Looking for a good read? Here is a recommendation. I have an unusual approach to reviewing books. I review books I feel merit a review. Each review is an opportunity to recommend a book. If I do not think a book is worth reading, I find another book to review. You do not have to agree with everything every author has written (I do not), but the fiction I review is entertaining (and often thought-provoking) and the non-fiction contain ideas worth reading.
Book Review
How Texas Formed America
Reviewed by Mark Lardas
February 23 2025
“Texas, An American History,” by Benjamin Heber Johnson, Yale University Press, February 2025, 392 pages, $35.00 (Hardcover), $33.25 (E-book), $17.49 (Audiobook), $49.95 (Audio CD)
Some say admitting Texas to the United States led to the American Civil War. If so, it was a price worth paying. Texas has had a major, and largely positive, influence on the United States and all of North America throughout its existence.
“Texas, An American History,” by Benjamin Heber Johnson, is a new, short one-volume history of Texas. It presents a fresh view of the Lone Star State.
Johnson mixes traditional views of Texas with a twenty-first century approach to its history. He starts each chapter with a black-and-white illustration reminiscent of images gracing chapter headings in early twentieth century school histories of Texas. Each chapter contains a modern perspective on the state’s history, however.
He begins with a chapter on the ancient inhabitants of what became Texas. He ends with a chapter on twenty-first century Texas, covering events as recent as the Uvalde Massacre. In between he touches on all aspects of Texas history. He treats each group influencing Texas with the attention they deserve.
He fully explores the history of Texas under Spain, Mexico and the Indians that occupied it alongside chapters on more traditional subjects; the Texian settlement of Texas, the Lone Star Republic, and Texas as part of the US and Confederacy during the nineteenth century. He shows how Anglo, Hispanic, and Native American empires contended for Texas between the 1780s and 1850s.
He also presents the twentieth century influence of oil, transportation, and technology on Texas. More, he shows how Texas changed the rest of the United States during that period. He demostrate this goes beyond three Texas President. Texas was a cultural, technological, and political driver of the United States throughout the century and beyond. The space age, cultural trends like the television show Dallas and the urban cowboy craze were linked with Texas. So too were major sociological issues. Roe vs Wade and Obergefel both came from Texas.
While many histories of Texas focus on the nineteenth century and primarily on events within Texas this book shows how Texas influenced the rest of the United States and the North American continent throughout history. Johnson teaches Texas history on the college level. He is an academic, with baggage that entails. Yet his love of his home state of Texas shows throughout the book, and he presents both sides fairly. Readers may disagree with some conclusions, yet this book is well worth reading.
Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City. His website is marklardas.com.