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Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. By Gregg Cantrell. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 493. Acknowledgments, introduction, illustrations, maps, appendix, notes, essay on sources, index. $29.95.)
Prior to the publication of Gregg Cantrell's book, no full-length, scholarly consideration of Stephen Austin had appeared since the publication of Eugene Barker's 1925 biography. That three-quarter century gap seems quite surprising given the renowned place that Austin has long occupied in the annals of American westward expansion. Certainly, Barker's biography shows its age. His portrait of Austin as an unblemished pioneer hero reads now more like hagiography than biography. So, too, Barker's near exclusive focus on Austin's public career (with almost nothing revealed about Austin's personal life and private ambitions) is out of step with the practice of modern biographers. With the emergence of a "new western history" dedicated to upending the triumphalist myths of American expansion, the time would seem ripe for a critical re-examination...