A TIME TO STAND

The siege of the Alamo would seem made to order for Walter Lord (A Night to Remember, etc.) but somehow it lacks the emotional qualities that would make it memorable. Compared, for instance, with Lon Tinkle's Thirteen Days to Glary, it seems flat. Possibly Lord, an excellent researcher, was thrown off balance by the conflicting evidence. Even his heroes were quite probably not heroes at all. And get his gift for pacing a story with all the trappings of heroism carried events along to the not wholly glorious finale. Travis emerges as reluctant, unwilling-but caught up in the drama and the implications of what fate called upon him to do. Bowie was probably killed on what was already his deathbed. The end of Davy Crockett, even, is in doubt. Somehow the minor figures come off better -- but few of them really come to life in these pages. Rather is it a carefully reasoned record of a forlorn struggle to hold a hopeless outpost- but a struggle to the death that had its aftermath in glory. ""Remember the Alamo!