seeing a golden opportunity to start fresh in the influx of American settlers into the Mexican territory soon to become Texas, Houston thrived on the heady expansionist sentiments filling the air, taking charge as the commander of a volunteer army when friction between the newcomers and Mexico turned to war. Successful in a decisive engagement against Santa Anna's army, Houston quickly became the preeminent statesman of the fledgling Republic of Texas, but his staunch pro- Union position after statehood was achieved left him increasingly isolated and eventually cost him his Senate seat, derailed his presidential aspirations, and caused his precipitous removal as governor when he refused to support secession. Houston died in disgrace in 1863. Substantive but uninspired, and marred by editorializing (a woman protecting her property from appropriation by Houston during the war with Mexico is labeled ``an unpatriotic virago''). (Sixteen pages of b&w illustrations--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0394576233
• ISBN 13: 9780394576237
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 446