Cult of Glory

The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers

De: Doug J. Swanson

Narrado por: Kaleo Griffith

“Swanson has done a crucial public service by exposing the barbarous side of the Rangers.” (The New York Times Book Review)

A 21st-century reckoning with the legendary Texas Rangers that does justice to their heroic moments while also documenting atrocities, brutality, oppression, and corruption.

The Texas Rangers came to life in 1823, when Texas was still part of Mexico. Nearly 200 years later, the Rangers are still going - one of the most famous of all law-enforcement agencies. In Cult of Glory, Doug J. Swanson has written a sweeping account of the Rangers that chronicles their epic, daring escapades while showing how the white and propertied power structures of Texas used them as enforcers, protectors, and officially sanctioned killers.

Cult of Glory begins with the Rangers' emergence as conquerors of the wild and violent Texas frontier. They fought the fierce Comanches, chased outlaws, and served in the US Army during the Mexican War. As Texas developed, the Rangers were called upon to catch rustlers, tame oil boomtowns, and patrol the perilous Texas-Mexico border. In the 1930s they began their transformation into a professionally trained police force.

Countless movies, television shows, and pulp novels have celebrated the Rangers as Wild West supermen. In many cases, they deserve their plaudits. But often the truth has been obliterated. Swanson demonstrates how the Rangers and their supporters have operated a propaganda machine that turned agency disasters and misdeeds into fables of triumph, transformed murderous rampages - including the killing of scores of Mexican civilians - into valorous feats, and elevated scoundrels to sainthood. Cult of Glory sets the record straight.

Beginning with the Texas Indian wars, Cult of Glory embraces the great, majestic arc of Lone Star history. It tells of border battles, range disputes, gunslingers, massacres, slavery, political intrigue, race riots, labor strife, and the dangerous lure of celebrity. And it reveals how legends of the American West - the real and the false - are truly made.

©2020 Doug J. Swanson (P)2020 Penguin Audio

A Historical Hit Piece

While this book offers a good counterbalance to the myth of the Rangers as so-called "white knights", it is a poor history and should be taken with a large grain of salt. Swanson privileges the veracity of some accounts over others with no explanation and fails to uphold the duty of a historian to remain a fair and removed arbiter of truth, basing each statement on available evidence and not inserting his own opinions as fact.

All this being said, I would not reccomend Cult of Glory.

Texas Rangers

A wonderful amalgam of myth, legend, optimism and disappointment
The Rangers were an exaggerated version of their times: bigoted inclined to kill rather than control, immune from prosecution and having little or no constraints a story better than the best of the lawless west
They ruled and killed with intent Indians, Blacks, outlaws, Mexicans and people who were innocent. Women, children were killed without fear of a trial or fear of punishment Linked to the KKK and on the side of the Confederacy. A very good and interesting read

Okay, not great

Not what I was expecting,

First, my issues with the narration. I am a native Texan. If you are going to narrate a book about Texas, for heaven's sake, learn the correct pronunciations of locations and historical figures. Every time he mispronounced Bowie (as if we were talking about David Bowie), I cringed. I am from Bowie, Texas, named for Jim Bowie, so I found this particularly irritating. Add Pedernales, Beauford Jester, San Jacinto, Bastrop, Mexia, and countless others--it was enough to almost make me quit listening.

Next, the book itself. I was hoping for an in depth study of the Rangers and their history, good, bad, neutral. Instead this book does a recitation, in jumpy narrative, of one event after another. Though some are put in the brutal, usually racists, historical context, there is nothing to really explain the men--their back stories (with few exceptions), for example. The passing mention of Bonnie and Clyde is a disappointment (the extra-jurisdictional use of the former Rangers, for instance), the disbanding by Ma Ferguson (and their investigation of her leading up to ot) was barely mentioned, and the 21st Century Rangers are given short notice. The Henry Lee Lucas chapter disturbs me because of a glaring error--I met Sheriff Conway in the 70's when I worked as a dispatcher one summer during my college years. I knew his son for years later. I have never heard him called "Hound Dog". I cannot help but wonder what else may be wrong in his research that I just didn't recognize.

