The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 70, July 1966 - April, 1967 Page: 143

ook eviews
ROBERT C. COTNER, Editor
The Saga of Texas Series. Edited by Seymour V. Connor. Austin
(Steck-Vaughn Company), 1965. Vols. 6. Illustrations, bibli-
ographies, indexes. $15.00; $2.95 each.
From time to time for more than a century, histories of Texas
have appeared with some claim to comprehensiveness. In 1856,
the lawyer-historian Henderson Yoakum finished A History of
Texas that was for its day and time both comprehensive and
scholarly. In his Works, Hubert Howe Bancroft left a good history
of Texas. When the twentieth century was young, Eugene C.
Barker, assisted by Ernest W. Winkler, published A History of
Texas and Texans by Frank W. Johnson. The authors used only
a little of what Johnson had written, but made the first volume of
the set a sound and fairly comprehensive history of the state.
Some years later, Lewis J. Wortham and Clarence R. Wharton
published histories of some merit that are relatively lengthy if
not comprehensive. Those books and others that might be named
were mainly one-man projects. Now, for the first time there is
a multi-volume history of Texas written by trained historians and
seasoned writers. From such a team one may well expect a product
comprehensive and readable; and the result is not disappointing.
The series has been well conceived, carefully planned, and
effectively edited. The divisions of Texas history will be ques-
tioned by some: ending the first book at 1810 rather than 1820,
when Spain's empire in America collapsed; and devoting only
one of the six books to the twentieth century. Such features,
however, are matters of opinion. The authors have used well
their allotted space and have stayed with their respective subjects.
In the main they have taken advantage of secondary materials
and have used them as approaches to primary sources. Each book
ends with a short essay on sources, entitled "Point of View."
Although style varies with the different authors, certain char-