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Texas Rangers book / Ambrose Bierce

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KindaSkolarly

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Texas Rangers book / Ambrose Bierce

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I've ordered a book called The Texas Rangers and the Mexican Revolution: The Bloodiest Decade, 1910-1920. I guess it'll be next on my history reading list.

Image

I thought I'd mention the book here because some time back I did a scanning project that relates to the time and place--Presidio, Texas & Vicinity 1911-1914. Maybe somebody here will find the project interesting. I know I did. A large pdf.

https://mikesheedy.files.wordpress.com/ ... 1-1914.pdf

The American writer Ambrose Bierce disappeared while covering the Mexican Revolution. For all I know he could be in one of the pictures I scanned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce

Bierce had a fondness for O. Henry-like surprise endings. "The Man and the Snake" is a good example of that:

http://www.ambrosebierce.org/works.html

End of rambling transmission.
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Re: Texas Rangers book / Ambrose Bierce

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The title sounds interesting. I'll look for it The Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920 was a bloody period in Mexican history. In Texas, the Rangers actively fought against Mexican bandits during the period and (unfortunately) against innocent Hispanics in general along the border from El Paso to Brownsville. The term Latinos used in Texas for the Rangers was "Los Rinches". If you were a Ranger at the time, anyone of Mexican descent was suspect, guilty or not. and a lot of law abiding citizens were terrorized.

Another good book on the Mexican Revolution is "The Life and Times of Pancho Villa" by Friedrich Katz (1998). Read it and you will understand why Pancho was one of the most successful guerrilla leaders of the 20th Century.
KindaSkolarly

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Re: Texas Rangers book / Ambrose Bierce

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I've moved on from this book and can't really recommend it as cover-to-cover reading, unless you want to be stupefied with minutiae. Some people like that, but I can do without. So when I saw that it was tedious, I marked the chapters that interested me and read only those. The book has an excellent index and some tables in the back, and I'll use it as reference in the future.

That period (1910-20) is an interesting one in the history of the Texas Rangers. The Mexican Revolution was going on just across the border, and then WW1 came along and Mexico was simpatico with Germany. So the border had to be guarded. And in 1915 some Mexicans launched a small war (The Plan of San Diego) and made several raids into Texas. So the Rangers were pretty busy during that decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_of_San_Diego

I've moved on to The Conquest of Peru, by Prescott. I read his Conquest of Mexico, and the Peru book is shaping up to be a very worthy companion piece.
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