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

—from the introduction by Henry Steele Commager