Forget the Alamo
The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller!
“Lively and absorbing. . ." — The New York Times Book Review
"Engrossing." —Wall Street Journal
“Entertaining and well-researched . . . ” —Houston Chronicle
Three noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head.
Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness.
In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalists and "proud Texans" Burrough (Days of Rage), Tomlinson (Tomlinson Hill), and Stanford (Adios, Mofo) revisit the legend of the Alamo in this substantive yet wryly humorous history. Though "traditionalists" believe that the Alamo's defenders sacrificed their lives in order to help defeat Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and secure Texas's independence, the authors point out that Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and others "were fighting to form what became the single most militant slave nation in history." Skillfully drawing on primary and secondary sources, the authors show that Stephen F. Austin, who established a colony of American settlers in Texas in the 1820s, fought to protect slavery from Mexican legislators' desire to abolish it, and that the independence movement was focused on preserving Texas's slave-based cotton economy. Early histories of the Alamo "suffered from the twin sins of florid romanticism and score settling" and diminished the influence of Tejano families on the region, according to the authors, who also reveal the 20th-century origins of the myth that Davy Crockett went down fighting (it was widely reported in the 1830s that he surrendered before his execution). Enriched by its breezy tone and fair-minded approach, this is an essential look at the Alamo from the perspective of today's racial reckoning.
