Art Martínez de Vara’s Tejano Patriot: The Revolutionary Life of José Francisco Ruiz, 1783–1840 is the first full-length biography of this important figure in Texas history. Best known as one of two Texas-born signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Ruiz’s significance extends far beyond that single event. Born in San Antonio de Béxar into an upwardly mobile family, during the war for Mexican independence Ruiz underwent a dramatic transformation from a conservative royalist to one of the staunchest liberals of his era. Steeped in the Spanish American liberal tradition, his revolutionary activity included participating in three uprisings, suppressing two others, and enduring extreme personal sacrifice for the liberal republican cause. He was widely respected as an intermediary between Tejanos and American Indians, especially the Comanches. As a diplomat, he negotiated nearly a dozen peace treaties for Spain, Mexico, and the Republic of Texas, and he traveled to the Imperial Court of Mexico as an agent of the Comanches to secure peace on the northern frontier. When Anglo settlers came by the thousands to Texas after 1820, he continued to be a cultural intermediary, forging a friendship with Stephen F. Austin, but he always put the interests of Béxar and his fellow Tejanos first. Ruiz had a notable career as a military leader, diplomat, revolutionary, educator, attorney, arms dealer, author, ethnographer, politician, Indian agent, Texas ranger, city attorney, and Texas senator. He was a central figure in the saga that shaped Texas from a remote borderland on New Spain’s northern frontier to an independent republic.

This is the first general history of San Antonio, Texas, the seventh largest city in the nation. Its past is complex and ranges across 300 years, from the community’s origins as a tiny Spanish frontier town to its contemporary status as a vital American mega-city. Site of some of the most violent struggles between warring empires and people—historians believe San Antonio may be the most fought-over city in U.S. history—it is perhaps most celebrated for the iconic 1836 Battle of the Alamo. The city is also home to four beautifully restored Spanish missions, which in 2015 UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site and have become integral to San Antonio’s robust tourist economy along with the fabled River Walk. This study weaves together a series of environmental, social, political, and cultural pressures that have shaped life in the Alamo City over the last three centuries. Residents have long fought to protect and utilize water and other resources even as they have struggled to achieve equal rights and build a more open and democratic society. Activists from all sectors of this multicultural city have believed deeply in its promise even though they have had to push hard to secure and expand its potential. Their efforts were every bit as intense in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they have been in the twenty-first. Written for a general audience, but with a scholarly attention to detail and nuance, San Antonio: A Tricentennial History immerses readers in the city’s fascinating and fraught past.

"Born in San Antonio in 1795, José Antonio Navarro lived through a tumultuous era in Texas history that saw the transitions of Texas from a Spanish colony to a Mexican state, an independent republic, an American state, a Confederate state, and an American state once again. More than just bearing witness to these events, however, Navarro helped shape them. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and a steadfast defender of the rights of all Tejanos and people of Mexican descent in Texas, ensuring at both the 1836 Consultation that created the Texas Republic and the 1845 drafting of the state constitution after annexation that political rights would not be restricted solely to those with white skin and pure European ancestry. Navarro believed that Texas was a place where peoples of all colors and backgrounds should be able to realize the American Dream"--Book jacket.

The Texas State Historical Association is pleased to offer a reprint edition of Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas, Gregg Cantrell’s path-breaking biography of the founder of Anglo Texas. Cantrell’s portrait goes beyond the traditional interpretation of Austin as the man who spearheaded American Manifest Destiny. Cantrell portrays Austin as a borderlands figure who could navigate the complex cultural landscape of 1820s Texas, then a portion of Mexico. His command of the Spanish language, respect for the Mexican people, and ability to navigate the shoals of Mexican politics made him the perfect advocate for his colonists and often for all of Texas. Yet when conflicts between Anglo colonists and Mexican authorities turned violent, Austin’s accomodationist stance became outdated. Overshadowed by the military hero Sam Houston, he died at the age of forty-three, just six months after Texas independence. Decades after his death, Austin’s reputation was resurrected and he became known as the “Father of Texas.” More than just an icon, Stephen F. Austin emerges from these pages as a shrewd, complicated, and sometimes conflicted figure.

Texans of Mexican descent built a unique and highly developed ranching culture that thrived in South Texas until the 1880's. In Tejano Empire, historian Andres Tijerina describes the major elements that gave the Tejano ranch community its identity: shared reaction to Anglo-American in-migration, tightly interconnected families, cultural loyalty, networks of communication, Catholic religion, and a material culture well adapted to the conditions of the region.

A narrative account of the evacuation of the Texians in 1836, which was redeemed by the defeat of the Mexican army and the creation of the Republic of Texas. Two events in Texas history shine so brightly that they can be almost blinding: the stand at the Alamo and the redemption at San Jacinto, where General Sam Houston’s volunteers won the decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. But these milestones came amid a less obviously heroic episode now studiously forgotten—the refugee crisis known as the Runaway Scrape. Propulsive, lyrical, and richly illustrated, Texian Exodus transports us to the frigid, sodden spring of 1836, when thousands of Texians—Anglo-American settlers—fled eastward for the United States in fear of Antonio López de Santa Anna’s advancing Mexican army. Leading Texas historian Stephen L. Hardin draws on the accounts of the Runaways themselves to relate a tale of high stakes and great sorrow. While Houston tried to build a force that could defeat Santa Anna, the evacuees suffered incalculable pain and suffering. Yet dignity and community were not among the losses. If many of the stories are indeed tragic, the experience as a whole was no tragedy; survivors regarded the Runaway Scrape as their finest hour, an ordeal met with cooperation and courage. For Hardin, such qualities still define the Texas character. That it was forged in retreat as well as in battle makes the Runaway Scrape essential Texas history.

One of the most important themes in US history is the series of struggles that transformed the Southwest from a Spanish to an American possession: the Texas Revolution of 1836 and the Mexican–American War of 1845. But what if historians have been overlooking a key event that led to these wars—another war almost entirely unknown—that took place on what is now US soil and dramatically shaped the development of the American Southwest to this day? The true story of this war, presented in The Lost War for Texas: Mexican Rebels, American Burrites, and the Texas Revolution of 1811, is only now being revealed by never-before-published research, which will challenge paradigms and reshape much of what we know about United States, Texas, and even Mexican history. In the early 1800s, the impact of the Napoleonic Wars rippled across the Atlantic. Within weeks of the United States’s declaration of war on England in 1812, hundreds of western militia forces rallied to a flag and marched boldly to war—but not for the United States. They instead invaded the province of Texas to make common cause with Mexican rebels who had launched their struggle against the Spanish monarchy the year before. The resulting war changed the Southwest forever. Author James Aalan Bernsen places a spotlight on division and separatism at this pivotal moment of the “second revolution” of the United States. The Lost War for Texas, by revealing the forgotten war of 1811–1812 will profoundly change how we understand the birth of the American Southwest.