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Yale University
Press STEPHEN F.
AUSTIN
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Yale University
Press STEPHEN F.
AUSTIN
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"Richly entertaining from start
to finish." |
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New Haven--On October 1, 1999, Yale University Press
will publish STEPHEN F. AUSTIN: Empresario of Texas, by
Gregg Cantrell. The first biography of Austin to be published since
1925, it is the first ever to delve into the Texas hero's early years,
private life, and complex character.
Just twenty-seven years old when he rode into the Spanish province of Texas in 1821, Austin endured physical hardships, illnesses, vilification, imprisonment, and one financial setback after another. But he never wavered in his plan to colonize Texas or his conviction that Texas's destiny was entwined with his own. Pursuing his goal relentlessly, he played a central role in events leading up to the Texas Revolution and the founding of the Lone Star Republic. In this engrossing biography, Cantrell moves beyond the self- sacrificing, rather bloodless Austin of legend, describing instead a man who was at once a consummate manager and exhorter, politician and diplomat, statesman and manipulator. Drawing on both American and Mexican sources, the author shows how Austin mixed effort and cunning, diplomacy and deception, idealism and pragmatism. Cantrell also shows how Austin faced the crucial issues of his day--slavery, land speculation on the frontier, relations between Anglo settlers and Indian and Hispanic natives of the southwestern borderlands, and the complex dynamics of Mexican politics. STEPHEN F. AUSTIN is attracting a great deal of advance interest. An alternate selection of the History Book Club, it has won the Catherine Munson Foster Memorial Award for Literature (previous recipients include Larry McMurtry and T. R. Fehrenbach). The Texas House of Representatives and Senate have passed resolutions honoring this new biography of the Father of Texas, and Cantrell will be a featured author at the 1999 Texas Book Festival in Austin. To set up an interview or arrange a book signing, please contact Gregg Cantrell at 915/670-1279 or via e-mail at greggc@hsutx.edu. For further information, contact Brenda Kolb at Yale University Press, 203/432-0917 or via e-mail at brenda.kolb@yale.edu. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. |
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
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Gregg Cantrell is Rupert N. Richardson Professor
of History at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, where he teaches Texas,
Southern, Western, and Civil War history. He was born in Sweetwater, Texas,
in 1958 and has lived in every region of his home state. After earning
his Ph.D. in history at Texas A&M University in 1988, he joined the
faculty at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, where he remained
for ten years. In 1992 he published Kenneth and John B. Rayner and the
Limits of Southern Dissent, which received the Tullis Memorial Prize of
the Texas State Historical Association and the Phi Alpha Theta Book Award.
While working on STEPHEN F. AUSTIN: Empresario of Texas,
Cantrell was awarded a fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities
(1994-1995). The grant enabled him to live in Austin while researching
the collections housed at the University of Texas. It also gave him the
chance to follow Austin's footsteps in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky,
Washington, D.C., New York, Connecticut, and Mexico. In 1996 Cantrell was
named the first Summerlee Research Fellow at the newly established William
P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University.
Cantrell spent the academic year 1996-1997 at the center in Dallas, completing
his research and doing most of the writing of STEPHEN F. AUSTIN.
In May l999, as STEPHEN F. AUSTIN was going to press, both houses
of the Texas State Legislature issued proclamations honoring Cantrell for
his writing of the book. He will be a featured author at the 1999 Texas
Book Festival in Austin, November 5-7, midway through his tour promoting
his timely new biography of the Father of Texas.
Yale Book News Yale University Press
Web site: www.yale.edu/yup TITLE: STEPHEN F. AUSTIN: Empresario of Texas
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An
Alternate Selection of the History Book Club