#bryan burrough

Book #231 of 2021:

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford

An interesting look at the historical record surrounding the Alamo battle site in the Texan war for independence from Mexico. The first half of the book contextualizes what’s known and unknown about the skirmish, a subject which is uncontroversial among expert historians but radically different from the story that’s been passed down through popular culture as a brave stand for freedom against an oppressive regime, with the two sides read along homogeneous racial lines. (In reality, the rebels included both Anglo and Tejano participants, and they were largely fighting for their right to continue owning slaves in the face of the Mexican government’s efforts to stamp out the practice. There’s also little evidence of the Davy Crockett heroics commonly associated with the conflict.) In the remainder of the text, the authors trace how the legend developed, and how it continues to be passionately defended as an apocryphal piece of white cultural heritage today.

This is a pop-history title that mostly reports and summarizes rather than bringing any new analysis to bear, and its claims have been making headlines solely due to the modern conservative effort to crush any work under the imagined umbrella of ‘critical race theory’ that dares to teach unflattering facts about our nation’s past. It’s still worth the read, but is far less bold or original — let alone misleading or dangerous — than its opponents would have you believe.

[Content warning for racism and rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford

https://amzn.to/3cDsfke

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford 

https://amzn.to/3cDsfke

https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9781984880093

A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles: A History of Politics and Race in Texas by Bill Minutaglio 

https://amzn.to/3izP5gj 

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth