What do you think?
Rate this book
Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde
The New York Times Best Seller!
“Frank Hamer, last of the old breed of Texas Rangers, has not fared well in history or popular culture. John Boessenecker now restores this incredible Ranger to his proper place alongside such fabled lawmen as Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. Here is a grand adventure story, told with grace and authority by a master historian of American law enforcement. Frank Hamer can rest easy as readers will finally learn the truth behind his amazing career, spanning the end of the Wild West through the bloody days of the gangsters.”
--Paul Andrew Hutton, author of The Apache Wars
To most Americans, Frank Hamer is known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Now, in Texas Ranger, historian John Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer’s good name and prove that he was, in fact, a classic American hero.
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.
Written by one of the most acclaimed historians of the Old West, Texas Ranger is the first biography to tell the full story of this near-mythic lawman.
“Frank Hamer, last of the old breed of Texas Rangers, has not fared well in history or popular culture. John Boessenecker now restores this incredible Ranger to his proper place alongside such fabled lawmen as Wyatt Earp and Eliot Ness. Here is a grand adventure story, told with grace and authority by a master historian of American law enforcement. Frank Hamer can rest easy as readers will finally learn the truth behind his amazing career, spanning the end of the Wild West through the bloody days of the gangsters.”
--Paul Andrew Hutton, author of The Apache Wars
To most Americans, Frank Hamer is known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Now, in Texas Ranger, historian John Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer’s good name and prove that he was, in fact, a classic American hero.
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.
Written by one of the most acclaimed historians of the Old West, Texas Ranger is the first biography to tell the full story of this near-mythic lawman.
514 pages, Hardcover
First published April 26, 2016
513 people are currently reading
1769 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
December 24, 2020
“Texas bred tough men, and none came nay tougher than Frank Hamer. He was to the Lone Star State what Wyatt Earp was to Arizona and what Wild Bill Hickok was to Kansas.…Mexican smuggler, the Ku Klux Klan, corrupt politicians, the Texas Bankers Association, and Lyndon B. Johnson. His iron courage was forged in the flames of fifty-two gun fights with desperadoes. In an era when crooked police were a dime a dozen, he could not be bought at any price. Though a white supremacist of the Jim Crow era, he saved fifteen African American from lynch mobs. He was the greatest American lawman of the twentieth century.”
Frank Hamer
If not for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, nobody but Texas historians might have remembered Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger. The Barrow gang, between 1931 and 1934, robbed stores and banks across the Midwest and the Southwest. They killed at least nine police officers and numerous civilians in their reign of crime. They were lauded by the press and loved by the public. They were two poor kids from the urban slums of West Dallas. They were never going to be famous any other way than to become Bonnie and Clyde.
Barrow and Parker were running rings around law enforcement. They were on the move constantly and never stayed in one place for very long. They had an enhanced feral sense to know when law enforcement was closing in, and even when it looked at several points they might finally be trapped, they still managed to find a way to get away. By the time the state of Texas came to Frank Hamer to ask for his help in apprehending them, there were hundreds of law enforcement personnel who were already out looking for them. Frank Hamer was retired and running a successful security business for the oil industry, so the state of Texas had to put him on the payroll as a Special Investigator. The $130 a month was laughable, but this wasn’t about the money for Hamer; this was about nine police officers who were no longer going home to their families.
We all know how the tale of Bonnie and Clyde ended, but if you don’t know the story, it is compelling reading. I really enjoyed Jeff Guinn’s book Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Guinn peels away the myth and glamour; and yet, even after being shown the warts and psychotic behavior, I still couldn’t help but feel an immense sadness for what happened to them on that road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
The memories of that day made Frank Hamer shift in his seat, too. He would talk about his other exploits, but he never wanted to talk about Bonnie and Clyde. ”Soon after the ambush, a publisher contacted him with a proposal to produce a book about his life. When he declined, the editor asked, ‘How much would $10,000 mean to you?’
Hamer’s blunt response: ‘No more than a Mexican dime.’”
Hamer was famous in Texas during his lifetime. His exploits were well recorded in the newspapers of the time. He was in fifty-two gunfights during his illustrious career, and he didn’t always emerge unscathed. Hard to say how much lead was still residing in the folds of his flesh, to be buried with him when he finally succumbed to the passage of time. Yes, even legends die, but their legacy can continue to live well beyond them. John Boessenecker took that part of the job very seriously.
The story of Hamer’s life was filled with near death experiences and derring do, but one of the most impressive things that I discovered about Hamer was his willingness to put his life on the line against angry white mobs intent on harming black prisoners. He did it time and time again. I shouldn’t have been so flabbergasted, but I must say that I was when I learned how often Texas mobs were still storming jails to perform acts of vigilante justice on accused black prisoners. I was well aware of all the atrocities perpetrated during slavery and even during Reconstruction, but it was frankly appalling to see how frequently it was still happening in the decades right after the turn of the century.
One situation, which will remain in my mind forever, happened in Sherman, Texas, in 1930. The Texas Rangers, including Hamer, were called in to protect a prisoner accused of raping a white woman. Thousands of people gathered around the court house, demanding that Hamer let them have the accused. He refused. They stormed the court house, and Hamer and the Rangers held them off by using their gunbutts to knock them back down the stairs. Hamer decided to lock the accused in the vault so that, if the mob did overcome the Rangers, at least he would have had a chance.
The mob burned down their own courthouse.
”As flames roared out of the courthouse windows, the frenzied mob changed, ‘Roast him! Roast him! Roast him! Burn him alive! Burn him alive!’” This was the sanitized version of what they were actually chanting.
It wasn’t just the many wars we fought in the twentieth century that made it one of the bloodiest centuries in history. Texans must not have had much faith in their justice system or were too impatient to see punishment administered to those they thought were guilty. Hamer failed that day, but there wasn't much he could do against people who were willing to die to see the object of their hatred destroyed. These mobs weren’t burning a rapist. They were burning a black man who had the audacity to touch a white woman. They were carrying forward the torch of racism.
During the 1948 Democratic primary for a senate seat, Frank Hamer was called in to investigate election fraud. His friend, Coke Stevenson, was announced the victor with a 362 vote lead, but as the night continued, more votes started trickling in, and somehow Lyndon B. Johnson emerged the victor by 87 votes. Hamer realized very quickly from looking at the late returns that precinct 13 in Alice, Jim Wells County, was where the biggest flip happened. When he finally acquired the tally sheet (the precinct captain did not want to give it to him), he discovered that 765 votes for Johnson had be crudely turned into 965.
Despite discovering this outright fraud, Johnson was still seated as the victor. Needless to say, Hamer was furious.
How important was this election? Johnson wouldn’t have been in a position to be tapped by John F. Kennedy for the the vice president nomination in 1960 and probably would have never been president of the United States.
Boessenecker made a good case that Hamer was the greatest lawman of all time. Hamer found himself in numerous tight spots, and most of the time he came out on top. The author didn’t shy away from writing about the times that Hamer got it wrong or when he might have even bent the very laws he was sworn to uphold.
”One day he might be remembered as the greatest lawman of the twentieth century. But history can be cruel, casting a blinding light on some deeds while relegating others to the shadows of oblivion. In our collective memory, Frank Hamer still remains the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde. Perhaps this book can help restore him to his proper place in the American story.”
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
Frank Hamer
If not for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, nobody but Texas historians might have remembered Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger. The Barrow gang, between 1931 and 1934, robbed stores and banks across the Midwest and the Southwest. They killed at least nine police officers and numerous civilians in their reign of crime. They were lauded by the press and loved by the public. They were two poor kids from the urban slums of West Dallas. They were never going to be famous any other way than to become Bonnie and Clyde.
Barrow and Parker were running rings around law enforcement. They were on the move constantly and never stayed in one place for very long. They had an enhanced feral sense to know when law enforcement was closing in, and even when it looked at several points they might finally be trapped, they still managed to find a way to get away. By the time the state of Texas came to Frank Hamer to ask for his help in apprehending them, there were hundreds of law enforcement personnel who were already out looking for them. Frank Hamer was retired and running a successful security business for the oil industry, so the state of Texas had to put him on the payroll as a Special Investigator. The $130 a month was laughable, but this wasn’t about the money for Hamer; this was about nine police officers who were no longer going home to their families.
We all know how the tale of Bonnie and Clyde ended, but if you don’t know the story, it is compelling reading. I really enjoyed Jeff Guinn’s book Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Guinn peels away the myth and glamour; and yet, even after being shown the warts and psychotic behavior, I still couldn’t help but feel an immense sadness for what happened to them on that road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
The memories of that day made Frank Hamer shift in his seat, too. He would talk about his other exploits, but he never wanted to talk about Bonnie and Clyde. ”Soon after the ambush, a publisher contacted him with a proposal to produce a book about his life. When he declined, the editor asked, ‘How much would $10,000 mean to you?’
Hamer’s blunt response: ‘No more than a Mexican dime.’”
