| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 292 words from this article are provided below; about 618 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Don Graham. Kings of Texas: The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 2003. Pp. xiii, 289. $24.95.
The history of ranching and livestock raising in America does not lack for chroniclers. There are many and they are a diverse group: foreign language professors, sociologists from Norway, writers of novels, museum directors, archivists, and professional photographers among them. Clearly, they are not all historians and they are not all from the American West. Most of them produce good, solid, institutional studies. Some of them write ranch histories that border on triumphal romanticism and folklore that honor the rancher, the cowboy, and their large cattle herds.	1
Don Graham takes a different tact. In this book, he presents a revisionist, not particularly friendly history of America's largest ranch, a study that almost celebrates flaws in the huge institution's founder and current board of directors, in its operations, and in its treatment of its neighbors. Nonetheless, if Graham is right, the book represents a significant corrective to many earlier studies that glorify the King Ranch and its celebrated traditions.	2
Richard King, founder of the ranch, comes across as a tough, rough-edged, and poorly educated but intelligent young man with ready wit and much common sense. Orphaned as a youth, King became a steamboat pilot at the early age of sixteen. He understood the value of political and economic "connections" and used them to secure government contracts along the Rio Grande during the U.S.-Mexican War. After the war, he also used his connections to keep competitors from effectively challenging his operations. He and his partner, Mifflin Kenedy, made a lot of money in the steamboat business.	. . .

There are about 618 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.