Lone Star Vistas

As Texas became a destination for large-scale immigration in the wake of Mexico’s independence from Spain, many learned of the region through published travelogues, emigrant guides, and scientific reports. Lone Star Vistas is the first comparative study of transnational travel writing on Texas, analyzing 40 years of work from the three major settler populations: Anglo-American, Mexican, and German. Haas explores how these vivid accounts shaped public knowledge and created the very idea of Texas.

~The Alcalde

Haas’s well-written treatment of this diverse collection of travelogues highlights the deeply held racist attitudes of Anglo-American and European visitors and settlers toward the Native American and mixed-blood Hispanic peoples they encountered in Texas, as well as their almost unanimous tolerance of Black slavery, which structurally embedded deep divisions into the future. Fortunately, this volume provides yet more well-documented evidence refuting current political discourses in Texas and across the United States condemning critical race studies as an unfounded creation of the academy.

~Journal of Southern History

The different travelogues that Haas analyses offer a glimpse at the evolution of opinions about the many parts of Texas by contemporaries as German and Anglo American settlers began populating the area...The manuscript itself offers scholars of this period a thoroughly-detailed road map for further research into the literature and lives of lesser-known figures of early Texas.

~Western Historical Quarterly

[A] cogent and detailed examination of travel narratives about Texas from Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821 to the beginning of the Civil War in 1861...Haas’s meticulous research and broad net gives her work authority and relevance. Scholars interested in Texas history and the early narrative construction of the state will find Lone Star Vistas a must-read.

~Western American Literature