The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, July 1972 - April, 1973 Page: 104

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

could have cleared up the cloudy, almost meaningless accounts of
Zuber's service in the Texas Revolutionary Army and in the Con-
federate Cavalry in Arkansas, Missouri, and Louisiana. If he served
in Company H of the Twenty-first Texas Cavalry, we are never certain
just what this regiment is, where it is, nor in whose brigade it is
lodged at any given date. The historian who uses the book will have
to start at the drawing board insofar as historical method is concerned.
The only redeeming feature of the book is Llerena Friend's "His-
toriography of the Account of Moses Rose and the Line That Travis
Drew," an essay on the history of Zuber's "An Escape from the
Alamo" and its use by Texas historians. Her bibliography of Zuber's
works at the end of the volume reveals no material with which one
might authenticate the book at hand.
University of Arkansas WALTER L. BROWN
Texas: A History. By Seymour V. Connor. (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell Company, Inc., 1971. Pp. 481. Bibliography, index, $8.95.)
Texas: A History is intended for university level textbook use and
"serious adult" readership. Connor's objective resolves into three basic
parts: presenting the fundamentals of Texas history; placing Texas
events into their larger historical contexts; and offering "several
unusual interpretations" to explain some major aspects of Texas
history.
The author's basic organization is topical within fourteen chrono-
logical chapters. Although the topical technique occasionally requires
a reader to refer to earlier passages, Connor handles his organizational
plan skillfully. A selective bibliography adequately meets the imme-
diate needs of the expected readership. Generally Connor achieves
his announced purposes. Acceptance and adoption as a text will be
determined largely by personal reactions and individual approaches
to teaching Texas history.
Few well-informed, thoughtful Texas historians will find interpre-
tive surprises. Still, Connor accepts the historians' interpretive obliga-
tion and is at his articulate best in treating the causes of the Texas
Revolution. Critically disposing of three traditional interpretations
as fallacious, inadequate, or both, Connor places contributory factors
in perspective and then isolates the heart of the issue with "the
Revolution resulted from the overthrow of the Republic of Mexico

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