Hamer was famous in Texas during his lifetime. His exploits were well recorded in the newspapers of the time. He was in fifty-two gunfights during his illustrious career, and he didn’t always emerge unscathed. Hard to say how much lead was still residing in the folds of his flesh, to be buried with him when he finally succumbed to the passage of time. Yes, even legends die, but their legacy can continue to live well beyond them. John Boessenecker took that part of the job very seriously.
The story of Hamer’s life was filled with near death experiences and derring do, but one of the most impressive things that I discovered about Hamer was his willingness to put his life on the line against angry white mobs intent on harming black prisoners. He did it time and time again. I shouldn’t have been so flabbergasted, but I must say that I was when I learned how often Texas mobs were still storming jails to perform acts of vigilante justice on accused black prisoners. I was well aware of all the atrocities perpetrated during slavery and even during Reconstruction, but it was frankly appalling to see how frequently it was still happening in the decades right after the turn of the century.
One situation, which will remain in my mind forever, happened in Sherman, Texas, in 1930. The Texas Rangers, including Hamer, were called in to protect a prisoner accused of raping a white woman. Thousands of people gathered around the court house, demanding that Hamer let them have the accused. He refused. They stormed the court house, and Hamer and the Rangers held them off by using their gunbutts to knock them back down the stairs. Hamer decided to lock the accused in the vault so that, if the mob did overcome the Rangers, at least he would have had a chance.
The mob burned down their own courthouse.
”As flames roared out of the courthouse windows, the frenzied mob changed, ‘Roast him! Roast him! Roast him! Burn him alive! Burn him alive!’” This was the sanitized version of what they were actually chanting.
It wasn’t just the many wars we fought in the twentieth century that made it one of the bloodiest centuries in history. Texans must not have had much faith in their justice system or were too impatient to see punishment administered to those they thought were guilty. Hamer failed that day, but there wasn't much he could do against people who were willing to die to see the object of their hatred destroyed. These mobs weren’t burning a rapist. They were burning a black man who had the audacity to touch a white woman. They were carrying forward the torch of racism.
During the 1948 Democratic primary for a senate seat, Frank Hamer was called in to investigate election fraud. His friend, Coke Stevenson, was announced the victor with a 362 vote lead, but as the night continued, more votes started trickling in, and somehow Lyndon B. Johnson emerged the victor by 87 votes. Hamer realized very quickly from looking at the late returns that precinct 13 in Alice, Jim Wells County, was where the biggest flip happened. When he finally acquired the tally sheet (the precinct captain did not want to give it to him), he discovered that 765 votes for Johnson had be crudely turned into 965.
Despite discovering this outright fraud, Johnson was still seated as the victor. Needless to say, Hamer was furious.
How important was this election? Johnson wouldn’t have been in a position to be tapped by John F. Kennedy for the the vice president nomination in 1960 and probably would have never been president of the United States.
Boessenecker made a good case that Hamer was the greatest lawman of all time. Hamer found himself in numerous tight spots, and most of the time he came out on top. The author didn’t shy away from writing about the times that Hamer got it wrong or when he might have even bent the very laws he was sworn to uphold.
”One day he might be remembered as the greatest lawman of the twentieth century. But history can be cruel, casting a blinding light on some deeds while relegating others to the shadows of oblivion. In our collective memory, Frank Hamer still remains the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde. Perhaps this book can help restore him to his proper place in the American story.”
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten
June 28, 2025
I bought this book years ago for my Kindle after watching a movie – not the older 60s version – of Bonnie and Clyde, wanting to read more about the man who is most known for and is credited with their demise. This is a very long biography and there is quite a lot of Texas history from the early 1900s through 1940s. Frank Hamer was an upstanding cowboy from west Texas who was an excellent horse rider and a stupendous shot with his rifle. This biography takes us through his adult life and his up and down history with the Texas Rangers. He was paid only $40 per month back in 1906, not enough to really live on, but the idea of being a law man and protecting others appealed to Frank Hamer. He believed in justice and always was a man of his word. He was a tough man who was sensible in his position.
Most people will remember him as a villain because of the Hollywood portrayal of him in the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. John Boessenecker has done excellent research delving into the primary sources from the records to provide a comprehensive biography of Frank Hamer and has restored his name and shown that he was actually an American hero. His career as a Texas Ranger demonstrated his courage, skill with shooting, and his aptitude for investigation. Some of the things he was known to have accomplished were combatting the Ku Klux Klan, protecting prisoners and other people from lynch mobs, and bringing law and order to the oil boom towns which were chaotic and rife with bootlegging and gambling. He participated in at least 50 gunfights and is said to have only lost one prisoner that he was protecting. He even investigate illegal arms smuggling along the Rio Grande. And another interesting operation he fought against was the Texas banker’s Association’s reward of $5,000 for dead bank robbers. You can certainly see the problems with that type of reward! He fought against election fraud many times and one of the last ones involved Lyndon B. Johnson’s senatorial bid in which LBJ got away with winning that election fraudulently!
An interesting book that read on the dry side for my nonfiction tastes. Hamer chose not to write his memoirs. This author had accounts from the records of the Texas Rangers which makes it very accurate, yet its thorough, methodical style was just not as readable for me. I enjoy a narrative non-fiction much more.
Most people will remember him as a villain because of the Hollywood portrayal of him in the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde. John Boessenecker has done excellent research delving into the primary sources from the records to provide a comprehensive biography of Frank Hamer and has restored his name and shown that he was actually an American hero. His career as a Texas Ranger demonstrated his courage, skill with shooting, and his aptitude for investigation. Some of the things he was known to have accomplished were combatting the Ku Klux Klan, protecting prisoners and other people from lynch mobs, and bringing law and order to the oil boom towns which were chaotic and rife with bootlegging and gambling. He participated in at least 50 gunfights and is said to have only lost one prisoner that he was protecting. He even investigate illegal arms smuggling along the Rio Grande. And another interesting operation he fought against was the Texas banker’s Association’s reward of $5,000 for dead bank robbers. You can certainly see the problems with that type of reward! He fought against election fraud many times and one of the last ones involved Lyndon B. Johnson’s senatorial bid in which LBJ got away with winning that election fraudulently!
An interesting book that read on the dry side for my nonfiction tastes. Hamer chose not to write his memoirs. This author had accounts from the records of the Texas Rangers which makes it very accurate, yet its thorough, methodical style was just not as readable for me. I enjoy a narrative non-fiction much more.
January 31, 2018
A very well researched book about a true lawman hero who survived over 50 gunfights. In the movie, Bonnie and Clyde, he was said to have been captured by the Barrow Gang and put in a rowboat in handcuffs but that never occurred and his widow successfully sued the studio for that slanderous lie.
Another fascinating part was when he sued Lyndon Baines Johnson when he ran for US Senator for stuffing the ballot box. While Frank lost that case in court, in 1970 a coconspirator confessed to cheating on enough ballots for LBJ to win the election !!
Another fascinating part was when he sued Lyndon Baines Johnson when he ran for US Senator for stuffing the ballot box. While Frank lost that case in court, in 1970 a coconspirator confessed to cheating on enough ballots for LBJ to win the election !!
March 3, 2019
Frank Hamer certainly had an interesting life. He started riding a horse chasing cattle rustlers, opposed the KKK, spent the Prohibition fighting bootleggers, worked as a constable or sheriff in various cities and hunted down and killed Bonnie and Clyde. He was not always a Ranger because the funding for them seemed to be at the whim of whoever was Governor at the time. So Hamer was in and out of the Rangers many times. Tough, brave and a deadly shot, perfect qualities for the job.
After the first 200 pages a lot of the stories were very similar so I found myself skimming a lot but for anyone interested in the Texas Rangers or Frank Hamer this is a well researched and detailed book.
After the first 200 pages a lot of the stories were very similar so I found myself skimming a lot but for anyone interested in the Texas Rangers or Frank Hamer this is a well researched and detailed book.
September 21, 2020
My Thoughts:
The 2019 film, The Highwaymen is about Frank Hamer and Maney Gault’s hunt for Bonnie and Clyde. I recommend this film if you have not seen it. It’s currently playing on Netflix. But, consider this film to be a Frank Hamer, basic class 101 of the true historical person.
If you decide to visit Waco, Texas to see Chip and Joanna Gaines’s Magnolia Market, swing by the Texas Ranger Museum. The museum is easy to find. It’s on the north bound side of I-35 near the Brazos River. I don’t know what the hours are because of COVID, but it is an easy to access, park, and walk through museum. I highly recommend the place for history buffs.
The first thing I want to mention is this book is not just Frank Hamer’s hunt and killing of Bonnie and Clyde. This part of the story is in the later part of the book. This story is about Frank Hamer’s life. This story is about Texas history during the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century. I’ve read a few reviewers didn’t like reading about his whole life, but only wanted to read about Bonnie and Clyde.
What I love about this book:
~A strong account of Texas history in the last of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.
~Detailed research of Frank Hamer, law enforcement, racial injustice, Texas ranching, the people groups in Texas, Texas politics, lynching history, Jim Crow laws, Mexican Border War, and the Democratic National Convention in Houston-1928.
~Information about Bonnie and Clyde that is accurate, not speculation or legend.
~The personal life of Frank Hamer.
Surprises:
~The Sherman Texas Riot in 1930. I’d not heard about this horrible history.
