Stephen F.Austin Empresario of Texas Gregg Cantrell

Stephen F. Austin, the "Father of Texas," has long been enshrined in the public imagination as an authentic American hero, but one who was colorless and rather remote. This book, the first major biography in more than seventy years, brings Austin's private life, motives, personality, and character into sharp focus, revealing a driven man who successfully mixed effort and cunning, idealism and pragmatism to build an illustrious career. Gregg Cantrell traces Austin's early life from his privileged boyhood as the son of the Missouri mining baron Moses Austin to his family's humiliating financial downfall after the War of 1812. He tells how in 1821 Stephen Austin inherited his father's daring plan to colonize Spanish Texas. Over the next fifteen years Austin carried out this plan with dazzling success, becoming a consummate manager, exhorter, politician, and diplomat, and playing a central role in the events that led to the Texas Revolution and the establishment of the Lone Star Republic. Within a generation, as a result largely of forces that he helped set in motion, the United States completed its drive for mastery over the North American continent.

"Dr. Gregg Cantrell takes a penetrating look into the life of one of the greatest men in Texas history and reveals to us the man behind the legend, Stephen F. Austin. Dr. Cantrell approaches Stephen F. Austin's life and the effects of his life on two nations with a sharp eye for detail. Richly entertaining from start to finish, Stephen F. Austin, Empresario of Texas gives us a deeper appreciation for our history and a better understanding of a man to whom we owe much, a man who shaped our future." Laura Bush, First Lady "An elegantly researched and reasoned portrait." Paula Mitchell Marks, New York Times Book Review "An engrossing story... A rewarding trip through history, a revealing account of one man's transformation from a businessman into a world-class statesman." Robert Nash, Dallas Morning News "Reads like a novel... A fine book." Margaret Swett Henson, Houston Chronicle "A splendid and long overdue new life of the acknowledged Father of (Anglo-) Texas." T.R. Fehrenbach, San Antonio Express-News