Even so, because there are few books on the Rangers I do recommend this, with a grain of salt, for people who are interested.

A more even-handed review of Ranger history

This work includes some of the less heroic actions in the history of the Rangers than Webb's book. It makes the organization more "human" if no less legendary.

A reference to a specific incident in the book which I feel is just as applicable to the Rangers story is that their flaws aren't so much a history of the Rangers, as that of America and Texas.

Society tends to judge based on current beliefs, customs, and mores - not so much those in place at the time/place of those and the actions being judged.

Some of the legends are dispelled. But the Rangers remain no less legendary.

This has always been Texas

I love the myth of Texas and embrace it. There is nothing wrong inherently with myth making or so I thought. That is how I always envisioned the Rangers. An elite police unit that epitomizes professionalism and the best of what makes Texans so unique. You may have read more than a few reviews that called this a hack job, or a left wing screed. What I would want to ask them is are they afraid of the truth, or are they more scared that the ethos and myth of Texas may be built on a pile of horse shit. To defend the Rangers after reading this is to ignore their culpability in numerous mass murders, genocidal ethnic cleansing, and propping up white supremacy You also will choose to frame the myth and ethos of Texas in a very narrow view, from an Anglo perspective. Should we incorporate the pain that Native American's, Tejanos, slaves and then Freemen felt in Texas? My guess is that they would have very different answers from an Anglo perspective what our history means, and what is a Texan.

This is a wonderfully researched and impeccably told story. Mr. Swanson is not out to "get the Rangers", he is a truth teller. I never felt like he was applying 21st century morality or norms to the Rangers behavior. Many of the acts that he depicted can be seen as far outside the norm and beyond reproach when they occurred. He does a wonderful job throughout the story of showing the power of the victor's. The Rangers either dictated their own history, or had many enablers do it for them. What he is doing is critically important to how we understand our past. The is a story that deconstructs a myth that should have never existed, because it didn't. The mystique of the Ranges was built in embellished half truths, exaggerations, and lies and he calls them out for it. There were still men that exhibited great heroism and were selfless in the service of their interests and that of the State of Texas. The Texas Rangers protected and helped prop up a Texas that was a myth to anyone that was not a white, Christian Anglo. This book is for them as much as it is for anyone else. It can finally acknowledge the pain and misery inflicted upon them, and the Rangers should confront that as strongly as Mr. Swanson does.

Must Read(listen)!

Most balanced view of the Texas Rangers I've come across. A true tribute to their realistic place in Texas and American History. Those who view the Rangers through "rose-colored" glass or opine "that past Ranger conduct is being unfairly judged by today's more liberal standards by this author" I believe are wrong. I find that the author has made a decent effort to be fair and true to the Texas Ranger tradition! Caveat! I make this review as a simple, 10+ year Audible member/customer with no relationship whatsoever, financial or otherwise, with author, narrator, books publisher, Amazon or its many subsideraries.

Excellent

Such a terribly wonderful historical portrayal of an institutional staple in Texas law enforcement. Los Diablos Tejas!

Los rinches

I have a recollection of stories told by my grandfather, family lived for centuries in southwest Texas but was ran out of the state for their land and for being “Mexican”

Always Believe the Offenders

This book was frustrating to listen to in a number of ways. First, after almost two centuries of history, there are bound to be times when there were abuses for any law enforcement agency. Second, the Rangers have been tainted from time to time by major political interference and chicanery. Third, trying to judge the Rangers who served in 1850 by today's standards is bound to give a bad impression. People should be judged in their times, and by their times. Finally, a consistent problem with this book is that the author seems to be more than willing to believe any dissent from the Rangers' account of an incident to automatically be true.

No exceptions

None of us our exempt from facing the truth. It’s encouraging to know that when we face our faults as well as our talents, merits and gifts we can grow.