~The lynching history of blacks in 1920s Texas.
~I didn’t know the KKK also abducted and abused white citizens. If a white man was an adulterer he was subject to abduction, flogging, or tar and feather.
~Rape was a capital offense until 1972. An interesting article about this: Timeline.
~A brief history of Miriam A. Ferguson (Ma Ferguson).
Final Thoughts:
~The Epic Life of Frank Hamer is told with honesty about a historical figure who was not perfect; yet, he was humble and had great courage.
~The book is detailed and graphic. This is not a story about a tame Texas.
~There is tension and conflict both with Hamer and the environment.
~I feel the title aptly defines the story. Frank Hamer had an epic life.
The 2019 film, The Highwaymen is about Frank Hamer and Maney Gault’s hunt for Bonnie and Clyde. I recommend this film if you have not seen it. It’s currently playing on Netflix. But, consider this film to be a Frank Hamer, basic class 101 of the true historical person.
If you decide to visit Waco, Texas to see Chip and Joanna Gaines’s Magnolia Market, swing by the Texas Ranger Museum. The museum is easy to find. It’s on the north bound side of I-35 near the Brazos River. I don’t know what the hours are because of COVID, but it is an easy to access, park, and walk through museum. I highly recommend the place for history buffs.
The first thing I want to mention is this book is not just Frank Hamer’s hunt and killing of Bonnie and Clyde. This part of the story is in the later part of the book. This story is about Frank Hamer’s life. This story is about Texas history during the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century. I’ve read a few reviewers didn’t like reading about his whole life, but only wanted to read about Bonnie and Clyde.
What I love about this book:
~A strong account of Texas history in the last of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century.
~Detailed research of Frank Hamer, law enforcement, racial injustice, Texas ranching, the people groups in Texas, Texas politics, lynching history, Jim Crow laws, Mexican Border War, and the Democratic National Convention in Houston-1928.
~Information about Bonnie and Clyde that is accurate, not speculation or legend.
~The personal life of Frank Hamer.
Surprises:
~The Sherman Texas Riot in 1930. I’d not heard about this horrible history.
~The lynching history of blacks in 1920s Texas.
~I didn’t know the KKK also abducted and abused white citizens. If a white man was an adulterer he was subject to abduction, flogging, or tar and feather.
~Rape was a capital offense until 1972. An interesting article about this: Timeline.
~A brief history of Miriam A. Ferguson (Ma Ferguson).
Final Thoughts:
~The Epic Life of Frank Hamer is told with honesty about a historical figure who was not perfect; yet, he was humble and had great courage.
~The book is detailed and graphic. This is not a story about a tame Texas.
~There is tension and conflict both with Hamer and the environment.
~I feel the title aptly defines the story. Frank Hamer had an epic life.
April 16, 2018
Most of us are familiar with the academy award winning movie “Bonnie And Clyde” from the 1960’s. If you have not seen it, I highly recommend it. At one point in the movie, the glamorized Bonnie and Clyde capture a Texas Ranger and humiliate him. That Ranger is Frank Hamer (pronounced Hay-mer) who is near the end of his career. This current book gives an account of the career of Frank Hamer.
Personally, I do not generally enjoy non-fiction as much as fiction but sometimes I come across a winner such as Undaunted Courage, Crazy Horse And Custer, Blood And Thunder, or Ghost Soldiers. This book is in that class and in October 2018 will be the partial basis of a Netflix film “The Highwaymen”, starring Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer and Woody Harrelson as his fellow Ranger.
The 3-page prologue caught my interest immediately. The author, John Boessenecker, then proceeds to give an unvarnished look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Hamer’s career. Early on, Hamer is referred to as the greatest lawman of the 20th century . . . and the book goes on to show He was unrivaled. While Hamer may have been most famous for his killing of Bonnie and Clyde, his life prior to that episode was very danger-filled. By the time the book reaches Bonnie and Clyde, Hamer has already achieved a stellar career. Fortunately, the book does not make Hamer the bad guy and Bonnie and Clyde into the good guys. It paints both Bonnie and Clyde as low-life, scum . . . killers of innocent people. And this episode with them is relegated to a couple of chapters near the end of your read.
Near the end of the book, Hamer is again referred to as possibly the greatest lawman of the 20th century. When you finish with this one, I feel you will agree he could not possibly have had a rival to that title.
Personally, I do not generally enjoy non-fiction as much as fiction but sometimes I come across a winner such as Undaunted Courage, Crazy Horse And Custer, Blood And Thunder, or Ghost Soldiers. This book is in that class and in October 2018 will be the partial basis of a Netflix film “The Highwaymen”, starring Kevin Costner as Frank Hamer and Woody Harrelson as his fellow Ranger.
The 3-page prologue caught my interest immediately. The author, John Boessenecker, then proceeds to give an unvarnished look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Hamer’s career. Early on, Hamer is referred to as the greatest lawman of the 20th century . . . and the book goes on to show He was unrivaled. While Hamer may have been most famous for his killing of Bonnie and Clyde, his life prior to that episode was very danger-filled. By the time the book reaches Bonnie and Clyde, Hamer has already achieved a stellar career. Fortunately, the book does not make Hamer the bad guy and Bonnie and Clyde into the good guys. It paints both Bonnie and Clyde as low-life, scum . . . killers of innocent people. And this episode with them is relegated to a couple of chapters near the end of your read.
Near the end of the book, Hamer is again referred to as possibly the greatest lawman of the 20th century. When you finish with this one, I feel you will agree he could not possibly have had a rival to that title.
May 6, 2022
What a great book.
This biography of the legendary Frank Hamer was really good. Hamer is known as the lawman that killed Bonnie and Clyde, but I had no idea of his other exploits that includes much of the history of the Texas Rangers though the turn of the century into the 1930's. But it dives deeper into a man that was a great lawman, but also still a "white supremacist" (I hate that the term is so freely today) as he helped and protected blacks but always thought they were inferior. Never any evidence he treated them badly, but also didn't treat them as equals.
Hamer's early Ranger career in West Texas chasing Mexican Bandits, patrolling lawless lands, rustlers, violent crime in small towns, transferring prisoners', etc, then on to East Texas and was surprised to read the Rangers' role which included a lot of protection of black prisoners against mobs and potential lynching. The myth of the "One Riot, One Ranger" was discussed a lot, but many times it was 2-3 rangers working with local law enforcement as a back-up and/or reinforcements for the local sheriff protecting prisoners. Many times these local lawmen wanted nothing to do with the conflict as their town relationships, families, and friends were usually part of the mobs.
Particularly interesting is his role and the whole event of the George Hughes lynching and the mob violence in Sherman, TX (1931?) where Hamer actually did shoot the legs of some of the mob, but the mob burned down the courthouse with the black prisoner within and then paraded the burned body later. Hamer took heat as the first Ranger to lose a prisoner to a mob. Terrible event in Texas History and I want to find a book on that.
Hamer was also involved in the legendary LBJ theft of the Democratic Senate primary in South Texas with stuffed ballot boxes as Coke Stevenson sent Hamer to investigate. and he was publicly lambasted by LBJ and later sued LBJ.
The book also showed the politics that were played with the Rangers as in IF they did any investigating for the sitting Governor, then the next Governor would immediately clean out Ranger leadership (captains). Governors also used the Rangers to hire some of their friends/supporters, which made for a diminished level of experience & professionalism within its ranks.
Overall a great book. Very interesting. Kept moving with great stories.
This biography of the legendary Frank Hamer was really good. Hamer is known as the lawman that killed Bonnie and Clyde, but I had no idea of his other exploits that includes much of the history of the Texas Rangers though the turn of the century into the 1930's. But it dives deeper into a man that was a great lawman, but also still a "white supremacist" (I hate that the term is so freely today) as he helped and protected blacks but always thought they were inferior. Never any evidence he treated them badly, but also didn't treat them as equals.
Hamer's early Ranger career in West Texas chasing Mexican Bandits, patrolling lawless lands, rustlers, violent crime in small towns, transferring prisoners', etc, then on to East Texas and was surprised to read the Rangers' role which included a lot of protection of black prisoners against mobs and potential lynching. The myth of the "One Riot, One Ranger" was discussed a lot, but many times it was 2-3 rangers working with local law enforcement as a back-up and/or reinforcements for the local sheriff protecting prisoners. Many times these local lawmen wanted nothing to do with the conflict as their town relationships, families, and friends were usually part of the mobs.
Particularly interesting is his role and the whole event of the George Hughes lynching and the mob violence in Sherman, TX (1931?) where Hamer actually did shoot the legs of some of the mob, but the mob burned down the courthouse with the black prisoner within and then paraded the burned body later. Hamer took heat as the first Ranger to lose a prisoner to a mob. Terrible event in Texas History and I want to find a book on that.
Hamer was also involved in the legendary LBJ theft of the Democratic Senate primary in South Texas with stuffed ballot boxes as Coke Stevenson sent Hamer to investigate. and he was publicly lambasted by LBJ and later sued LBJ.
