Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire
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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 Library Journal 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 route 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 on the King Ranch, John Cypher's Bob Kleberg and the King Ranch: A Worldwide Sea of Grass (1995), which is a more scholarly look at this modern corporate empire. Highly recommended for Southwestern libraries, both public and academic.-Charlie Cowling, SUNY at Brockport Lib. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Acknowledgments.Introduction. Manifest Destiny's Children. The Quartermaster's Depot. The Preacher and the Preacher's Daughter. Sea of Grass. Grandma's Cattle. His Majesty King Cotton. Ricardo King, Owner of the Hacienda Gertrudis. A Second Alamo. The Great Cattle King of Texas. Cause No. 1279. Quieted in the Possession of His Lands. The Succession. The Unquiet Past. Chapman v. King Ranch, Inc. Bibliography. Index.
