This is the stuff of which legend is made, this story of the making of Texas, and Houston is one with those semilegendary characters--with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, with Marion the Swamp Fox and Ethan Allen. . . . In a sense he is too good to be true, this man who wrought such mighty deeds within the lifetime of our fathers and grandfathers; in a sense if he had not existed we should have had to create him. --from the introduction by Henry Steele Commager