The book also showed the politics that were played with the Rangers as in IF they did any investigating for the sitting Governor, then the next Governor would immediately clean out Ranger leadership (captains). Governors also used the Rangers to hire some of their friends/supporters, which made for a diminished level of experience & professionalism within its ranks.
Overall a great book. Very interesting. Kept moving with great stories.
May 3, 2019
The life of Texas Ranger legend Frank Hamer has been taken on before, but John Boessenecker has presented the most definitive account of a man who embodied American law enforcement at its foundations. Written from such a perspective it still begs a few questions, largely unanswerable at this time, resolved by giving Hamer the benefit of the doubts. But on the whole it’s a fair take of a basically decent man living in a still-unsettled semi-frontier; whose career spanned the fast horse and six-shooter to the airplane and machine gun. Whether it was border rebels, lynchers and Klansmen, Bonnie & Clyde, moonshiners or labor militants, to Hamer they were equal challenges to order. There was no doubt in his mind that the order he imposed encompassed justice, law and moral right.
My personal path and Captain Hamer’s have “crossed” three times, though the man died two months before I was born. I grew up on the Bonnie and Clyde story before their enshrinement in the same film that demonized Hamer. My grandfather owned a farm between Castor and Ashland, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana; personally knew the Methvin family (I still have a rocking chair old Ivan “Ivy” Methvin made for my grandfather); and was a personal friend and “special deputy” for parish sheriff Henderson Jordan. He saw said couple driving to hideaways, even talked to them. “They never bothered no one around here,” was his judgment, and thought their ambush death was “cowardly.” He also had no use for Capt. Hamer, whom he thought an overbearing “big shot.” (Hamer, one of the Rangers' expert marksmen, would have agreed in his own way.)
More professional encounters began when I researched the Sherman riot of 1930. Here Boessenecker’s own prodigious effort shows: while I disagree with a few details, his account is spot-on, using published sources I’ve seen, some official documents I haven’t (though I did encounter a few surviving participants back in the ‘80s who shared inside perspectives on the QT.) I can attest to the defaced local references in Sherman to what was a closely-guarded non-secret for over sixty years. Enough time has passed. In this home-town insurrection – no mere lynching – Hamer became the first Ranger to lose his man; for all his grand-standing at the county courthouse with threats of “many funerals in Sherman,” which some believe provoked as much violence as the rioters, he became trapped in the Grayson County jail like a latter-day Alamo until rescued by the cavalry, in the form of the Texas National Guard. Boessenecker’s opinion that Hamer should have acted with greater force in saving the Sherman black community from arson is unrealistic: this could not have been done without great lethal force to civilians. The rioters believed that Hamer’s Rangers were under an executive “Don’t Shoot” order, which he violated when making his courthouse threat. The Rangers would have gotten the worst in a crowd of thousands with armed members. The political blowback would have made it as great a scandal as the lynching-riot; nor would Hamer have embarrassed his anti-Klan friend, Governor Dan Moody, with state bloodshed in an election year.
The irrepressible Capt. Hamer emerged again when researching the San Diego “plot” of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. His actions here have always been murky. Boessenecker takes great pains to assure us that Hamer disapproved of fellow-Ranger Captain Henry Ransom’s death squad “evaporations” of Hispanic rebel suspects/sympathizers. (One wonders why Latin American “special forces” didn’t use the term.) But Hamer never talked much about it, and his public verbal threats and stalking of Tejano activist Jose Canales seem the actions of a man with more on his mind than just professional insult to Rangerdom. This was an era when law enforcement was the law itself on the ground with the full backing of courts, politicians, and business, unused to being questioned or accountable for deeds in the field. His answer to the “Lives Matter” movement would have been, “I agree, so don’t make me pull Old Lucky on you.”
Boessenecker takes us through the swamp of Texas politics, which sunk Hamer’s pirogue more than once; reassures us that Hamer was no racist in an era of white supremacy – though he shared the patronizing attitudes of all white men of authority in that era. His strike-breaking services for Big Texas Oil (rationalized as “anti-Communism”) made him no friend of labor or Lyndon Johnson. Hamer was the product of a pre-industrial, pre-urban world in which he mentally still resided, despite the evolving society around him: the fate of old-timers in an always-changing era.
Hamer’s career underscores an essential fact overlooked by most: that the political state is a creation of the city, imposed on surrounding topography only by human force. In the feudal state of nature that force becomes incarnated in the persons who enforce it. Echoing Louis the Sun-King, Frank Hamer was the State of Texas in a literal sense in the still-open range of his youth; aiding the transition to “civil society” was as thorny as installing electricity and running water. His mission was to clear land and lay foundations, not choose the color of the finished construction or the direction – left or right – it faces, though he shared the preferences of the men in power in Austin and Dallas and the King Ranch.
As stated, Boessenecker’s meticulous investment of the Hamer story shows his legal talent in case exposition; but you can catch slips of unchecked statements. Boessenecker gets confused occasionally on directions: Honey Grove, Texas, is forty miles east of Sherman, not west; and Arcadia, Louisiana, is fifty-three miles east of Shreveport, again not west; while Ashland is fifty-five miles southeast of Shreveport – not west. Don’t let small glitches prevent you from enjoying a well-presented brief for the prosecution.
My personal path and Captain Hamer’s have “crossed” three times, though the man died two months before I was born. I grew up on the Bonnie and Clyde story before their enshrinement in the same film that demonized Hamer. My grandfather owned a farm between Castor and Ashland, in Bienville Parish, Louisiana; personally knew the Methvin family (I still have a rocking chair old Ivan “Ivy” Methvin made for my grandfather); and was a personal friend and “special deputy” for parish sheriff Henderson Jordan. He saw said couple driving to hideaways, even talked to them. “They never bothered no one around here,” was his judgment, and thought their ambush death was “cowardly.” He also had no use for Capt. Hamer, whom he thought an overbearing “big shot.” (Hamer, one of the Rangers' expert marksmen, would have agreed in his own way.)
More professional encounters began when I researched the Sherman riot of 1930. Here Boessenecker’s own prodigious effort shows: while I disagree with a few details, his account is spot-on, using published sources I’ve seen, some official documents I haven’t (though I did encounter a few surviving participants back in the ‘80s who shared inside perspectives on the QT.) I can attest to the defaced local references in Sherman to what was a closely-guarded non-secret for over sixty years. Enough time has passed. In this home-town insurrection – no mere lynching – Hamer became the first Ranger to lose his man; for all his grand-standing at the county courthouse with threats of “many funerals in Sherman,” which some believe provoked as much violence as the rioters, he became trapped in the Grayson County jail like a latter-day Alamo until rescued by the cavalry, in the form of the Texas National Guard. Boessenecker’s opinion that Hamer should have acted with greater force in saving the Sherman black community from arson is unrealistic: this could not have been done without great lethal force to civilians. The rioters believed that Hamer’s Rangers were under an executive “Don’t Shoot” order, which he violated when making his courthouse threat. The Rangers would have gotten the worst in a crowd of thousands with armed members. The political blowback would have made it as great a scandal as the lynching-riot; nor would Hamer have embarrassed his anti-Klan friend, Governor Dan Moody, with state bloodshed in an election year.
The irrepressible Capt. Hamer emerged again when researching the San Diego “plot” of the Lower Rio Grande Valley. His actions here have always been murky. Boessenecker takes great pains to assure us that Hamer disapproved of fellow-Ranger Captain Henry Ransom’s death squad “evaporations” of Hispanic rebel suspects/sympathizers. (One wonders why Latin American “special forces” didn’t use the term.) But Hamer never talked much about it, and his public verbal threats and stalking of Tejano activist Jose Canales seem the actions of a man with more on his mind than just professional insult to Rangerdom. This was an era when law enforcement was the law itself on the ground with the full backing of courts, politicians, and business, unused to being questioned or accountable for deeds in the field. His answer to the “Lives Matter” movement would have been, “I agree, so don’t make me pull Old Lucky on you.”
Boessenecker takes us through the swamp of Texas politics, which sunk Hamer’s pirogue more than once; reassures us that Hamer was no racist in an era of white supremacy – though he shared the patronizing attitudes of all white men of authority in that era. His strike-breaking services for Big Texas Oil (rationalized as “anti-Communism”) made him no friend of labor or Lyndon Johnson. Hamer was the product of a pre-industrial, pre-urban world in which he mentally still resided, despite the evolving society around him: the fate of old-timers in an always-changing era.
Hamer’s career underscores an essential fact overlooked by most: that the political state is a creation of the city, imposed on surrounding topography only by human force. In the feudal state of nature that force becomes incarnated in the persons who enforce it. Echoing Louis the Sun-King, Frank Hamer was the State of Texas in a literal sense in the still-open range of his youth; aiding the transition to “civil society” was as thorny as installing electricity and running water. His mission was to clear land and lay foundations, not choose the color of the finished construction or the direction – left or right – it faces, though he shared the preferences of the men in power in Austin and Dallas and the King Ranch.
