The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 33, July 1929 - April, 1930 Page: 80

80 Southwestern Historical Quarterly
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Readings in Texas History. Edited by Eugene C. Barker. (Dal-
las: The Southwest Press. 1929. Pp. VIII, 653.)
Probably the most worth-while, the most elucidating and the
most valuable single volume ever published, bearing on the history
of Texas, has just come from the press.
It is entitled Readings in Texas History, for High Schools and
Colleges. It touches every phase of Texas history from 1528 to
1928.
Dr. Barker indicates in the preface that he undertook the work
to meet a crying need in Texas for such a book, because of the
existence of a vast quantity of periodical literature, books out of
print, and documentary materials of various kinds bearing on the
history of Texas but inaccessible to students and lovers of Texas
history; and he sought to give access to these sources. He suc-
ceeded in his undertaking.
The book is not a consecutive treatment of Texas history by a
single author, but is made up of selections from reports made,
books and papers published, by some thirty-five different people
who have had to do with the making of Texas history; or who
have made special studies in various periods and phases of Texas
history and of the different parts of Texas. In that way the
reader gets the point of view and the deductions, not of one editor
alone, but he gets the local color, the contemporary reports,
notably in the case of the Goliad campaign, the Fall of the Alamo
and the San Jacinto campaign, where the Mexican reports have
been translated and brought into the book, along with the Texans'
versions, and the results of intensive research into the history of
Texas that has been going on for many years.
The first 339 pages are devoted to the period of Texas history
ending with the establishment of the Republic. The second part
begins with "A Survey of the Home Affairs of the Republic of
Texas," taken from the editor's edition of Johnson's Texas and
Texans; and chapters follow from various authors: on the foreign
affairs of the Republic; on the varying stages of the annexation
question; on East Texas in the politics of the Republic; on the
settlement of the public debts question (of the Republic); on the