Volume 53, Number 14 · September 21, 2006
Texas: The Death of the Natives
By Larry McMurtry
The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875
by Gary Clayton Anderson
University of Oklahoma Press, 494 pp., $29.95
Gary Clayton Anderson, author of this thunderclap of a book, lives in Norman, Oklahoma, which is just a hop, a skip, and a jump from Texas, far too close, I would think, for a scholar who has now suggested that the Texas Rangers—our heroes, our protectors—are pretty much the moral equivalents of certain paramilitary units from the former Yugoslavia—Balkan death squads, in effect. If I had made that comparison I would immediately check out the housing situation in Spitzbergen, where there's lots of dark to hide in. Certainly I would settle as far as I could get from the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, which is in Waco, Texas, a very short distance itself from the famous ranch house where it was once suggested that Laura Bush sweep the porch.
Review, 3377 words
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