As stated, Boessenecker’s meticulous investment of the Hamer story shows his legal talent in case exposition; but you can catch slips of unchecked statements. Boessenecker gets confused occasionally on directions: Honey Grove, Texas, is forty miles east of Sherman, not west; and Arcadia, Louisiana, is fifty-three miles east of Shreveport, again not west; while Ashland is fifty-five miles southeast of Shreveport – not west. Don’t let small glitches prevent you from enjoying a well-presented brief for the prosecution.
September 21, 2025
Frank Hamer’s story is another of those “truth is stranger than fiction.” Hamer was a larger than life character involved in so much Western history, from the Mexican wars to prohibition, protecting African Americans from lynch mobs to finally (and most famously) tracking down and killing Bonnie and Clyde.
This story reads like a novel and paints the picture of a real American hero- complex and a product of his time, but a man of moral conviction who was devoted to justice.
Would highly recommend this one.
This story reads like a novel and paints the picture of a real American hero- complex and a product of his time, but a man of moral conviction who was devoted to justice.
Would highly recommend this one.
July 16, 2019
It's rare for me to listen to a book this long, but this one kept me engaged and interested.
August 26, 2019
I read this book a couple years ago and really enjoyed it. Frank Hamer started his Ranger career in west Texas then was assigned to east Texas. I enjoyed reading the historical stories of the towns that I live near. Gray book, highly recommend oof you are interested in this period of history.
August 31, 2024
Very fascinating and shines light on a man who stood for what he believes to be right.
July 20, 2021
The author refers to Hamer as "the greatest lawman of the 20th century" and after reading this book I'd be inclined to agree. Hamer was a legendary Texas Ranger from the waning days of the old West on horseback to the bootlegger and gangster days of the 1930s. He was a crack shot and had a strong moral belief that the law should be upheld, and he stood down lynch mobs and bandits with his pistol and his reputation. If all you know about Bonnie and Clyde is from the movie, this account gives you a more realistic view of the situation and makes it clear that the person portrayed in the movie bears no resemblance to the actual Frank Hamer. His career came to an end after he lost a legal fight over the results of clearly crooked voting results he was hired to investigate and that happened to be the election that put LBJ on the path to power.
July 28, 2019
Damn, this book.
Frank Hamer is not a name that's familiar to most, but he is, as the subtitle of the book states, the man who engineered the deaths of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, arguably the two most legendary American outlaws of the 20th century. However, while Bonnie and Clyde have become metaphorical to any lovers-on-the-run duo and have inspired such film's as 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde," starring the ultra-glamorous Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Frank Hamer is seen as he is portrayed by Denver Pyle in Arthur Hill's film: an incompetent, beer-bellied fuddy-duddy, an out-of-touch, bumbling cowboy who should have been concerned with "protectin' the rights'a poor folk" rather than attempting to ruin Barrow and Parker's bank-robbing, mass-murdering fun.
Frank Hamer is as different from Denver Pyle as Adelaide Kane is from Mary Queen of Scots, only in the opposite direction. Frank Hamer is the real deal, the living embodiment of the Texas Ranger. Raised in the Texas Hill Country, Hamer survived a shotgun blast at age eighteen, joined the Rangers at the tender age of 21, and spent the next 50 years surviving and whupping wholesale ass through one chaotic, hilariously dangerous situation after another. This magnificent bastard was a town marshal at age 25 (remember what you were doing at age 25? Yeah, nursing a hangover and hoping that girl with the lower-back tattoo would call you, you alcoholic fuck), one of the worst enemies the Ku Klux Klan ever had, and a gunslinging, nail-spitting, badass border-warrior, fighting Pancho Villa's boys while attempting to stop smuggling and banditry along the Texas/Mexico border.
But don't think that Frank was all grit and no heart. While serving along the border, Ranger Hamer fell crazy-in-love with the sultry rich girl Gladys Johnson, whose family was embroiled in a blood feud with the Sims family, Gladys's former in-laws. Although Hamer had always valued duty over booty, he decided, know what? I'm Frank Hamer, fuck it, I do what I want. Despite being told to remain neutral, this love-struck, gunfighting SOB became an exclusive bodyguard for the Johnson family, ostensibly because he felt that the Sims clan posed a real threat to public safety (sure, Frank) but really because the Johnson family probably had a barn full of hay and Gladys was a whole lot of fun to roll in it with. Gladys herself was a don't-fuck-with-me South Texas hell-on-heels who had helped her brother shoot and kill her ex-husband. Then, these two crazy kids, Frank and Gladys, after surviving a murder plot worthy of a Coen Brothers movie, helped each other out in a shoot out with the ex-Texas Ranger bodyguard of the Sims family, during which Frank was shot multiple times and still managed to kill the guy who shot him. He then refused to let his buddy kill the partner of the guy who'd shot him because the other guy was running and he couldn't stand to see a man shot in the back. Few months later, Frank and Gladys got married, and stayed married for over 40 years.
He did all of this, mind you, before he'd ever even heard of Bonnie and Clyde. You can't make this shit up.
What John Boessenecker has done is dig up details on the greatest lawman you've never heard of. Instead of Chuck Norris jokes, there should be Frank Hamer jokes. I came away from this well-written, hair-raising biography with a new appreciation for a man who not even the wildly entertaining Netflix film "The Highwaymen" could truly do justice. If you want to read about a true American hero, a guy who woke up in the morning and pissed excellence, then pick up this book, because it's probably one of the best books about a cop you'll ever read.
And you can take that to the bank...the blood bank.
Dig it.
Frank Hamer is not a name that's familiar to most, but he is, as the subtitle of the book states, the man who engineered the deaths of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, arguably the two most legendary American outlaws of the 20th century. However, while Bonnie and Clyde have become metaphorical to any lovers-on-the-run duo and have inspired such film's as 1967's "Bonnie and Clyde," starring the ultra-glamorous Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Frank Hamer is seen as he is portrayed by Denver Pyle in Arthur Hill's film: an incompetent, beer-bellied fuddy-duddy, an out-of-touch, bumbling cowboy who should have been concerned with "protectin' the rights'a poor folk" rather than attempting to ruin Barrow and Parker's bank-robbing, mass-murdering fun.
Frank Hamer is as different from Denver Pyle as Adelaide Kane is from Mary Queen of Scots, only in the opposite direction. Frank Hamer is the real deal, the living embodiment of the Texas Ranger. Raised in the Texas Hill Country, Hamer survived a shotgun blast at age eighteen, joined the Rangers at the tender age of 21, and spent the next 50 years surviving and whupping wholesale ass through one chaotic, hilariously dangerous situation after another. This magnificent bastard was a town marshal at age 25 (remember what you were doing at age 25? Yeah, nursing a hangover and hoping that girl with the lower-back tattoo would call you, you alcoholic fuck), one of the worst enemies the Ku Klux Klan ever had, and a gunslinging, nail-spitting, badass border-warrior, fighting Pancho Villa's boys while attempting to stop smuggling and banditry along the Texas/Mexico border.
But don't think that Frank was all grit and no heart. While serving along the border, Ranger Hamer fell crazy-in-love with the sultry rich girl Gladys Johnson, whose family was embroiled in a blood feud with the Sims family, Gladys's former in-laws. Although Hamer had always valued duty over booty, he decided, know what? I'm Frank Hamer, fuck it, I do what I want. Despite being told to remain neutral, this love-struck, gunfighting SOB became an exclusive bodyguard for the Johnson family, ostensibly because he felt that the Sims clan posed a real threat to public safety (sure, Frank) but really because the Johnson family probably had a barn full of hay and Gladys was a whole lot of fun to roll in it with. Gladys herself was a don't-fuck-with-me South Texas hell-on-heels who had helped her brother shoot and kill her ex-husband. Then, these two crazy kids, Frank and Gladys, after surviving a murder plot worthy of a Coen Brothers movie, helped each other out in a shoot out with the ex-Texas Ranger bodyguard of the Sims family, during which Frank was shot multiple times and still managed to kill the guy who shot him. He then refused to let his buddy kill the partner of the guy who'd shot him because the other guy was running and he couldn't stand to see a man shot in the back. Few months later, Frank and Gladys got married, and stayed married for over 40 years.
He did all of this, mind you, before he'd ever even heard of Bonnie and Clyde. You can't make this shit up.
What John Boessenecker has done is dig up details on the greatest lawman you've never heard of. Instead of Chuck Norris jokes, there should be Frank Hamer jokes. I came away from this well-written, hair-raising biography with a new appreciation for a man who not even the wildly entertaining Netflix film "The Highwaymen" could truly do justice. If you want to read about a true American hero, a guy who woke up in the morning and pissed excellence, then pick up this book, because it's probably one of the best books about a cop you'll ever read.
And you can take that to the bank...the blood bank.
Dig it.
December 8, 2016
This book is a biography of Frank Hamer. Despite the title, he was not a Texas Ranger his entire life, but he certainly spent much of his time as one. He first joined the Texas Rangers in 1906 as a young man, and most of the book is about his adventures in keeping the peace and enforcing the law. These adventures range from protecting blacks from lynching mobs, catching horse or cattle thieves, stopping illegal goods from coming over the boarder from Mexico, fighting in the Bandit War, getting involved in a blood feud, helping protect Texan oil interests, investigating election fraud, and more. I was surprised by how many details still exist since Frank Hamer "left behind scant correspondence and no diaries or journals." But his story "lives on in moldering court records, yellowed newspapers, obscure archives, and forgotten memoirs of his fellow lawmen."
