The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 40, July 1936 - April, 1937 Page: 163

Book Reviews and Notices

To one who believes, as the reviewer does, that a few thousand
dollars from the state's appropriation for the Centennial celebra-
tion might have been allocated wisely to the preparation of a com-
prehensive history or a dictionary of Texas biography, this work
is particularly gratifying. It will have value when the mortar and
stone of the present Centennial erections have crumbled and its
spectacles are forgotten. It is a permanent memorial to those who
made the history of Texas for the first two hundred and fifty
years of its development toward civilization.
EUGENE C. BARKER.
The Father of Texas. By Eugene C. Barker. (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1936. Pages xiii, 248.)
Professor Eugene C. Barker of the University of Texas, out-
standing authority on the life of Stephen F. Austin, has in this
volume intended primarily for younger readers given to older
and younger ones alike a stirring, vivid, and sympathetic account
of the man who submerged personal ambitions and private long-
ings for family and home for the good of the Austin Colony
which he had established at the request of his dying father, Moses
Austin, on land granted him by the Spanish Government of
Mexico.
Ten years ago, Dr. Barker published his monumental Life of
Stephen F. Austin, which ranks not only as the definitive study
of the founder of Anglo-American civilization in Texas but also
as a standard of biographical literature in the region. Later, he
edited four volumes of The Austin Papers. The new volume is
not a condensation of the larger, more scholarly biography; it is
a complete recounting from the original sources, as authentic as
the earlier work but more succinct in telling colonial events, sim-
pler in style, less detailed in recording political and diplomatic
affairs. It stresses, above all else, the character of the man.
The opening chapter, entitled "His Life in Brief," is a challenge
to the attention. Clearly, briskly, even swiftly, the story of Austin,
of the Austin Colony, and of the Texas Revolution is sketched.
Dramatic issues are hinted, stirring action is insinuated, vigorous
conflict is prophesied in these introductory pages. Reading interest
is awakened to extend over the following pages in which promise

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