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Cult of Glory
The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers
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Narrated by:
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Kaleo Griffith
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By:
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Doug J. Swanson
About this listen
“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” (The New York Times Book Review)
A 21st-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 US 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.
©2020 Doug J. Swanson (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Wyatt Earp is regarded as the most famous lawman of the Old West, best known for his role in the Gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. But the story of his two-year war with a band of outlaws known as the Cowboys has never been told in full. The Cowboys were the largest outlaw gang in the history of the American West. After battles with the law in Texas and New Mexico, they shifted their operations to Arizona. There, they ruled the border, robbing, rustling, smuggling, and killing with impunity until they made the fatal mistake of tangling with the Earp brothers.
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Tough Listen.
- By Nick on 05-15-20
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Bill O'Reilly's Legends and Lies: The Patriots
- By: Bill O'Reilly, David Fisher
- Narrated by: Holter Graham, Bill O'Reilly
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The must-have companion to Bill O'Reilly's historical docudrama Legends and Lies: The Patriots, an exciting and eye-opening look at the Revolutionary War through the lives of its leaders. The American Revolution was neither inevitable nor a unanimous cause. It pitted neighbors against each other as loyalists and colonial rebels faced off for their lives and futures. These were the times that tried men's souls: No one was on stable ground, and few could be trusted.
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Couldn't stop listening!
- By Erin on 08-05-16
By: Bill O'Reilly, and others
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38 Nooses
- Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Beginning of the Frontier's End
- By: Scott W. Berg
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In August 1862, after decades of broken treaties, increasing hardship, and relentless encroachment on their lands, a group of Dakota warriors convened a council at the tepee of their leader, Little Crow. Knowing the strength and resilience of the young American nation, Little Crow counseled caution, but anger won the day. Forced to either lead his warriors in a war he knew they could not win or leave them to their fates, he declared, "[Little Crow] is not a coward: he will die with you."
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Powerful condemnation of Manifest Destiny
- By Buretto on 09-26-19
By: Scott W. Berg
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Killing Jesus
- A History
- By: Bill O'Reilly, Martin Dugard
- Narrated by: Bill O'Reilly
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Millions of people have thrilled to best-selling authors Bill O'Reilly and historian Martin Dugard's Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, works of nonfiction that have changed the way we view history. Now the anchor of The O'Reilly Factor details the events leading up to the murder of the most influential man in history: Jesus of Nazareth. Nearly 2,000 years after this beloved and controversial young revolutionary was brutally killed by Roman soldiers, more than 2.2 billion human beings attempt to follow his teachings and believe he is God.
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The Jesus story in context
- By Kimberly on 10-01-13
By: Bill O'Reilly, and others
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Texas Ranger
- The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde
- By: John Boessenecker
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 17 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the front lines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution's spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists.
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I love Frank Hamer, but Boessenecker's left leanin
- By A. Taylor on 04-06-19
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Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves
- Race and Ethnicity in the American West Series #1
- By: Art T. Burton
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Art T. Burton sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late 19th-century America - and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era. Fluent in Creek and other Southern native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Bass Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws, and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
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inspiring story and insightful
- By Derrick on 12-17-15
By: Art T. Burton
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To Hell on a Fast Horse
- The Untold Story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett
- By: Mark Lee Gardner
- Narrated by: Graham Rowat, Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Billy the Kid - a.k.a. Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William Bonney - was a horse thief, cattle rustler, charismatic rogue, and cold-blooded killer. A superb shot, the Kid gunned down four men single-handedly and five others with the help of cronies. Two of his victims were Lincoln County, New Mexico, deputies, killed during the Kid's brazen daylight escape from the courthouse jail on April 28, 1881.
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Great Listen
- By Susan Stilley on 10-06-21
By: Mark Lee Gardner
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The Feud
- The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story
- By: Dean King
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Filled with bitter quarrels, reckless affairs, treacherous betrayals, relentless mercenaries, and courageous detectives, The Feud is the riveting story of two frontier families struggling for survival within the narrow confines of an unforgiving land. It is a formative American tale, and in it, we see the reflection of our own family bonds and the lengths to which we might go in order to defend our honor, our loyalties, and our livelihood.
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Get out the pad and pencil .....
- By Alan on 10-15-13
By: Dean King
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Empire of Shadows
- The Epic Story of Yellowstone
- By: George Black
- Narrated by: Jack de Golia
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Empire of Shadows is the epic story of the conquest of Yellowstone, a landscape uninhabited, inaccessible, and shrouded in myth in the aftermath of the Civil War. In a radical reinterpretation of the 19th century West, George Black casts Yellowstone's creation as the culmination of three interwoven strands of history.
