Time of the Rangers

Time of the Rangers PDF

Author: Mike Cox

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2009-08-18

Total Pages: 520

ISBN-13: 9780765318152

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A history of the famed law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers, in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Cult of Glory

Cult of Glory PDF

Author: Doug J. Swanson

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 481

ISBN-13: 1101979879

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“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” —The New York Times Book Review A twenty-first century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going--one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors and officially sanctioned killers. Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the U.S. Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force. Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages--including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians--into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight. Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West--the real and the false--are truly made.

Cult of Glory

Cult of Glory PDF

Author: Doug J. Swanson

Publisher: Viking

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1101979860

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A twenty-first-century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, and corruption The Texas Rangers rode into existence in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico, and continue today as one of the most famous of all law enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson offers a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles both their epic, daring escapades and how the white and propertied power structures of Texas have used them as enforcers and protectors. Fleshing out key episodes and individuals in Texas Ranger history, Swanson begins by covering their birth and emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier, as they skirmished with Apaches and Comanches and assisted the U.S. Army in the Mexican War. Beginning around 1870, the Rangers transformed themselves from a frontier battalion into a state police force. Although the Rangers found themselves rocked by a series of corruption scandals in the 1930s, their reputation soared thanks to pulp novelists, movies, and the radio series and television show "The Lone Ranger." As the Rangers have entered the contemporary era, they have attempted to present themselves as a modern crime-fighting force, dealing with flashpoints like school integration, farmworkers' strikes, and patrol of the U.S. Mexico border. But they have been stymied by their hidebound ways and the glorification of their past. As Swanson shows, Rangers and their supporters have for decades used propaganda, deception, and outright falsehoods to depict scandalous, oppressive, and illegal Ranger behavior as heroic triumphs. Cult of Glory sets the record straight for the first time.

East Texas Troubles

East Texas Troubles PDF

Author: Jody Edward Ginn

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2019-07-18

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0806165472

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When the gun smoke cleared, four men were found dead at the hardware store in a rural East Texas town. But this December 1934 shootout was no anomaly. San Augustine County had seen at least three others in the previous three years, and these murders in broad daylight were only the latest development in the decade-long rule of the criminal McClanahan-Burleson gang. Armed with handguns, Jim Crow regulations, and corrupt special Ranger commissions from infamous governors “Ma” and “Pa” Ferguson, the gang racketeered and bootlegged its way into power in San Augustine County, where it took up robbing and extorting local black sharecroppers as its main activity. After the hardware store shootings, white community leaders, formerly silenced by fear of the gang’s retribution, finally sought state intervention. In 1935, fresh-faced, newly elected governor James V. Allred made good on his promise to reform state law enforcement agencies by sending a team of qualified Texas Rangers to San Augustine County to investigate reports of organized crime. In East Texas Troubles, historian Jody Edward Ginn tells of their year-and-a-half-long cleanup of the county, the inaugural effort in Governor Allred’s transformation of the Texas Rangers into a professional law enforcement agency. Besides foreshadowing the wholesale reform of state law enforcement, the Allred Rangers’ investigative work in San Augustine marked a rare close collaboration between white law enforcement officers and black residents. Drawing on firsthand accounts and the sworn testimony of black and white residents in the resulting trials, Ginn examines the consequences of such cooperation in a region historically entrenched in racial segregation. In this story of a rural Texas community’s resurrection, Ginn reveals a multifaceted history of the reform of the Texas Rangers and of an unexpected alliance between the legendary frontier lawmen and black residents of the Jim Crow South.

Texas Ranger Tales II

Texas Ranger Tales II PDF

Author: Mike Cox

Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing

Published: 1999-06-30

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1461625505

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Mike Cox knows as much about the Texas Rangers as anybody on the planet. And in this, his second book on the Rangers, he spins more great tales of these larger-than-life heroes and their sometimes almost unvelievable adventures. These are all new stories, some only told among the Rangers themselves, some told quietly over remote compfires, and others only whispered over elegant dinner tables. Now here they are: more entertaining, informative, and always exciting tales of the grea Texas Rangers.

