... densely researched.

Swanson is adept at holding readers’ interest in a sweeping narrative, all the while allowing a nuanced understanding of these myths. The book loses some momentum in the final chapters in telling 20th-century history; by then the myths were ingrained in public imagination.

Though well-written, Cult of Glory isn’t a book for the fainthearted. Swanson, a prodigious researcher, recounts how in their nearly 200-year “attention-grubbing” history Rangers burned peasant villages, slaughtered innocents, busted unions and committed war crimes.

... will thus surely discomfit some of those who pick it up, even as it confirms for others their sense that the Rangers frequently served as anything but impartial arbiters of justice..

This is the history that isn’t talked about, the history that hides in plain sight, the history that doesn’t advance the narrative. But the history is still there, and ignoring it --- ignoring the, frankly, racist acts of both the Rangers and the Texans they protect --- does no one a service.

Sure, the Rangers had been written about before, but no one had published a tome about the agency’s nearly 200 years, much less one that took a harrowing deep dive into the Rangers’ darkest moments..

... comprehensive.

... [an] exhaustive, myth-busting exposé.