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Paints a big picture
- By Gail Thomalla on 07-13-21
By: George Black
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The Last Campaign
- Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
William Tecumseh Sherman and Geronimo were keen strategists and bold soldiers, ruthless with their enemies. Over the course of the 1870s and 1880s these two war chiefs would confront each other in the final battle for what the American West would be: a sparsely settled, wild home where Indian tribes could thrive, or a densely populated extension of the America to the east of the Mississippi.
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Outstanding Unbiased Native American History
- By Paul W. Brazis on 11-07-22
By: H. W. Brands
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The Summer of 1876
- Outlaws, Lawmen, and Legends in the Season That Defined the American West
- By: Chris Wimmer
- Narrated by: Chris Wimmer, Johnny Heller
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The summer of 1876 was a key time period in the development of the mythology of the Old West. Many individuals who are considered legends by modern listeners were involved in events that began their notoriety or turned out to be the most famous—or infamous—moments of their lives. Those individuals were Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, and Jesse James. The Summer of 1876 weaves together the timelines of the events that made these men legends.
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Like History? You will thoroughly enjoy this book!
- By JRC on 04-26-24
By: Chris Wimmer
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The State of Jones
- The Small Southern County that Seceded from the Confederacy
- By: John Stauffer, Sally Jenkins
- Narrated by: Don Leslie
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The State of Jones is a true story about the South during the Civil War, the real South. Not the South that has been mythologized in novels and movies, but an authentic, hardscrabble place where poor men were forced to fight a rich man's war for slavery and cotton. In Jones County, Mississippi, a farmer named Newton Knight led his neighbors, white and black alike, in an insurrection against the Confederacy at the height of the Civil War.
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Confederate Insurrection-Rebellion against Rebels
- By W Perry Hall on 02-02-14
By: John Stauffer, and others
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Dreams of El Dorado
- A History of the American West
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Matt Kugler
- Length: 17 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West. He takes us from John Jacob Astor's fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. He shows how the migrants' dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance that put their stay-at-home cousins to shame - and how those same dreams also drove them to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another. El Dorado was at least as elusive in the West as it ever was in the East.
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Dreadful narration
- By Fredmo on 12-09-19
By: H. W. Brands
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The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know.
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Wish He Had Stuck to the Core Story
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James Monroe
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The extraordinary life of James Monroe: Soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform 13 colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic.
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Large and inconsistent, much like Monroe himself.
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If
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At the turn of the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling towered over not just English literature, but the entire literary world. At the height of his fame in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner. His influence on major figures - including Freud and William James - was pervasive and profound. But in recent decades Kipling’s reputation has suffered a strange eclipse.
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Chris Benfey’s ‘IF’ A MUST AUDIOBOOK
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The Greatest Fury
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Mispronounced names and locations
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Spying on the South
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In the 1850s, the young Frederick Law Olmsted was adrift, a restless farmer and dreamer in search of a mission. He found it as an undercover correspondent in the South for the up-and-coming New York Times. For the Connecticut Yankee, pen name "Yeoman", the South was alien, often hostile territory. Yet Olmsted traveled for 14 months, by horseback, steamboat, and stagecoach, seeking dialogue and common ground. Tony Horwitz rediscovers Yeoman Olmsted amidst the discord and polarization of our own time. Is America still one country?
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Great final story from a talented author
- By Ericka on 06-29-19
By: Tony Horwitz
What listeners say about Cult of Glory
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- Alex Zilkha
- 10-02-20
A Historical Hit Piece
While this book offers a good counterbalance to the myth of the Rangers as so-called "white knights", it is a poor history and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Swanson privileges the veracity of some accounts over others with no explanation and fails to uphold the duty of a historian to remain a fair and removed arbiter of truth, basing each statement on available evidence and not inserting his own opinions as fact.
All this being said, I would not reccomend Cult of Glory.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Len Granick
- 06-12-20
Texas Rangers
A wonderful amalgam of myth, legend, optimism and disappointment
The Rangers were an exaggerated version of their times: bigoted inclined to kill rather than control, immune from prosecution and having little or no constraints a story better than the best of the lawless west
They ruled and killed with intent Indians, Blacks, outlaws, Mexicans and people who were innocent. Women, children were killed without fear of a trial or fear of punishment Linked to the KKK and on the side of the Confederacy. A very good and interesting read
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6 people found this helpful
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- Versel Rush
- 07-03-20
Okay, not great
Not what I was expecting,
First, my issues with the narration. I am a native Texan. If you are going to narrate a book about Texas, for heaven's sake, learn the correct pronunciations of locations and historical figures. Every time he mispronounced Bowie (as if we were talking about David Bowie), I cringed. I am from Bowie, Texas, named for Jim Bowie, so I found this particularly irritating. Add Pedernales, Beauford Jester, San Jacinto, Bastrop, Mexia, and countless others--it was enough to almost make me quit listening.
