In The Red River in Southwestern History Carl N. Tyson traces the river's history from the time of early Spanish and French explorers to the present day, leading his readers to a new appreciation of the river and the region. From the Staked Plains of the Texas Panhandle the river flows down to buffalo and prairie dog country and through the Cross Timbers. It continues eastward to the Great Bend and through the cypresses of Louisiana's bayou country, joining the Mississippi River south of Natchez.

Red River was a source of water to Spaniards as they searched for gold. At Natchitoches, French trader Louis Juchereau de St. Denis traded with the Caddo Indians. Conflicts developed between French traders and Spaniards in Texas, as they competed for land along the Red. When Spanish minister Luis de Onis y Gonzales and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams settled the western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase, the Red River was of great significance in the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty.

In 1852 Randolph Marcy discovered the source of the Red River-a mountain rivulet cutting a deep canyon through the Staked Plains. Marcy's testimony in the Greer County border dispute between Oklahoma and Texas was key to the U.S. Supreme Court decision favoring Oklahoma. In the decades between 1930 and 1970, dams were built along the Red by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to control floods, generate electricity, and create lakes for recreation along the Oklahoma-Texas border.

Carl Newton Tyson, whose special field of interest is Western American History, received the Ph.D. degree from Oklahoma State University. He is CEO at Thinkwell in Austin, Texas, and coauthor of The McMan: The Lives of Robert M. McFarlin and James A. Chapman.