The first systematic inquiry into the Texas Rangers did not begin until 1935 with Walter Prescott Webb's publication The Texas Rangers. Since then numerous works have appeared on the Rangers, but no volume has been published before that covers the various historians of the Rangers and their approaches to the topic. Editors Bruce A. Glasrud and Harold J. Weiss Jr. gather essays that profile individual historians of the Texas Rangers, explore themes and issues in Ranger history, and comprise archival research, biographies, and autobiographies. Several approaches in Texas historiography have influenced the writings on the Texas Rangers and serve to organize the chapters in the volume. Traditionalists (Chuck Parsons, Stephen L. Moore, and Bob Alexander) stress the revered happenings in the nineteenth century that brought about the Lone Star state and its empire-building Ranger force. To these historical writers the Texas Rangers were part of a golden age. Revisionists (Robert M. Utley, Louis R. Sadler, and Charles H. Harris) pull back from this adulation, emphasize the importance of overlooked ethnic and racial groups, and point out misbehavior on the part of Rangers. They also want to separate fact from fiction. Some Ranger historians (Frederick Wilkins and Mike Cox) straddle both traditional and revisionist approaches in their works. The final group, Cultural Constructionalists (Gary Clayton Anderson, AmErico Paredes, and Monica MuNoz Martinez), continue the work of Revisionists and focus on an interconnected past that includes theoretical approaches and the study of memory and regional identities.
Bruce A. Glasrud has published more than thirty books, including the two-volume Tracking the Texas Rangers:The Nineteenth Century and The Twentieth Century (UNT Press) and The African American Experience in Texas. Harold J. Weiss Jr coedited (with Bruce Glasrud) the two-volume Tracking the Texas Rangers and is the author of Yours to Command: The Life and Legend of Texas Ranger Captain Bill McDonald (UNT Press).
"[I]t is unique in that no other volume on the subject has collected together a group of individual current historians, serious researchers and scholars to write a series of essays on the main writer-historians of the Rangers who have published in the twentieth century and more recently. Here are substantive profiles resulting from archival research, biographies and autobiographies, and divided into specific themes and issues connected with the Rangers."--English Westerners Society "There have been many kinds of Rangers in Texas. Those who write about them, or pursue other popular avenues of communication, are no less diverse. This work makes that clear, but it also tells about their influences and impacts. Based on their personal perspectives and experiences, everyone interested in the Rangers has their favorite sources. Hopefully most of those are found here, but readers should take some time to read about the 'other side.' If the authors achieve their purpose, the material found here about Ranger historians will lead to more debate in a more informed manner."--from the foreword by Richard B. McCaslin "The most striking feature of the Rangers has been their ability to adapt to the different modes of life in Texas for several centuries. They fought for the flag when called upon to do their duty. They put felons into prisons in order to combat crime and disorder. They changed their methods of transportation from horses and wagons to railroad cars, motorized vehicles, and airplanes. And their weaponry became more automatic and deadly in shootouts."--from the Introduction
