Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers - Hardcover

Utley, Robert M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195154444 ISBN 13: 9780195154443

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2007

Synopsis

Hailed as "a rip-snortin', six-guns-blazin' saga of good guys and bad guys who were sometimes one and the same," Robert M. Utley's Lone Star Justice captured the colorful first century of Texas Ranger history. Now, in the eagerly anticipated conclusion, Lone Star Lawmen, Utley once again chronicles the daring exploits of the Rangers, this time as they bring justice to the twentieth-century West.
Based on unprecedented access to Ranger archives, this fast-paced narrative stretches from the days of the Mexican Revolution (where atrocities against Mexican Americans marked the nadir of Ranger history) to the Branch Davidian saga near Waco and the recent bloody standoff with "Republic of Texas" militia. Readers will find in these pages one hundred years of high adventure. Utley follows the Rangers as they pursue bank robbers, bootleggers, moonshiners, and "horsebackers" (smugglers who used mule trains to bring liquor across the border). We see these fearless lawmen taming oil boomtowns, springing the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, facing down angry lynch mobs, and tracking the "Phantom Killer" of Texarkana. Utley also highlights the gradual evolution of this celebrated force, revealing that while West Texas Rangers still occasionally ride the range on horseback and crack down on smugglers and rustlers, East Texas Rangers--who work mostly in big cities--now ride in high-powered cars and contend with kidnappers, forgers, and other urban criminals. But East or West, today's Rangers have become sophisticated professionals, backed by crime labs and forensic science.
Written by one of the most respected Western historians alive, here is the definitive account of the Texas Rangers, a vivid portrait of these legendary peace officers and their role in a changing West.

About this title

About the Author

Robert M. Utley is one of the leading historians of the American West. A former chief historian of the National Park Service, he is a founding member and former president of the Western Historical Association, and the author of sixteen books on the American West, including the best-selling The Lance and the Shield: The Life of Sitting Bull. He lives in Georgetown, Texas, with his wife Melody Webb, also a historian.

Reviews

In this follow-up to Lone Star Justice, Utley tells how the Texas Rangers entered the 20th century as an effective if idiosyncratic law enforcement outfit and entered the 21st century as the investigative arm of the Texas Department of Public Safety. In a dry style, Utley describes the Rangers' various commanders, troopers and exploits. Through the first third of the 20th century, the Rangers operated in an extralegal fashion—their existence was at the whim of whoever occupied the governor's mansion in Austin. It wasn't until 1935 that the Rangers were made official and brought into the newly formed DPS. Utley is far too enamored of the Rangers for his book's good. While his precise if plodding prose doesn't hype the Rangers' exploits, and he acknowledges a "dark period" early in the 20th century when weak leaders failed to control their men, he treads so lightly on so many issues—prisoner treatment (brutal), racial integration (belated) and especially gender equality (a glaring problem Utley chalks up to "the lack of female applicants")—that it is hard to see this as the definitive account it aspires to be. 30 b&w illus. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195154444
• ISBN 13: 9780195154443
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400