Thomas F. (hardtack) - , reviewed on 7/25/2021 + 2846 more book reviews

This is a fascinating book about the history of the Alamo, and how it was created. If that subject interests you, then you should read the book. However, it is also a great book about how history is made, re-made, re-made again and---if we're lucky---remade back to what it was in the beginning. As such, anyone interested in history should read this book.

For example, and this isn't covered in the book, there are many Civil War histories books coming out today, and over the last decade or two, which are called "revisionist histories." The fact is, these are not revisionist histories, but real histories. Their authors have access to far more data that writers of Civil War histories written in the past and are not encumbered by the distortions of legends or self-serving authors (of memoirs and autobiographies) that so influenced Civil War histories over generations.

This is actually a short book of 198 pages, and it's height is about the size of a paperback. While I've read much about the Alamo, I still learned new information. And that alone made the book valuable to me.

Here is just one interesting tidbit from the book. Davy Crockett occupies a major role in the fight at the Alamo, but he had only been in Texas for four months. Yet nine of the eleven defenders of the Alamo who were actually born in Texas were Tejanos, who were later "erased" from most histories of the battle.

Having said all that, I was first enhanced by the Alamo story after watching Fess Parker get killed at the Alamo in the Disney show. And the author refers to it often in this book. Somewhere in my house, I still have my "Davey Crockett coonskin cap," but, if I remember correctly, the coon tail is missing.

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