A swift and savvy journey through 164 years of Alamo history—from lines in the sand to lines at the gift shop.
Roberts (History/Purdue) and Olson (History/Sam Houston State Univ.) present a balanced analysis of one of the obsessions of the subject of their previous work (John Wayne: American, 1995). The first half deals with the brief battle itself (it was over in about 90 minutes)—its causes, its participants, and its immediate aftermath. The second examines “how Americans gave and continue to give meaning to the event.” The authors provide fair and careful portraits of the principal players in the bloody drama: they characterize the Mexican general Santa Anna was “Byronic,” a man who “lusted for absolute power” and considered himself “Napoleon’s latter-day reincarnation.” William Barret Travis, the Alamo’s commander, read novels by Sir Walter Scott and, like many others at the time, employed “the rhetoric of the American Revolution.” Jim Bowie convinced Sam Houston the makeshift fortress could be defended—then died in his Alamo bed where he lay suffering from some devastating illness (perhaps typhoid). The most compelling and controversial figure, however, remains Davy Crockett, whose portrayals by Fess Parker and John Wayne have become part of the collective American imagination. Roberts and Olson consider the documentary evidence of Crockett’s life and death and conclude “there is no definitive account of Crockett’s final hours.” There are compelling chapters on the restoration of the structure, on Disney’s Davy Crockett phenomenon (which “must have made a dent in the raccoon population”), on Wayne’s meticulous but sluggish 1960 film (the set was cleared of rattlesnakes each morning), on the various academic interpretations of the Alamo, and on the structure’s continuing role as a lightning rod for political activists of all stripes.
Although sorely in need of maps and other illustrations, this is an impressive, engaging analysis of one of the most politically charged events in American history.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-83544-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
Categories: GENERAL HISTORY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY
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Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | UNITED STATES | HISTORY
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