With a pistol in his hand

After reading a recent article by Dagoberto Gilb in Texas Monthly, I decided to finally read Americo Paredes' With his pistol in his hand. Paredes' treatment of "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez" is exceptional. He questions J. Frank Dobie's version of the Cortez story as well as Webb's views on the Texas Rangers. Paredes dissects the famous folk ballad, giving the reader a good understanding of the development of the border corrido. In his analysis, he includes several Spanish variants of the corrido with an English translation. The book is a great read for the historian, folklorist, musicologist, or fiction writer mining for ideas.