Texas: A Compact History

Texas "a whole other country"—a slogan that promotes tourism as much within the Lone Star State as elsewhere—is familiar to native Texans and those adopted sons and daughters who "got here just as quickly as they could." Texas is as varied as East Texas timberland, hundreds of miles of seashore, prairies of the Central and High Plains, and the dry desert of far West Texas.

When traveling abroad and asked, "Where are you from?" residents of forty-nine of the United States usually respond, "th...