Utley's careful scholarship, so evident in the earlier volume, is absent here. The book reads like a vintage gossip tabloid combined with revisionist history.

Apologetic in tone, the majority of the text is spent on Rangers at the turn of the century with no positive mention of the cases which made them famous. Utley spends far too much time documenting and rehashing conspiracy theories which previous historians covered far more accurately.

Utley fails to differentiate between critical details such as the difference between the Texas Rangers and State Police. He begins this volume with the assertion that most reference material has "mysteriously" disappeared and continues in that vein. Where documentation has been noted, it comes from questionable sources such as daily newspapers. Any documentation from the Texas Rangers Museum and Hall of Fame is conspicuously absent.

Utley never does fulfill his promise of bringing the history of the Texas Rangers into the modern era. the 1930s through the 1970s are covered in a single chapter with another for 1970 onward. There appears to have been no actual effort to obtain modern resources or talk to today's Rangers.

This is a disappointing read, lacking in scholarship and objectivity. I expected better of this author. ( )