Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire

* Full of myth and misunderstanding, there's a Texas for everyone... Graham writes about Texas recognizing the wide-open country that we love, while at the same time putting longitude and latitude in proper perspective... ""Kings of Texas"" is a pleasure to read. ( Austin American Statesman) ""is the right man for the task of chronicling this Jonesian expanse of archetypal Texana...a pleasure to read"". ( Austin American-Statesman , January 19, 2003) My mother grew up in Texas in the 1930s and recalls driving with her father for hours past seemingly endless miles of King Ranch Property. Covering 850,000 acres even today, a spread as big as the state of Rhode Island, the King Ranch has been an icon of Texas ranching culture since the 19th century. For six generations, descendants of founder Richard King ran the ranch and its various enterprises until Stephen Kleberg was voted out as ranch manager by the corporate board in 1998. The changing face of the King Ranch from family-run enterprise to corporate entity captures attention precisely because so many ranches and farms have already gone this rou te in the West, and here is the largest of them all following in their footsteps. Graham (literature, Univ. of Texas, Austin) has written several books on Texas life and culture. His latest is an easy-to-read popular narrative that complements another recent title of the King Ranch, John Cypher's Bob Kleberg and the King Ranch: A worldwide Sea of Grass& lt;/I> (1995) which is a amore scholarly look at this modern corporate empire. Highly recommended for Southwestern libraries, both public and academic. Charlie Cowling, SUNY at Brockport Lib. ( Library Journal, March 1, 2003) ""A crisp history of the King Ranch... a good read about an era long gone.""-- Boston Globe "This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present--and a first-rate read." —H.W. Brands, author THE AGE OF GOLD and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN. "KINGS OF TEXAS is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous and very readable. It should find a wide audience." —Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove From the Publisher "This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present--and a first-rate read." --H.W. Brands, author THE AGE OF GOLD and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist THE FIRST AMERICAN. "KINGS OF TEXAS is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It's concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous and very readable. It should find a wide audience." --Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize winning Lonesome Dove From the Inside Flap It’s the stuff of tall tales, legends, and epic films like Red River and Giant. King Ranch, carved from the scrub and mesquite of the South Texas coastal plains and comprising more acreage than the state of Rhode Island, is the largest and most famous cattle ranch in American history. From cattle empire to oil empire to multilayered, media-shy corporation beset by legal battles and power struggles, King Ranch embodies the oldest dream of American wealth–the possession of land and the perpetuation of a dynasty. Kings of Texas is the sprawling saga of the larger-than-life characters who founded, built, and expanded this vast holding. Renowned Texas scholar, writer, and storyteller Don Graham weaves a compelling multigenerational family drama into the complex social history of South Texas. The result is an intricate tapestry laced with thrilling tales drawn from decades of conflict arising from the Mexican War, the Civil War, and countless skirmishes between Texas Rangers and border bandits. It was the era, too, when great herds of longhorns were sent north up the Chisholm Trail. And all the while, King Ranch was expanding, growing ever more powerful and famous in the land. You’ll meet the man who started it all–Richard King, the orphaned son of Irish immigrants who founded a dynasty in the middle of "heartbreak country," and who believed firmly in the dictum of his friend, Robert E. Lee–Buy land and never sell. You’ll follow King’s rise from riverboat pilot to rancher, his courtship of the daughter of a dour Presbyterian preacher, and his creation of an American version of a Spanish hacienda, sustaining generations of work and loyalty from Mexican vaqueros and their families, who became known as the Kineños, King’s people. And always, there were the struggles to acquire more land and to protect his holdings from cattle thieves, raiders, and, most threatening of all, lawsuits. You’ll also meet a smart, ambitious young lawyer named Robert J. Kleberg, whose legal maneuverings protected King from a judgment won by Kleberg’s own client–the J. R. Ewing moment in this narrative. Kleberg then courted and married King’s daughter, Alice, and became patriarch of King Ranch after its founder’s death. Kleberg and King’s actions, however, would come back to haunt their descendants more than a century later, striking at the very heart of their empire. The Ranch’s modern history begins with Bob Kleberg Jr., "a tornado of a man," who pushed the Ranch to stunning new levels of success. He expanded its holdings, produced the only new breed of cattle ever created in the new world, and developed a Triple Crown—winning racehorse. Hardworking, hardriding, and harddrinking, he made millions from oil leases and, with the help of his wife, Helen, took the Ranch global with operations in Cuba, South America, and Australia. His death in 1974 led to a troubled succession and, in 1998, Stephen J. ("Tio") Kleberg, the last of his family to run King Ranch, was fired in favor of a CEO with offices in Houston. From humble frontier jacales to the sleek offices of a multinational corporation, Kings of Texas tells an unforgettable story of vision and violence; generosity and greed; loyalty and betrayal, set on a stage as vast as the American dream. Praise for KINGS OF TEXAS "Kings of Texas is a fresh and very welcome history of the great King Ranch. It’s concise but thorough, crisply written, meticulous, and very readable. It should find a wide audience."–Larry McMurtry, author of Sin Killer and the Pulitzer Prize—winning Lonesome Dove "This book is about the King Ranch, but it is about much more than that. A compelling chronicle of war, peace, love, betrayal, birth, and death in the region where the Texas-Mexico border blurs in the haze of the Wild Horse Desert, it is also an intriguing detective story with links to the present–and a first-rate read."–H.W. Brands, author of The Age of Gold and the bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The First American DON GRAHAM is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine and the J. Frank Dobie Regents Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas, Austin. He is also past president of the Texas Institute of Letters and the author of the critically acclaimed biography of Audie Murphy, No Name on the Bullet. Among Graham’s other works are Giant Country: Essays on Texas and Cowboys and Cadillacs: How Hollywood Looks at Texas. Read more