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New printing includes a new introduction by Texas History Legend Stephen L. Hardin.When Phil Collins was a kid growing up in a London suburb, he would often watch an amazing show on his family television. There, in black and white, was Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. As he matured, Collins not only acted out the exploits of his new hero, but he often refought the Battle of the Alamo with his toy soldiers. Even though music came to dominate his life, it was this love of history—and Davy Crockett and the Alamo in particular—that was always near by. On one musical tour, Collins encountered his first David Crockett autograph—for sale at a store called the Gallery of History. “I didn’t know this stuff was out there, that you could own it,” the rock-n-roll legend said. “It had never occurred to him. Later, he received a birthday present that would change his life: a receipt for a saddle signed by an Alamo defender. From that point forward, the drummer began building his impressive Alamo and Texas Revolution collection.Here, for the first time in history, are the artifacts, relics, and documents that compose the Phil Collins collection, available in a beautifully designed color book shot-through with stunning photography and crisply rendered illustrations. Collins’s prose takes the reader through the joys of being a collector as he lovingly describes what each piece in this impressive assemblage means to him. Photographer Ben Powell of Austin brought these items to vivid relief, and artist Gary Zaboly’s masterful pen-and-ink drawings breath life into the items. Essays by Texas historians Bruce Winders, Don Frazier, and Stephen Hardin provide the historical background to the collection and help make this into a work of art that also serves handily as a serious research tool.

In Sleuthing the Alamo, historian James E. Crisp draws back the curtain on years of myth-making to reveal some surprising truths about the Texas Revolution--truths often obscured by both racism and "political correctness," as history has been hijacked by combatants in the culture wars of the past two centuries.Beginning with a very personal Prologue recalling both the pride and the prejudices that he encountered in the Texas of his youth, Crisp traces his path to the discovery of documents distorted, censored, and ignored--documents which reveal long-silenced voices from the Texan past. In each of four chapters focussing on specific documentary "finds," Crisp uncovers the clues that led to these archival discoveries. Along the way, the cast of characters expands to include: a prominent historian who tried to walk away from his first book; an unlikely teenaged "speechwriter" for General Sam Houston; three eyewitnesses to the death of Davy Crockett at the Alamo; a desperate inmate of Mexico City's Inquisition Prison, whose scribbled memoir of the war in Texas is now listed in the Guiness Book of World Records; and the stealthy slasher of the most famous historical painting in Texas. In his Afterword, Crisp explores the evidence behind the mythic "Yellow Rose of Texas," and examines some of the powerful forces at work in silencing the very voices from the past that we most need to hear today. Here then is an engaging first-person account of historical detective work, illuminating the methods of the serious historian--and the motives of those who prefer glorious myth to unflattering truth.

Long overshadowed by the towering buildings of downtown San Antonio, the modest little Alamo still evokes tremendous feeling among Texans and, indeed, many other Americans. For Anglo Texans, the Alamo is the "Cradle of Texas Liberty" and a symbolic confirmation of Manifest Destiny. For Hispanic Texans, however, the Alamo has increasingly become a stolen symbol, its origin as a Spanish mission forgotten, its famous defeat used to exclude Hispanics from an honorable place in Texas history.In this important new book, Holly Beachley Brear explores in fascinating detail what the Alamo means to the numerous groups that lay claim to its heritage. She shows how Alamo myths often diverge from the historical facts-and why. She decodes the agendas of various groups, including the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (who maintain the Alamo buildings and grounds), the Order of the Alamo, the Texas Cavaliers, and LULAC. And she probes attempts by individuals and groups to rewrite the Alamo myth to include more positive roles for themselves, as she explains the value in laying claim to the Alamo's past.With new perspectives on all the sacred icons of the Alamo and the Fiesta that celebrates (one version of) its history each year, Inherit the Alamo is guaranteed to challenge stereotypes and offer new understanding of the Alamo's ongoing role in shaping Texas and American history and mythology. It will be of interest to a wide popular and scholarly audience.

Runner-up, Best Historical Fiction in English, Latino Book Awards Competition, 2010This literary adventure takes place in nineteenth-century Texas and follows the story of a Tejana lesbian cowgirl after the fall of the Alamo. Micaela Campos, the central character, witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela's Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela's travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela's journey and her romance with a black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic.This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. PÉrez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation's imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that PÉrez explores-political climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American West-are current today.

"Remember the Alamo!" reverberates through Texas history and culture, but what exactly are we remembering? Over nearly two centuries, the Mexican victory over an outnumbered band of Alamo defenders has been transformed into an American victory for the love of liberty. Why did the historical battle of 1836 undergo this metamorphosis in memory and mythology to become such a potent master symbol in Texan and American culture? In this probing book, Richard Flores seeks to answer that question by examining how the Alamo's transformation into an American cultural icon helped to shape social, economic, and political relations between Anglo and Mexican Texans from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. In the first part of the book, he looks at how the attempts of heritage society members and political leaders to define the Alamo as a place have reflected struggles within Texas society over the place and status of Anglos and Mexicans. In the second part, he explores how Alamo movies and the transformation of Davy Crockett into an Alamo hero/martyr have advanced deeply racialized, ambiguous, and even invented understandings of the past.

