Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager and Barbara Pierce Bush

This book is not heavy reading but neither is it trivial.  The Bush twins are intelligent, thoughtful and well-adjusted; they have a balanced sense of who they are and where they stand on the spectrum of public figures.  They write about their relationship with one another and their experiences as members of an influential political family in a style that is personal and heartfelt without being gossipy or sentimental.

Of particular interest are their accounts of being in the public eye from a relatively young age when their grandfather, George H.W. Bush, became president.  Having a Secret Service detail when only eight years old is not exactly normal.  Both wrote entertaining, but, again, thoughtful descriptions of life as a twenty-something with agents always close by.  Other highlights were Barbara’s account of her dinner conversation with Vladimir Putin, Jenna’s account of meeting her husband, Barbara’s experience on 9/11, their insights into the calm disposition of Laura Bush, how they handled all the media coverage during their father’s presidency and the relationship they have with both their parents and four grandparents.  

We’ve been in Texas for six years.  I’m still convinced that I’m going to run into George or Laura Bush one day when I’m at the playground with my granddaughters.  I just know it.  Fortunately, now that I've read this book, I'll be able to jump right in and start a friendly conversation with them😊.

American Lion by Jon Meacham

The main issues that confronted Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) as the seventh president of the United States (1828-1836) were the nullification controversy, secession and the banking crisis. This book, more political history than biography,  seemed a good complement to the subject of Sam Houston (who was mentored by Jackson and greatly admired him) and the early history of the United States. For the most part it was. 

 Andrew Jackson served as president scarcely 40 years after George Washington and already, in that short space of time, he was considered to be overstepping the powers of the presidency as intended by the Founding Fathers.  Jackson was dubbed King Andrew the First and was criticized for his belief that he had an allegiance directly to the American people.  I had thought that the erosion of the distinctions between the three branches of government and the ballooning of the powers of the executive branch didn’t occur until at least Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson.

 As for the issues of his presidency, the nullification controversy involved the claim on the part of the state of South Carolina that they had the right to declare null and void certain tariffs (of 1828 and 1832) which were deemed punitive to the economy of that state and the South.  Underlying that claim was the issue of states’ rights and the nature of the ties that bound the states together into a union.  The author writes: “Jackson argued that “We the People” had formed the Union that produced the Constitution, as opposed to the Southern theory that the Constitution was a compact between the states in which the individual states were paramount.”  Pg 228  

The threat of secession arose from the further claim by South Carolina, John Calhoun being its principal spokesman, that the federal government could either amend or remove the tariffs and if they didn’t the state could then secede from the Union.  Jackson saw secession as akin to the destruction of the nation and was adamantly against it.  A compromise was eventually drawn up,  but it’s easy to see that this was a tip-of-the-iceberg controversy.  The division between North and South, with the moral issue of slavery at its core, was building to the crescendo it would soon reach during Lincoln’s presidency.

On the banking issue, briefly, Jackson opposed a national bank because he felt it concentrated power in the hands of the elite and ignored the common man.  Jackson managed to veto a re-charter of the bank and then did just as he had threatened and removed United States funds from the bank.  For that act, the Senate censured him (just like Trump!), a serious blow to Jackson which was later rescinded.

There was no real discussion in the book of the familiar phrase “Jacksonian democracy” that I could ascertain. Nor was much space given to Jackson’s policies toward the Indians, specifically the removal of the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears.  The relationship between Sam Houston and Jackson received scant treatment in this book; I thought Jackson had played a larger role in the events in Texas but his presidency was largely over as Texas was bursting onto the national scene.  A bit of trivia about Jackson, he was the first president to be the target of an assassination attempt. 

Jackson was a figure much like Sam Houston in that he was a Tennessean (though a South Carolinian by birth) and a frontier-type soldier, statesman and lawyer.  Jackson left his mark on history and as the title of the book indicates, American Lion, Jackson was considered a force to be reckoned with.  By today’s standards, he seemed to be a pretty normal politician to me.  Granted, after Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and another Adams, Jackson was the first rough-and-tumble sort to occupy the White House. But he was apparently well spoken, educated to some degree and had informed views.  He was devoted to his wife who died just as he was elected to the presidency and he was equally devoted to his niece and nephew who were his closest aides in Washington. 