The author carefully researched Hamer's life. He made an effort to help us understand Frank Hamer in his historical context and tried to give readers a balanced view of the man. Hamer's temper got him in trouble at times, and his methods were sometimes rough but were what got the job done when one man was expected to do the job of fifteen. But he wasn't corrupt. It's surprising what some of his bosses got away with before the corruption started to be curbed. The author included some pictures of Frank Hamer throughout his life.
Through Frank Hamer's life, we get glimpses at how the Texas Rangers changed from 1906 to the 1940s--like from using horses to increasingly using automobiles, and changes in the types of jobs they did, what they were paid, and who qualified to be one. Overall, the book was a easy read and fairly exciting. I'd recommend it to those interested in Frank Hamer or this period of Texas Ranger history.
I received this review copy from the publisher through Amazon Vine.
The author carefully researched Hamer's life. He made an effort to help us understand Frank Hamer in his historical context and tried to give readers a balanced view of the man. Hamer's temper got him in trouble at times, and his methods were sometimes rough but were what got the job done when one man was expected to do the job of fifteen. But he wasn't corrupt. It's surprising what some of his bosses got away with before the corruption started to be curbed. The author included some pictures of Frank Hamer throughout his life.
Through Frank Hamer's life, we get glimpses at how the Texas Rangers changed from 1906 to the 1940s--like from using horses to increasingly using automobiles, and changes in the types of jobs they did, what they were paid, and who qualified to be one. Overall, the book was a easy read and fairly exciting. I'd recommend it to those interested in Frank Hamer or this period of Texas Ranger history.
I received this review copy from the publisher through Amazon Vine.
September 9, 2018
Ponderous and full of detailed minutiae about the famed Texas ranger who was involved the bullet ridden disposal of Bonnie and Clyde. But before you get to that hunt and final bloody roadside end, you get chapter after chapter of all the cases, incidents, arrests, gun battles, and frankly, boring life of Frank Hamer. There are hundreds of names hurled at you in the reading that you can't keep track. The author, to his credit, obviously did his research, but it just isn't attention grabbing. Personally found a lot of Ranger Hamer's attitudes (he believed in the superiority of whites, though he defended African Americans and Mexicans against racial mobs because he believed in the law) and his involvement in the feud between his future wife (who loved to shoot people when she got angry) and her ex-husband's family to be a bit disconcerting.
April 20, 2023
Excellent book for anybody wanting a good overview of Hamer, honest and detailed alike, and also something that does good cutting through some Texas Ranger myths.
Boessenecker is honest to even rightly finding fault with Hamer over the Sherman riot and his tardiness in calling for more help from Austin.
He otherwise rightly notes that Hamer was a cut above the Ranger of yore in not having as much prejudice, at least, and being a bit more under control of himself.
That said, Boessenecker, per Stephen Harrington's new "Big Wonderful Thing," probably still turd-polishes Hamer's pre-Sherman history too much. I've cropped it a star.
To put Hamer even more in context, one must, MUST read Doug Swanson's Cult of Glory. Ideally, this book is 3.5-3.75.
Boessenecker is honest to even rightly finding fault with Hamer over the Sherman riot and his tardiness in calling for more help from Austin.
He otherwise rightly notes that Hamer was a cut above the Ranger of yore in not having as much prejudice, at least, and being a bit more under control of himself.
That said, Boessenecker, per Stephen Harrington's new "Big Wonderful Thing," probably still turd-polishes Hamer's pre-Sherman history too much. I've cropped it a star.
To put Hamer even more in context, one must, MUST read Doug Swanson's Cult of Glory. Ideally, this book is 3.5-3.75.
April 24, 2019
A small Texas town in the ’30’s gripped by mob fever driven by racial hatred, almost the whole populace crowded around the courthouse, most hellbent on lynching the accused African-American in the jail, the rest there to watch the “fun.” An automobile forces its way through the crowd into the public square. Several men get out, big, tough, armed with shotguns and submachine guns. One goes to the courthouse steps where he sits alone, brandishing a Tommy gun, a hard look on his face. The news whips through the mob: “That’s Frank Hamer!” And with that the mob slinks away like the cowardly beast that it is, deprived of its courage and bravado by the presence of just one man, Frank Hamer, the toughest Texas Ranger that ever lived.
This is just one of the many incredibly dramatic incidents that made up the life of Frank Hamer. John Boessenecker has written an accurate, deeply researched biography that doesn’t flinch from the unsavory, downright awful aspects of Texas history and the genuine character flaws of his subject. Like every other human being, Hamer was a product of his time and place. He grew up tough working as a cowhand and farming at a time when Texas was little removed from its frontier origins and his beliefs and views were affected by that. The author makes no bones about the fact that Hamer was a white supremacist, as indeed most Americans were quite unapologetically until recent times. Yet he also points out how Hamer differed from many of his contemporaries in his concern for the underdog. This is illustrated by the many times when Hamer fought off lynch mobs intent on murdering accused African-Americans, often at great risk to his life. Again, the author doesn’t turn away from the raw and hateful racism that was so endemic in Texas and the Deep South at that time.
Incorruptibility was another sterling quality of Hamer. In a state so famous for corruption that they joked that a spotlight was focused on the state capitol’s dome at night so the governor couldn’t steal it, Hamer simply could not be bought or influenced. This led to frequent conflicts between him and other, highly politicized and compromised Rangers and most significantly for his own career, with Ma and Pa Ferguson, cheerfully brazen grafters who first played the alternating spouses for governor trick later used by George and Lurleen Wallace in Alabama (my, there really is something about Dixie, isn’t there?).
Hamer’s most famous exploit was, of course, the manhunt he organized that successfully put an end to Bonnie and Clyde’s murderous crime spree. The Ranger would be pretty much a footnote outside of Texas today if he hadn’t had attention brought to him by Arthur Penn’s ’67 film, Bonnie And Clyde. Aware that this is the best part of his story, Boessenecker draws out this section of the narrative, explaining in detail how Hamer carefully followed the criminals, always keeping his plans secret, until he was able to trap them with the help of one of their confederates, Henry Methvin. He also debunks the romanticization of the couple in Penn’s film, pointing out how many people they viciously killed and the basically pointless, nihilist nature of their rampage.
After a life filled with so many violent incidents including multiple gunfights, Hamer died peacefully in his old age in Austin. He left behind a vastly different state from the one he’d known as a young man, a good deal more civilized in many ways. Much of that progress can be attributed to Frank Hamer. Despite not having much formal education, he brought a level of professionalism, integrity, and courage to the job that has served as a model to Texas Rangers to this very day. For that, he still deserves praise.
I recommend this book to everyone interested in modern Texas history, the Southwest in general, and anyone who wants a rip-roaring read about one of the last of the genuine rooting-tooting buckaroos, the real McCoy. Frank Hamer was all that and more.
This is just one of the many incredibly dramatic incidents that made up the life of Frank Hamer. John Boessenecker has written an accurate, deeply researched biography that doesn’t flinch from the unsavory, downright awful aspects of Texas history and the genuine character flaws of his subject. Like every other human being, Hamer was a product of his time and place. He grew up tough working as a cowhand and farming at a time when Texas was little removed from its frontier origins and his beliefs and views were affected by that. The author makes no bones about the fact that Hamer was a white supremacist, as indeed most Americans were quite unapologetically until recent times. Yet he also points out how Hamer differed from many of his contemporaries in his concern for the underdog. This is illustrated by the many times when Hamer fought off lynch mobs intent on murdering accused African-Americans, often at great risk to his life. Again, the author doesn’t turn away from the raw and hateful racism that was so endemic in Texas and the Deep South at that time.
Incorruptibility was another sterling quality of Hamer. In a state so famous for corruption that they joked that a spotlight was focused on the state capitol’s dome at night so the governor couldn’t steal it, Hamer simply could not be bought or influenced. This led to frequent conflicts between him and other, highly politicized and compromised Rangers and most significantly for his own career, with Ma and Pa Ferguson, cheerfully brazen grafters who first played the alternating spouses for governor trick later used by George and Lurleen Wallace in Alabama (my, there really is something about Dixie, isn’t there?).
Hamer’s most famous exploit was, of course, the manhunt he organized that successfully put an end to Bonnie and Clyde’s murderous crime spree. The Ranger would be pretty much a footnote outside of Texas today if he hadn’t had attention brought to him by Arthur Penn’s ’67 film, Bonnie And Clyde. Aware that this is the best part of his story, Boessenecker draws out this section of the narrative, explaining in detail how Hamer carefully followed the criminals, always keeping his plans secret, until he was able to trap them with the help of one of their confederates, Henry Methvin. He also debunks the romanticization of the couple in Penn’s film, pointing out how many people they viciously killed and the basically pointless, nihilist nature of their rampage.
