Book Reviews
business where "it was necessary to run fast in order to stay in
the same place."
To the "old-timers" in the industry this book will prove nos-
talgic, and to the students of business, to the historians, and to
everyone interested in authentic information concerning the
growth of a dynamic and indispensable industry and how one
corporation, Humble Oil & Refining Company, met new prob-
lems and new opportunities, this book will prove a gold mine of
information.
It has been the good fortune of this reviewer to have been
acquainted with many of the persons referred to in the text and
to have had occasion to be present at or to take part in some of
the happenings and events chronicled, and he wishes to take this
opportunity to compliment the authors on the fidelity with which
they have portrayed individuals and the accuracy with which they
have described events and actions. C. A. WARNER
The Lives of Ellis P. Bean. By Bennett Lay. Austin (University
of Texas Press), 1960. Pp. xii+227. Illustrations, index.
$4.50.
Students of Texas history are rejoicing in a new scholarly biog-
raphy of Ellis P. Bean, and especially one as painstakingly written
as this by the well-known Houston attorney, Bennett Lay. The
Lives of Ellis P. Bean, published by the University of Texas
Press, is an attractive must for the collector of Texana. To em-
phasize the title, almost every chapter has its own epitasis.
The entire American history can be searched to match this
personal saga of high adventitiousness of the run-away boy from
Tennessee who bounces from one breath-taking historic episode
to the next until his death in Mexico in 1846. Henderson King
Yoakum, the first Texas historian of real stature, edited and re-
vised The Memoir of Colonel Ellis P. Bean and published it in
1855 in Appendix No. II to the first volume of his History of
Texas from its First Settlement in 1685 to its Annexation to the
United States in 1846.
Unfortunately Bean stopped writing his Memoir in 1816 and
apparently never got back to reminiscing on paper; thus the re-
275
Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 64, July 1960 - April, 1961. Austin, Texas. The Portal to Texas History. http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101190/. Accessed May 23, 2013.
