David J. Weber is Robert and Nancy Dedman Professor of History and director of the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University. He has written many books, including The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992), and was a Fulbright lecturer at the Universidad de Costa Rica. He is a past president of the Western History Association and the only American historian elected to membership in both the Mexican Academy of History and the Society of American Historians.