Being Texan: Celebrating a State of Mind

When Jeff Carroll tells the tale, history comes to life. His popular "Legendary Texas" radio series made his distinctive voice and his genial, informative storytelling style, as well as his unrivaled knowledge of Texas people, places, and events, known to and beloved by many. In Being Texan, he distills that knowledge and style into more than one hundred chronologically ordered individual stories that take the reader on a fascinating journey through the history of Texas and the people who created it. You'll sometimes meet the people who made history, but more often Jeff will introduce you to the people who lived that history and give you the opportunity to walk a mile-or a thousand miles-in their boots, moccasins, or slippers. Attend the first Thanksgiving in North America, held on the Rio Grande River more than a century before the Pilgrims celebrated it in the Plymouth Colony. Make a desperate ride with the "Paul Revere" of the brasada and compare the differences between tales told by the survivors of the siege of the Alamo. Ride a nitroglycerine delivery car to an oil-drilling site with Ma Thornton and fly on the silver wings of Queen Bess, the first African-American woman to become a licensed aviator. Find out who really built Dallas and learn how the Gospel came to Mobeetie, the wildest town in the Wild West. Meet the slave who became a Senator, the hero of the Texas Revolution for whom no street or school has ever been named, the Apache who was one of the most famous Texas Rangers of the Republic, and Two-Gun Sallie Scull, one of the toughest and most dangerous of the border ranchers. In Being Texan, you'll sit beside a Paleo Indian artisan as he-or she-delicately chips a spear point from a chunk of Alibates chert, and you'll consult with a man named Borden on the secret formula for the "Marvelous Meat Biscuit." You'll fight a duel over a poker game in which the stakes are a plantation and the fealty of a new bride, and you'll build a railhead in the middle of nowhere, knowing that if you build it, the cattle will come. You'll fight battles in dusty buffalo wallows and ancient fortresses. You'll ride the trail with Rangers and renegades and Comanche warriors, with soldiers and priests and martyrs, empresarios and tricksters and scholars, scientists and gamblers and explorers, and just plain folks who came together on the frontier to build a nation, a state, a people. You'll look into the "Eyes of Texas" in the many period photographs and modern and historical illustrations that illuminate the book. If you're just fond of a good story, Being Texan offers you more than 100 great stories to delight, inform and amuse you. If you're a serious researcher or an educator, it offers you an unprecedented source of information and enlightenment in the Texas experience. And when you come to the last story and reluctantly close this book, you will have discovered just what Jeff Carroll means when he speaks of Being Texan. Being Texan also includes a complete set of appendices that contains lesson plans and teaching guides for educators who wish to use it as a text or supplement for academic courses in Texas history. Revised, expanded, fully illustrated edition