Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence - And Changed America Book

â??The land was enough to excite any manâ??s lust,â? begins bestselling historian and author H. W. Brands in this sweeping true-life adventure story about one of the most dramatic and pivotal eras in American history. That exciting land was Texas, and the men and women who lusted after it were a motley collection of Native Americans and squatters, colonists and dictators, soldiers, citizens, and larger-than-life heroes, all of whom held one thing in common: an undying passion for the rocky ridges and fertile soil that would one day become the Lone Star State.

LONE STAR NATION is the gripping story of Texasâ??s precarious journey to statehood, from its early colonization in the 1820s to the shocking massacres of Texas loyalists at the Alamo and Goliad by the Mexican army, from its rough-and-tumble years as a land overrun by Comanche to its day of liberation an upstart Republic.

H. W. Brands tells the turbulent story of Texas through the eyes of a colorful cast of characters who have become a permanent part of the American landscape: Stephen Austin, the stateâ??s reluctant founder; Sam Houston, the alcoholic former rising star who came to lead the Texas army in its hour of crisis and glory; William Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett, the unforgettable heroic defenders of the doomed Alamo; Santa Anna, the Mexican generalissimo and dictator whose ruthless tactics galvanized the colonists against him; and the white-haired President Andrew Jackson whose expansionist aspirations loomed large in the background. Beyond these luminaries, Brands unearths the untold stories of the forgotten Texansâ??the slaves, women, unknown settlers, and children left out of traditional histories, who played crucial roles in Texas's birth.

With the scope and flair readers have come to expect from H. W. Brands, the book explores the fascinating story of the dawn of Texas in the broader context of U.S. history, discussing how the founding of Texas resulted from a growth of a broader, more populist democracy, which paradoxically contributed to the deepening sectional crisis over slavery at mid-century. By turns bloody and heroic, tragic and triumphant, this richly peopled, sprawling history of one of our greatest states reads like the most compelling fiction, and further secures H. W. Brandsâ??s position as one of the premier American historians writing today.