Gentleman,

I appreciate the solid opinions and feedback I always receive from this thread. I have a question. Three Roads to the Alamo, by William C. Davis has been sitting on my shelf for about a year now. Now I have to read it for my history class this semester. Before I start, is there anything I should look for? Certain things I should be aware of the author bringing to it? What was your least/most favorite thing about the novel?

I appreciate your opinions and suggestions.

Rob Curnock for Congress
Jess Fields for City Council
Debra Medina for Governor
Brian Alg for County Treasurer

[This message has been edited by GiveEmHellAgs12 (edited 1/31/2010 11:36p).]

The book shatters many of the myths concerning Crockett & will likely surprise/anger some kids in your class. The details of his political career might bore some & confuse others if they don't have a good background in the Jacksonian era. (I was in the latter camp!)

Travis will be revealed as an idealistic & occasionally irresponsible young man... not at all the English "dude" shown in John Wayne's "Alamo".

Bowie comes off as a combination of Bernie Madoff & Chuck Norris. The author goes into great depth on his land swindling in Louisiana... probably too much for reading to a classroom. I admit I struggled through them at times and found my eyes glazing over.

The book is great, but very long. You might want to consider reading an "abridged" version & truncate some portions on Bowie & Crockett.

I think a large map of the SE united states would be useful for showing where the three men were & when.

I think it is also important for folks to understand just how much "larger" the world was back then & how slowly information moved. Traveling 20-30 miles in a day was ALOT & it often took days or weeks for information to move across the country.

Great book, I thought Bowie was the more interesting guy.

BTW it is history not a novel.

It's been a few years since I read it, but it was a great book. Somewhat long, but very detailed.

I know very little about all three, but knew there were many myths out there. Truth is better than fiction most of the time and especially with these three.

I remember it taking about a month or so for me to read it at a decent pace (30 min - 1 hr per day).

It is history with all the warts left on. I like to compare these three with Martin Luther King, Jr., who plagiarized part of his dissertation and cheated on his wife but put his life on the line repeatedly for a good cause and paid the price when it came time.

So did all three of them. Crockett comes off best; he opposed Jackson's Indian removal policy and would not back down from Jackson even though Jackson was the most powerful and popular man in Tennessee. He was a ruined man when he came here looking for a new start.

Bowie comes off worst, he was a slave trader and smuggler and a land swindler of the first order but had more ballz than Rawlings.

Travis was not the English homosexual portrayed in Wayne's movie but a cocky Alabama lawyer with an eye for every woman he saw and an unhealthy obsession with being a martyred hero. His carelessness got his men cornered but he definitely stepped up to the plate during the siege.

Of all of them it could truthfully be said that nothing in their lives became them so much as the way they departed it.

We would all be better off if history were taught like this one is written: all great men have faults and weaknesses but what makes them great is how they either struggle with them or just rise to the occasion.

Thanks for the feedback so far, I'm starting the book this afternoon.

Excellent book, I agree with Huisache's take on it - tip of the pen to a well crafted review. They were all men with flaws but displayed courage at a crucial time in the early life of Texas. Had they made different choices we: 1) Might have never known they existed, and; 2) Might be habling the espanish right now as I sit here in San Antonio typing this out.

Forever immortal. Never to be forgotten.

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The book shatters many of the myths concerning Crockett &

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like what? or are you trying not to spoil the book?

I don't understand the reason of trying to point out every single flaw of some of the great men of the nation's past. Nearly every one of us is flawed in some way or have made mistakes in our own lives. Is it so important to tear down the people who put their lives on the line for this state/country? I don't think so.

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like what? or are you trying not to spoil the book?

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Like the fact that Crockett saw little to no action in the Creek War. That he had a wife & kids & wasn't much of a husband or father. (He spent most of his time away hunting or in Washington) That he went to Texas not really expecting to do battle with the Mexicans. Etc.

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Is it so important to tear down the people who put their lives on the line for this state/country? I don't think so.