This book was good reading by a recognized author who, like Daniel Bergamini, used newly uncovered documents in writing this book.  Meacham also had a hefty bunch of notes at the end of the book, none of which I consulted, but still only half the amount that Bergamini had in his book.  Meacham explained in his acknowledgments that he did not intend an “academic study” of Jackson’s presidency but rather wanted to “paint a biographical portrait” of the man.  I would say he did so with moderate success.  As noted above, I found the book to be more of a political history than an exhaustive biography of Jackson.  The reading was also a little dry at times.  

Kings of Texas by Don Graham

The author of this book clearly loves his subject and gives the reader a lot to think about. Indeed, the subtitle of the book is The 150-Year Saga of an American Ranching Empire and the author covers it all. The King Ranch story is a fascinating one made more so by being here in Texas and having a sense of just how much country there is from San Antonio down to the border.  There’s a lot.  More than enough for one man to easily aggregate to himself over a half million acres.  Today, the King Ranch in the United States covers almost a million acres, roughly the same area as the state of Rhode Island.

Richard King (1824-1885) began life in New York, the child of Irish immigrants.  He was orphaned by the age of 5, stowed away on a ship by his early teens and at 16 was a steamboat pilot on the Alabama River.  His life only grew more exciting after that! From Alabama, King made his way to Texas via Florida and the Seminole War. By 1847, when he began steamboating along the Texas/Mexico border, the Texas Revolution was history, Texas had joined the Union and the Mexican American War was just about fought. 

In the years before the Civil War, King began to coalesce his empire through steamboats and ranches.  As he explored Texas beyond the area of Brownsville, territory variously referred to by the author as the Wild Horse Desert or the “sea of grass,” King ultimately bought a tract of land along the Santa Gertrudis Creek.  Today, when you take a tour of King Ranch, one reports to this area, Kingsville to be exact.    

Mention should be made of the innovation in ranching that Richard King made.  The author writes, “King adopted the Mexican model, which meant year-round, lifetime support for one’s vaqueros and families.” (pg. 66) King established a hacienda not a mere ranch and he was the hacendado.  His workers came to be called Kinenos (tilda over the second n) and bestowed upon King the sobriquet El Capitan or el patron.  The Kinenos lived and worked together as a community alongside the King family. In some cases, lifelong loyalties were formed.

During the Civil War, King had a lucrative business shipping cotton for the South from the only port available to the Confederacy, the Brazos Santiago Pass (Port Isabel). To the extent that he was political, King was a Confederate who quickly pledged loyalty to the Union when the War was over.  No sooner was the nation’s war settled than the hostilities between Mexicans and Anglos went into full swing.  Cattle and horse thievery on the part of Mexicans was a constant threat during the 1870’s.  That’s not to say that the Anglos didn’t do their share of killing and provoking.  On this topic the author does an excellent job of examining Mexican/Anglo relations in terms of Manifest Destiny and the history of the times.  Highly recommended reading in those early chapters of the book. 

As engaging as it is to read about Captain King’s exploits, it is equally engaging to read about the German immigrant Robert Justus Kleberg whose son by the same name married Alice King, the Captain’s daughter, and carried on the King Ranch successes.  Robert Kleberg and Alice King Kleberg had five children, at least two of whom went on to make history themselves.  Son Richard Kleberg (1887-1955) is the career congressman from Texas who gave Lyndon Baines Johnson his entrée to Washington D.C. politics.  LBJ was Kleberg’s secretary!  It’s nice how history connects the dots for us.  Robert Kleberg---that’s a third Robert---is the son whom the author so accurately identifies as “the most significant figure in King Ranch history since Captain King.” pg. 207.  

From Richard King to Robert Kleberg (1896-1974), the King/Kleberg Ranch has had its hand in salt, wool, sheep, the cotton trade, cattle, oil, thoroughbred horses and citrus groves to name a few.  The King Ranch came to have operations not only in several countries, but even in my little hometown corner of the world, the Coatesville/Brandywine River Valley area.  History is again at hand to make connections!

The details of the 20^th century lawsuit, Chapman vs. King Ranch, are described in a fair amount of detail in the final chapters of the book. A descendant of the Chapman family decided to revive an 1883 lawsuit brought against King Ranch over a parcel of land claimed to belong to the Chapman heirs. While the lawsuit is certainly part of the lore of King Ranch, it just got to be more detail than I cared to go into.  Of greater value in my opinion is the colorful, historical account of South Texas that the author supplies as part of the warp and woof of Richard King’s life.  Texas is certainly unique among states given its beginnings as part of Mexico.  Its sons and daughters are equally unique in the contribution they’ve made to the history of our country.  That is all captured in this book.