Next, the book itself. I was hoping for an in depth study of the Rangers and their history, good, bad, neutral. Instead this book does a recitation, in jumpy narrative, of one event after another. Though some are put in the brutal, usually racists, historical context, there is nothing to really explain the men--their back stories (with few exceptions), for example. The passing mention of Bonnie and Clyde is a disappointment (the extra-jurisdictional use of the former Rangers, for instance), the disbanding by Ma Ferguson (and their investigation of her leading up to ot) was barely mentioned, and the 21st Century Rangers are given short notice. The Henry Lee Lucas chapter disturbs me because of a glaring error--I met Sheriff Conway in the 70's when I worked as a dispatcher one summer during my college years. I knew his son for years later. I have never heard him called "Hound Dog". I cannot help but wonder what else may be wrong in his research that I just didn't recognize.
Even so, because there are few books on the Rangers I do recommend this, with a grain of salt, for people who are interested.
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8 people found this helpful
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- CopperTech
- 12-27-20
A more even-handed review of Ranger history
This work includes some of the less heroic actions in the history of the Rangers than Webb's book. It makes the organization more "human" if no less legendary.
A reference to a specific incident in the book which I feel is just as applicable to the Rangers story is that their flaws aren't so much a history of the Rangers, as that of America and Texas.
Society tends to judge based on current beliefs, customs, and mores - not so much those in place at the time/place of those and the actions being judged.
Some of the legends are dispelled. But the Rangers remain no less legendary.
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- John R. Cerasuolo
- 09-09-20
This has always been Texas
I love the myth of Texas and embrace it. There is nothing wrong inherently with myth making or so I thought. That is how I always envisioned the Rangers. An elite police unit that epitomizes professionalism and the best of what makes Texans so unique. You may have read more than a few reviews that called this a hack job, or a left wing screed. What I would want to ask them is are they afraid of the truth, or are they more scared that the ethos and myth of Texas may be built on a pile of horse shit. To defend the Rangers after reading this is to ignore their culpability in numerous mass murders, genocidal ethnic cleansing, and propping up white supremacy You also will choose to frame the myth and ethos of Texas in a very narrow view, from an Anglo perspective. Should we incorporate the pain that Native American's, Tejanos, slaves and then Freemen felt in Texas? My guess is that they would have very different answers from an Anglo perspective what our history means, and what is a Texan.
This is a wonderfully researched and impeccably told story. Mr. Swanson is not out to "get the Rangers", he is a truth teller. I never felt like he was applying 21st century morality or norms to the Rangers behavior. Many of the acts that he depicted can be seen as far outside the norm and beyond reproach when they occurred. He does a wonderful job throughout the story of showing the power of the victor's. The Rangers either dictated their own history, or had many enablers do it for them. What he is doing is critically important to how we understand our past. The is a story that deconstructs a myth that should have never existed, because it didn't. The mystique of the Ranges was built in embellished half truths, exaggerations, and lies and he calls them out for it. There were still men that exhibited great heroism and were selfless in the service of their interests and that of the State of Texas. The Texas Rangers protected and helped prop up a Texas that was a myth to anyone that was not a white, Christian Anglo. This book is for them as much as it is for anyone else. It can finally acknowledge the pain and misery inflicted upon them, and the Rangers should confront that as strongly as Mr. Swanson does.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Tyree
- 05-26-21
Must Read(listen)!
Most balanced view of the Texas Rangers I've come across. A true tribute to their realistic place in Texas and American History. Those who view the Rangers through "rose-colored" glass or opine "that past Ranger conduct is being unfairly judged by today's more liberal standards by this author" I believe are wrong. I find that the author has made a decent effort to be fair and true to the Texas Ranger tradition! Caveat! I make this review as a simple, 10+ year Audible member/customer with no relationship whatsoever, financial or otherwise, with author, narrator, books publisher, Amazon or its many subsideraries.
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- Chad
- 04-06-23
Excellent
Such a terribly wonderful historical portrayal of an institutional staple in Texas law enforcement. Los Diablos Tejas!
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- HerbeyPerez
- 06-09-20
Los rinches
I have a recollection of stories told by my grandfather, family lived for centuries in southwest Texas but was ran out of the state for their land and for being “Mexican”
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7 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 04-01-22
Always Believe the Offenders
This book was frustrating to listen to in a number of ways. First, after almost two centuries of history, there are bound to be times when there were abuses for any law enforcement agency. Second, the Rangers have been tainted from time to time by major political interference and chicanery. Third, trying to judge the Rangers who served in 1850 by today's standards is bound to give a bad impression. People should be judged in their times, and by their times. Finally, a consistent problem with this book is that the author seems to be more than willing to believe any dissent from the Rangers' account of an incident to automatically be true.
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3 people found this helpful
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- dean
- 12-25-22
No exceptions
None of us our exempt from facing the truth. It’s encouraging to know that when we face our faults as well as our talents, merits and gifts we can grow.
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