As Mexican soldiers fought the mostly Anglo-American colonists and volunteers at the Alamo in 1836, San Antonio's Tejano population was caught in the crossfire, both literally and symbolically. Though their origins were in Mexico, the Tejanos had put down lasting roots in Texas and did not automatically identify with the Mexican cause. Indeed, as the accounts in this new collection demonstrate, their strongest allegiance was to their fellow San Antonians, with whom they shared a common history and a common plight as war raged in their hometown.Timothy M. Matovina here gathers all known Tejano accounts of the Battle of the Alamo. These accounts consist of first reports of the battle, including Juan N. SeguÍn's funeral oration at the interment ceremony of the Alamo defenders, conversations with local Tejanos, unpublished petitions and depositions, and published accounts from newspapers and other sources. This communal response to the legendary battle deepens our understanding of the formation of Mexican American consciousness and identity.

In one of very few balanced accounts of Texas's epic struggle for independence from Mexico, Albert Nofi provides a splendid chronicle of the events and personalities of the war. He includes readable and accessible maps of military movements and a strategic and tactical analysis of each battle, addressing the extraordinary number of myths that the Alamo has engendered and exposing the truth about a conflict that has taken on legendary proportions.

"Remember the Alamo!" is a phrase that is woven into the American consciousness, but what do most people really remember about the Alamo? Much of the true story has been shrouded in myth for over 150 years. This comprehensive encyclopedia provides thorough coverage for people, places, events and issues spanning the pre-Revolution period and settlement of Texas by Americans to the forming of the Republic in 1836. When appropriate, a mini-chronology supplements the entry, placing the discussion in context. A day-by-day account details the thirteen day famous siege. Entries cover major players such as Santa Anna, Jim Bowie and David Crockett and provide biographies (from obscure sources, in some cases) of every Alamo defender killed in the battle. American and Mexican resources have been used to assure a well-rounded picture of often misunderstood events. Maps and an extensive bibliography complement the text.

John Myers Myers authored sixteen books, including Doc Holliday and Tombstone's Early Years, also available as Bison Books.

On March 6, 1836, the Alamo fell after a thirteen-day siege by General Antonio López de Santa Anna and his Mexican army. The fall of the mission ranks as one of the most recognizable events in American history. Rendezvous at the Alamo presents capsule biographies of three prominent historical figures at the Alamo: Jim Bowie, William Barret Travis, and Davy Crockett. Using diaries, personal letters, eyewitness accounts, and a wealth of secondary souce material, Virgil E. Baugh describes the varied lives of the three and shows how each ended up at the Alamo. In spite of their fame, all three men had been dogged by frustration and failure, but in death their immortality was insured.

If we do in fact ""remember the Alamo,"" it is largely thanks to one person who witnessed the final assault and survived: the commanding officer's slave, a young man known simply as Joe. What Joe saw as the Alamo fell, recounted days later to the Texas Cabinet, has come down to us in records and newspaper reports. But who Joe was, where he came from, and what happened to him have all remained mysterious until now. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, authors Ron J. Jackson, Jr., and Lee Spencer White have fully restored this pivotal yet elusive figure to his place in the American story.The twenty-year-old Joe stood with his master, Lieutenant Colonel Travis, against the Mexican army in the early hours of March 6, 1836. After Travis fell, Joe watched the battle's last moments from a hiding place. He was later taken first to Bexar and questioned by Santa Anna about the Texan army, and then to the revolutionary capitol, where he gave his testimony with evident candor.With these few facts in hand, Jackson and White searched through plantation ledgers, journals, memoirs, slave narratives, ship logs, newspapers, letters, and court documents. Their decades-long effort has revealed the outline of Joe's biography, alongside some startling facts: most notably, that Joe was the younger brother of the famous escaped slave and abolitionist narrator William Wells Brown, as well as the grandson of legendary trailblazer Daniel Boone. This book traces Joe's story from his birth in Kentucky through his life in slavery - which, in a grotesque irony, resumed after he took part in the Texans' battle for independence - to his eventual escape and disappearance into the shadows of history.Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend recovers a true American character from obscurity and expands our view of events central to the emergence of Texas.

If we do in fact “remember the Alamo,” it is largely thanks to one person who witnessed the final assault and survived: the commanding officer’s slave, a young man known simply as Joe. What Joe saw as the Alamo fell, recounted days later to the Texas Cabinet, has come down to us in records and newspaper reports. But who Joe was, where he came from, and what happened to him have all remained mysterious until now. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, authors Ron J. Jackson, Jr., and Lee Spencer White have fully restored this pivotal yet elusive figure to his place in the American story.The twenty-year-old Joe stood with his master, Lieutenant Colonel Travis, against the Mexican army in the early hours of March 6, 1836. After Travis fell, Joe watched the battle’s last moments from a hiding place. He was later taken first to Bexar and questioned by Santa Anna about the Texan army, and then to the revolutionary capitol, where he gave his testimony with evident candor.With these few facts in hand, Jackson and White searched through plantation ledgers, journals, memoirs, slave narratives, ship logs, newspapers, letters, and court documents. Their decades-long effort has revealed the outline of Joe’s biography, alongside some startling facts: most notably, that Joe was the younger brother of the famous escaped slave and abolitionist narrator William Wells Brown, as well as the grandson of legendary trailblazer Daniel Boone. This book traces Joe’s story from his birth in Kentucky through his life in slavery—which, in a grotesque irony, resumed after he took part in the Texans’ battle for independence—to his eventual escape and disappearance into the shadows of history.Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend recovers a true American character from obscurity and expands our view of events central to the emergence of Texas.

Introducing a new model for the transnational history of the United States, Raúl Ramos places Mexican Americans at the centre of the Texas creation story. He focuses on Mexican-Texan, or Tejano, society in a period of political transition beginning with the year of Mexican independence. Ramos explores the factors that helped shape the ethnic identity of the Tejano population, including cross-cultural contacts between Bexareños, indigenous groups, and Anglo-Americans, as they negotiated the contingencies and pressures on the frontier of competing empires.