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The book doesn't bash or tear down Crockett, Bowie or Travis... the author simply tells history as it happened. As you mentioned, all great men have faults... it doesn't lessen their heroics. If anything, the knowledge that great men such as Crockett, MLK or Thomas Jefferson were flawed is very much a postive. It provides us 'common folk' a chance for some introspection.... if these great men overcame their shortcomings to become heroes, then so might we.

I highly suggest you read the book & make your own judgements.


[This message has been edited by Apache (edited 2/4/2010 8:41a).]

Huisache with the Macbeth allusion!

MALCOLM:

Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it: he died
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,
As 'twere a careless trifle.

[This message has been edited by OldArmy71 (edited 2/4/2010 6:27p).]

[This message has been edited by OldArmy71 (edited 2/5/2010 9:08a).]

Can you imagine what Shakespeare could have done with the Alamo? The whole Texas revolution is like a Greek tragedy and nobody has ever come close to doing it credit.

Thermopalaye had her messenger of defeat but the Alamo had none as they say, but where is Texas' Homer?

Speaking of allusions, the fellows at Gonzales with their Come and Take It flag were alluding to Herodotus, who reported that Leonidas' Spartans, when ordered by the Persians to lay down their arms, replied "Come and take them."

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but where is Texas' Homer?

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He lives in Dirty SA-- his name-- Fehrenbach.

A&M's homer lives in College Station. His name is Dave South.



Oh, you meant a different kind of homer.

South's got nothing on the homers in Austin: Way, Clements, Ward and every TV news personality in the market.

Fehrenbach indeed.

Saw a History Channel program called "Comanche Warriors" or something like that where snippets of some T.R.F. interviews were part of the "telling" of the story of the fight between the Comanches and the Texans. Very cool to actually see our "Homer" on the History Channel, in his element, so to speak.

P.S. Huisache, I never knew the Gonzales (corrected for Apache)flag was an homage to the Spartans. wow. Very cool piece of trivia.

[This message has been edited by XUSCR (edited 2/13/2010 7:51p).]

Gonzales

When I was in grad school I jokingly told a prof that I was inclined to write my thesis on the classical and literary antecedants to the Texas revolt.

Those guys back then did not have near as many books as we do. So most of them had read the basic canon---the Bible, Shakespeare, the Greeks and Romans. When Sam Houston was a kid living with the red men he supposedly memorized Chapman's Homer by the yard.

If you read Senate speeches of the time they were clearly influenced by the classic styles of rhetoric.

Read Walter Scott's novels of brave and adventurous men willing to die for their people and then look at the way these Scotch Irish frontiersmen lived their lives.

If you really want a treat, read Jane Porter's The Scottish Chiefs, published in 1810 and then read all of Travis' letters. Before Mel Gibson took to William Wallace, William Travis drank him whole.

Speaking of literary allusions influencing history, Twain wrote about what he called the "Sir Walter Disease"--tongue not entirely in cheek, he blamed the Civil War on Sir Walter Scott's romantic tales of underdogs and knights righting wrongs. Twain believed (not altogether kidding) that the Southern planter class educated its male youth in Scott's preposterous yarns and led said youth to believe they could defeat the North--hence the war.

Remember the name of the wrecked steamboat in "Huck Finn"? Yep. The "Walter Scott."

Hey, they were thinking positive. Not for them the naysayers and againers who warned about risks.

Look at how they kicked Sam Houston to the curb for advocating a more conservative approach.

Our family lore says we had a relative in San Antonio in early 1836 who took off after getting a whiff of Travis----said relative's dying words, forty years later, legend has it, were "never go into a combat with a commander who signs his letters 'Victory or Death!'"

I read it many years ago, and am a person who reads for the pleasure of reading and not necessarily for retention. This book, however, I recall substantially. I think it well and interestingly written and evidently well researched.
Were all histories of this quality it could do us no harm.