Sons of a man who led the fight for Texas's independence, Michael and Andrew Lewis settle down on a parcel of frontier land, only to be swept up in the fury of the Mexican-American War.

T.R. Fehrenbach is a native Texan, military historian and the author of several important books about the region, but none as significant as this work, arguably the best single volume about Texas ever published. His account of America's most turbulent state offers a view that only an insider could capture. From the native tribes who lived there to the Spanish and French soldiers who wrested the territory for themselves, then to the dramatic ascension...