Riding for the Lone Star

The storied Texas Rangers probably have more stories than just about any law- enforcement agency—and Mike Cox knows most of them, having spent 15 years as their spokesman. He’s put many of them in Texas Ranger Tales: Hard Riding Stories From the Lone Star State (Lone Star Books, $24.95). It’s a compilation of two previous Cox books with some new stuff added. Sure, some of these stories have been told before, but most aren’t that well-known—like the exploits of Ben Pennington, who became a Ranger in 1917 at age 56. The back jacket calls the book “True Stories That Need Tellin’“ and Cox tells them well.