Captain L.H. McNelly, Texas Ranger

Captain L.H. McNelly, Texas Ranger PDF

Author: Chuck Parsons

Publisher: TX A&m-McWhiney Foundation

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781880510742

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The first authentic biography of one of the most famous of the nineteenth century Texas Rangers-Capt. Leander H. McNelly. No history of the murderous Sutton-Taylor Feud, or of the Texas State Police, or of the depredations of the Mexican Gen. Juan H. Cortina, or of the rancher Richard King, or of the infamous Nueces Strip can be written without major emphases on the influence of McNelly and the men who followed him so loyally. Chuck Parsons is a native of Iowa, spending most of his life as an educator in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He is the author of seven books and numerous articles, all concerning outlaws and lawmen of Texas and the West. For over six years he wrote a monthly column "The Answer Man" for True West magazine. Parsons currently resides in South Texas. Marianne E. Hall Little is a native Texan and a descendent of three Texas Rangers. She has written sixteen books, mostly stemming from her genealogical research. She has co-authored with Chuck Parsons and James S. Peterson, writing the biography of Mace Bowman Texas Feudist Western Lawman. Little lives in South Texas.

Firearms of the Texas Rangers

Firearms of the Texas Rangers PDF

Author: Doug Dukes

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 645

ISBN-13: 157441819X

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From their founding in the 1820s up to the modern age, the Texas Rangers have shown the ability to adapt and survive. Part of that survival depended on their use of firearms. The evolving technology of these weapons often determined the effectiveness of these early day Rangers. John Coffee “Jack” Hays and Samuel Walker would leave their mark on the Rangers by incorporating new technology which allowed them to alter tactics when confronting their adversaries. The Frontier Battalion was created at about the same time as the Colt Peacemaker and the Winchester 73—these were the guns that “won the West.” Firearms of the Texas Rangers, with more than 180 photographs, tells the history of the Texas Rangers primarily through the use of their firearms. Author Doug Dukes narrates famous episodes in Ranger history, including Jack Hays and the Paterson, the Walker Colt, the McCulloch Colt Revolver (smuggled through the Union blockade during the Civil War), and the Frontier Battalion and their use of the Colt Peacemaker and Winchester and Sharps carbines. Readers will delight in learning of Frank Hamer’s marksmanship with his Colt Single Action Army and his Remington, along with Captain J.W. McCormick and his two .45 Colt pistols, complete with photos. Whether it was a Ranger in 1844 with his Paterson on patrol for Indians north of San Antonio, or a Ranger in 2016 with his LaRue 7.62 rifle working the Rio Grande looking for smugglers and terrorists, the technology may have changed, but the gritty job of the Rangers has not.

LBJ

LBJ PDF

Author: Phillip F. Nelson

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 640

ISBN-13: 1629140260

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Phillip F. Nelson’s new book begins where LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination left off. Now president, Johnson begins to push Congress to enact long-dormant legislation that he had previously impeded, always insisting that the timing wasn't right. Nelson argues that the passage of Johnson’s “Great Society” legislation was designed to take the focus of the nation off the assassination as well as lay the groundwork for building his own legacy. Nelson also examines Johnson’s plan to redirect US foreign policy within days of becoming president, as he maneuvered to insert the US military into the civil war being fought in Vietnam. This, he thought, would provide another means to achieve his goal of becoming a great wartime president. In addition, Nelson presents evidence to show that the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 was arguably directed by Johnson against his own ship and the 294 sailors on board as a way to insert the US military into the Six-Day War. It only failed because the Liberty refused to sink. Finally, Nelson presents newly discovered documents from the files of Texas Ranger Clint Peoples that prove Johnson was closely involved with Billie Sol Estes and had made millions from Estes’s frauds against taxpayers. These papers show linkages to Johnson’s criminal behavior, the very point that his other biographers ignore. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Lone Star Lawmen

Lone Star Lawmen PDF

Author: Robert M. Utley

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-03-05

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0199882479

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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.