After a life filled with so many violent incidents including multiple gunfights, Hamer died peacefully in his old age in Austin. He left behind a vastly different state from the one he’d known as a young man, a good deal more civilized in many ways. Much of that progress can be attributed to Frank Hamer. Despite not having much formal education, he brought a level of professionalism, integrity, and courage to the job that has served as a model to Texas Rangers to this very day. For that, he still deserves praise.
I recommend this book to everyone interested in modern Texas history, the Southwest in general, and anyone who wants a rip-roaring read about one of the last of the genuine rooting-tooting buckaroos, the real McCoy. Frank Hamer was all that and more.
August 23, 2018
(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)
To most Americans, Frank Hamer is known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Now, in Texas Ranger,historian John Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer’s good name and prove that he was, in fact, a classic American hero.
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participating in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.
Written by one of the most acclaimed historians of the Old West, Texas Ranger is the first biography to tell the full story of this near-mythic lawman.
Like another reviewer said, I am glad the publishers decided to add the Bonnie & Clyde reference to the title cos otherwise I would have missed a great book.
While the story of Frank Hamer did hit a high point with his part in the death of Bonnie & Clyde, he was involved in a lot of other things throughout his life in the Rangers. He protected African Americans from lynch mobs, stopped illegal shipments from crossing the Mexican border, caught horse and cattle hustlers, investigated election fraud, and protected the oil interests of Texas. He wasn't always perceived as a good guy - he made his fair share of enemies and his temper was sometimes getting him in trouble - but he wasn't a bad guy, if you get my meaning...
While the man himself didn't leave behind much in the way of a journal or anything of that sort, there is plenty of information found in old court documents, newspapers, archives and the like. I have to say I was impressed with the research involved in this story, as well as the easy style of writing. This could have easily become a "textbook-style" book but the author kept me engaged throughout.
Well worth a read - recommended!
Paul
ARH
To most Americans, Frank Hamer is known only as the “villain” of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Now, in Texas Ranger,historian John Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer’s good name and prove that he was, in fact, a classic American hero.
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participating in the Bandit War of 1915, survived the climactic gunfight in the last blood feud of the Old West, battled the Mexican Revolution’s spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. When at last his career came to an end, it was only when he ran up against another legendary Texan: Lyndon B. Johnson.
Written by one of the most acclaimed historians of the Old West, Texas Ranger is the first biography to tell the full story of this near-mythic lawman.
Like another reviewer said, I am glad the publishers decided to add the Bonnie & Clyde reference to the title cos otherwise I would have missed a great book.
While the story of Frank Hamer did hit a high point with his part in the death of Bonnie & Clyde, he was involved in a lot of other things throughout his life in the Rangers. He protected African Americans from lynch mobs, stopped illegal shipments from crossing the Mexican border, caught horse and cattle hustlers, investigated election fraud, and protected the oil interests of Texas. He wasn't always perceived as a good guy - he made his fair share of enemies and his temper was sometimes getting him in trouble - but he wasn't a bad guy, if you get my meaning...
While the man himself didn't leave behind much in the way of a journal or anything of that sort, there is plenty of information found in old court documents, newspapers, archives and the like. I have to say I was impressed with the research involved in this story, as well as the easy style of writing. This could have easily become a "textbook-style" book but the author kept me engaged throughout.
Well worth a read - recommended!
Paul
ARH
January 21, 2017
I very much enjoyed the biography about Frank Hamer. It was a good thing that the fact that Hamer was involved in killing Bonnie and Clyde in the title, otherwise I probably would not have picked it up. Like most of us, my knowledge of B & C and the times was limited to watching Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in "Bonnie & Clyde" and a quick visit to the Texas Ranger Museum in San Antonio.
John Boessenecker's biography gives a balanced view of Frank Hamer including pointing out actions which Hamer took which were illegal (or at least bordered on illegality) both in his time and certainly by today's standards. He goes in (sometimes) too much detail in Hamer's early exploits, but the facts he reports are well researched and ring true. No reason to doubt them.
Boessenecker gave enough background into the times in which Hamer operated to give context to his actions, and to provide a mini slice of American culture and history. I found this one of the high points of the book. His depiction of the corrupt nature of Texas politics (hello LBJ) and the disgusting racism and brutality against blacks brought back once again to me how far we have come (but unfortunately still how far we have to go in that area.)
What rings true throughout the book is Hamer preoccupation with "doing what is right - and respect for the law. He was a true believer in the law - and deserves the respect and admiration which is showered on him in this book.
This book gives you a glimpse of what the wild west was really right. John Wayne in his movies was a pale comparison to the real thing. And Frank Hamer was "the real thing."
John Boessenecker's biography gives a balanced view of Frank Hamer including pointing out actions which Hamer took which were illegal (or at least bordered on illegality) both in his time and certainly by today's standards. He goes in (sometimes) too much detail in Hamer's early exploits, but the facts he reports are well researched and ring true. No reason to doubt them.
Boessenecker gave enough background into the times in which Hamer operated to give context to his actions, and to provide a mini slice of American culture and history. I found this one of the high points of the book. His depiction of the corrupt nature of Texas politics (hello LBJ) and the disgusting racism and brutality against blacks brought back once again to me how far we have come (but unfortunately still how far we have to go in that area.)
What rings true throughout the book is Hamer preoccupation with "doing what is right - and respect for the law. He was a true believer in the law - and deserves the respect and admiration which is showered on him in this book.
This book gives you a glimpse of what the wild west was really right. John Wayne in his movies was a pale comparison to the real thing. And Frank Hamer was "the real thing."
March 27, 2024
The Pros:
This book is it is very well written and researched. If you are someone who is not very versed in Texas ranger lore or interested in the life of frank hamer this is a great place to start. This book also helps clear up a lot of false narrative’s the public might believe about Frank Hamers role in killing Bonnie and Clyde. Ted Hintons work of fiction that he calls “ambush” is cleared up in here as well.
The cons:
This book starts to get too political on trying to prove certain morale stand points of Frank Hamer. A lot of the problem of this book is it is written by a law enforcement agent/ attorney in California. Here in Texas we can see that very clearly. This book is about a lot of famous people from Texas. The lives of these people from outsiders is hard to understand.
Bonnie and Clyde’s part of this story is very inaccurately portrayed. It’s literally cited from law enforcement agencies or newspaper writers who never met these people. I don’t think anyone can give accounts of people they have never met. All of this information was literally spelled out in letters from Bonnie and Clyde and meetups as told in a book called “Fugitives.” The book was written by actual family members months after the deaths.
While reading this book on Frank hamers life I can see all the false myths that are always reported in these movies or articles are clearly just regurgitated here. As a fan of Frank Hamer and the history he has created for the state of Texas it’s very sad to see the Bonnie and Clyde story told this way in the book.
This book is it is very well written and researched. If you are someone who is not very versed in Texas ranger lore or interested in the life of frank hamer this is a great place to start. This book also helps clear up a lot of false narrative’s the public might believe about Frank Hamers role in killing Bonnie and Clyde. Ted Hintons work of fiction that he calls “ambush” is cleared up in here as well.
The cons:
This book starts to get too political on trying to prove certain morale stand points of Frank Hamer. A lot of the problem of this book is it is written by a law enforcement agent/ attorney in California. Here in Texas we can see that very clearly. This book is about a lot of famous people from Texas. The lives of these people from outsiders is hard to understand.
Bonnie and Clyde’s part of this story is very inaccurately portrayed. It’s literally cited from law enforcement agencies or newspaper writers who never met these people. I don’t think anyone can give accounts of people they have never met. All of this information was literally spelled out in letters from Bonnie and Clyde and meetups as told in a book called “Fugitives.” The book was written by actual family members months after the deaths.
While reading this book on Frank hamers life I can see all the false myths that are always reported in these movies or articles are clearly just regurgitated here. As a fan of Frank Hamer and the history he has created for the state of Texas it’s very sad to see the Bonnie and Clyde story told this way in the book.
March 1, 2022
This is a spectacular book about a true American hero and a law enforcement legend. Frank Hamer (pronounced hay-mer) was a Texas Ranger and law enforcement officer for over forty years. During Frank Hamer's law enforcement career he was involved in over 52 shootings, killing dozens of suspects, including Red Lopez who was responsible for killing 5 Utah law enforcement officers and was a terrorist with Pancho Villa's forces. Hamer is most well known for putting an end to those vile pieces of shit Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow---good on you Frank. What was not as well known to the public was the fact Hamer prevented numerous lynchings and fought against the Klu Klux Klan in Texas, at a time when many law enforcement officers were either directly involved with the Klan or turned a blind eye. Boessenecker does an excellent job taking the reader through the various stages of Hamer's police career. One of the most dynamic periods was during prohibition when armed insurgent gangs came over the Texas border 30-40 strong armed to the teeth bootlegging whiskey and other potent potables. Hamer led the Rangers against these bandits and planted a grip of them. This book is a fascinating glimpse into a by-gone police era and I highly recommend it.
September 13, 2025
Once again this author writes of a period in history, in Texas, when crime required men of valor and action to search out and bring the criminals to justice. Frank Hamer was just that serving as a Texas Ranger paroling the southern border and chasing down bank and stagecoach robbers. He built a reputation as a man of great investigative skills and possibly the best shot with a .45 as ever existed. He was also tough and used his great height, build and large fists to take on the worst of his adversaries. He often acted on the edge of the law, but did it for a good cause. Later in this career he confronted the Ku Klux Klan and the horrendous deeds they pursued in the early 1900s. And yes he was the man who successfully investigated, set an ambush and killed Bonnie and Clyde. Others had tried and failed often losing their life trying.
The author presets the myths but at the same time dispels them with the facts. He does a great job of documenting the events, including photos and articles from the local newspapers. He finishes the book with the following, "Frank Hamer with remain the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde. Perhaps this book can help restore him to his proper place in the American story." A book well worth reading.
The author presets the myths but at the same time dispels them with the facts. He does a great job of documenting the events, including photos and articles from the local newspapers. He finishes the book with the following, "Frank Hamer with remain the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde. Perhaps this book can help restore him to his proper place in the American story." A book well worth reading.
August 11, 2018
This book started a binge of reading about heroes of the south. Frank Hamer was made out to be the bad guy in the movie "Bonnie and Clyde". However it turns out he was the kind of man I wish all of us could aim to be. Frankly it seems to me that anyone who is given the honor of serving as a peace officer ought to be a man of impeccable integrity and character. After reading this book I believe Frank Hamer thought so as well.
Consider that Frank Hamer personally prevented so many lynchings that the practice all but disappeared during his tenure. In a time and place where the KKK was in its heyday and racial attitudes were terrible Mr. Hamer fought for the black man. He wasn't overly progressive or forward thinking, he simply understood the responsibility of being able to protect people. He hated bullies and was big and tough enough to back down anyone. John Wayne could have taken some pointers from him. In fact, Tom Mix did get pointers from him!
As a former Yankee I grew up in New York and learning about the evil men of the south. Why great and honorable men like Frank Hamer aren't household names is a stain on the NEA.
Consider that Frank Hamer personally prevented so many lynchings that the practice all but disappeared during his tenure. In a time and place where the KKK was in its heyday and racial attitudes were terrible Mr. Hamer fought for the black man. He wasn't overly progressive or forward thinking, he simply understood the responsibility of being able to protect people. He hated bullies and was big and tough enough to back down anyone. John Wayne could have taken some pointers from him. In fact, Tom Mix did get pointers from him!
As a former Yankee I grew up in New York and learning about the evil men of the south. Why great and honorable men like Frank Hamer aren't household names is a stain on the NEA.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 30, 2019
After watching The Highwaymen on Netflix, I wanted to know more about the story and found this book highly recommended. It is the biography of Frank Hamer (hay-mer), the greatest lawman in American history you've probably never heard of.
He was a Texas Ranger from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, through many of its most difficult, impressive, troubled, and storied years. Hamer himself was a flawed but very great man who was fixated on justice, opposed to cruelty and violence, particularly to minorities, hated corruption, and had absolutely zero fear or back down in him.
Hamer's career is almost jaw-dropping in its breadth and scope, and the book takes a close look at every aspect of it. If all you know of the man is from the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie, you need to read this because that movie was basically one fat lie start to finish.
The writing is engaging and solid, balancing information with ease of reading, but it is so long and filled with information I found it best to read in small sections, separated by reading other books. There's an awful lot to digest and read about in this man's life.
He was a Texas Ranger from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, through many of its most difficult, impressive, troubled, and storied years. Hamer himself was a flawed but very great man who was fixated on justice, opposed to cruelty and violence, particularly to minorities, hated corruption, and had absolutely zero fear or back down in him.
Hamer's career is almost jaw-dropping in its breadth and scope, and the book takes a close look at every aspect of it. If all you know of the man is from the 1967 Bonnie and Clyde movie, you need to read this because that movie was basically one fat lie start to finish.
The writing is engaging and solid, balancing information with ease of reading, but it is so long and filled with information I found it best to read in small sections, separated by reading other books. There's an awful lot to digest and read about in this man's life.
December 2, 2020
The Epic Life of Frank Hamer is a must read for anyone interested in the old West to modern law enforcement. Frank Hamer (pronounced HAY-MER) was a Texas Ranger involved in several of the notorious tales of Texas from dealing with the corruption of the Ma and Pa Ferguson governor era to the 1948 LBJ Senator ballot stuffing to win by fraud his first Senate Seat for LBJ. Hamer is probably best remembered as the Law man that planned the capture of Bonnie & Clyde which became their death in Louisiana. Unfortunately, Hamer is probably remembered in the fictitious 1967 movie about Bonnie & Clyde where Bonnie (played by Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (played by Warren Beatty) played the good guys and Hamer (played by Denver Pyle) played the bad guy the law. This movie failed to state that Bonnie and Clyde had killed 9 law enforcement officers in cold-blood as well as several innocent people. The author gives a full account of Frank Hamer’s life the good and the bad, he explains how times have changed in the South and dealing with the Klan and the rights of all people. This book is about 500 pages and a quick read, very well researched and hard to put down.
August 29, 2021
Excellent book about a true American hero who people know very little. John Boessenecker in writing “Texas Ranger”, chronicles the well researched life of Frank Hamer. The author provides an in-depth look of a former Texas Ranger who most only know as the person who put an end to Bonnie and Clyde’s reign of terror. He life was much much more and Boessenecker does a superb job of detailing this Texas hero’s life leading up to that controversial day that Bonne and Clyde met their fate.
Hamer presented a presence that was larger than life and the author does a great job putting you on the trail of bandits, thieves, murders or other law-breakers who were unfortunate to find Frank Hamer on their trail. A “stand-up” guy, Hamer was probably the best lawman of the twentieth century.
The author goes into adequate detail to provide insight, yet keeps the reader’s interest throughout the 462 pages of action and suspense. Boessenecker was fantastic in keeping your interest throughout and I will seek out other books by this author. I highly recommend this book.
Hamer presented a presence that was larger than life and the author does a great job putting you on the trail of bandits, thieves, murders or other law-breakers who were unfortunate to find Frank Hamer on their trail. A “stand-up” guy, Hamer was probably the best lawman of the twentieth century.
The author goes into adequate detail to provide insight, yet keeps the reader’s interest throughout the 462 pages of action and suspense. Boessenecker was fantastic in keeping your interest throughout and I will seek out other books by this author. I highly recommend this book.
April 18, 2018
A biography of a man who was a Texas Ranger in the rough and ready days to the 1940's, this book was researched with careful detail and written as great adventure. Frank Hamer was truly the epitome of "one riot, one Ranger." He had a sixth sense for finding bad guys and catching them red handed.
Bonnie and Clyde may have been his most famous case, but he had many before them from the Rio Grande to the Red River. He wasn't perfect and made enemies along the way, but he was always honest and upright in his career.
He fought the King Klux Klan during lynchings in Sherman, turned a windmill into a jail during a barn dance when none existed, fought Prohibition and Ma and Pa Ferguson. The stories in this book are fascinating especially because they are true. You have to like a Ranger whose wife shoots her way out of a touchy situation sitting in the car with him when they are newly married. What's coming. Ext?
Bonnie and Clyde may have been his most famous case, but he had many before them from the Rio Grande to the Red River. He wasn't perfect and made enemies along the way, but he was always honest and upright in his career.
He fought the King Klux Klan during lynchings in Sherman, turned a windmill into a jail during a barn dance when none existed, fought Prohibition and Ma and Pa Ferguson. The stories in this book are fascinating especially because they are true. You have to like a Ranger whose wife shoots her way out of a touchy situation sitting in the car with him when they are newly married. What's coming. Ext?
April 20, 2019
Hollywood disinformation strikes yet again with their telling of Bonnie and Clyde. They seem to relish making a mockery of history and apparently have little compunction about defaming a person's character. If you want to read the truth about the man who was instrumental at stopping the murderous spree of Bonnie and Clyde you need to read this book by John Boessenecker. The actual tale of the hunt for Bonnie and Clyde is covered in three chapters near the end of the book while the previous chapters treat the reader to the unvarnished histories of Frank Hamer and the Texas Rangers. Although Frank Hamer was a fearless lawman who was involved in many gunfights, the killing of Bonnie Parker bothered him greatly throughout the remainder of his life because of her sex and resemblance to his step daughter. Finally, the death of Hamer's son at Iwo Jima did to Hamer what no desperado or criminal could do; It turned him to drink and probably shortened his life. His life is worth the read.
November 4, 2019
This book clears up some myths and corrects a major libel. Frank Hamer was not the villainous, badge-heavy bastard he was depicted in the blockbuster movie "Bonnie and Clyde." He was tough as an overdone steak but also a scrupulously honest man who could have participated in the corruption then rampant in Texas, but refused. Though he held the beliefs common in his time that white Anglo-Saxons were superior to all other models of humanity, he also insisted that the other models were entitled to the equal protection of the laws, and many times risked his life to protect some of them from lynch mobs numbering in thousands. This biographer does not gloss over Hamer's few faults and mistakes, but puts them in perspective. The research seems faultless; I give it four stars instead of five only because the writing is dry. Probably an unintentional consequence of sticking to unvarnished facts.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews