What do you think?
The Alamo Reader: A Study in History
The Alamo Reader sheds light on some important questions on the last days of the Alamo
Hardcover
First published August 1, 2003
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
December 30, 2009
Have you ever read a doorstop-sized 800 page book just to savage another book on the same subject on Goodreads?
I have.
I read The Alamo Reader, edited by Todd Hansen, in preparation for reading Exodus From the Alamo. I'd heard that Exodus was controversial, and I wanted to school myself in Alamo lore by going to the source, or rather, the primary sources.
I don't give The Alamo five stars because it's a great book; I give it five stars because of its importance for a certain subset of people who are clinically, perhaps frighteningly obsessed with the battle of the Alamo.
If you are merely interested in the story of the Alamo, this book is not for you.
If you want a detailed account of the 13 day siege and battle, this book is not for you.
If you've ever told your wife, "if we ever get divorced, I'm marrying the Alamo," this book is for you.
The Alamo Reader is nothing more or less than a collection of primary sources from the battle. Everything that we know about the subject - the chronology, the troop movements, the attack, the fates of the garrison - come from these sources. There are interviews, depositions, affidavits, court records, newspaper clippings, memoirs, memos, and letters. Literally, it's just page after page of these reproduced documents, which are categorized into Anglo and Mexican sources, and cover the time period immediately preceding the siege, as well as the siege itself.
The editor, Todd Hansen, who worked on this while in grad school, and must have a very patient wife, does provide limited commentary after each grouping of sources. However, he doesn't go very in-depth, which is part of his stated intent to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions on the veracity of the sources.
I read this book straight through, and I'll admit to being a little flustered and lost at the start. I'm so used to reading passively - having the author tell me what's going on - that I felt unmoored. There was no one to hold my hand, and I kept looking around for someone to tell me what to believe.
Once I realized I wasn't going to get any assistance, and accepted this fact,my enjoyment really heightened. History is a lot like a court case, and you have to put the pieces together by gathering your witnesses, hearing their story, and then judging their trustworthiness by looking at foundational issues (were they in a place to see what they saw?), credibility (did they have motive to lie?), and corroboration (is what the witness reported backed up by other witnesses).
In doing so, I learned two important lessons. Not about the Alamo, but about history.
1. It's really very easy to ingest an interpretation of history that is absolutely wrong. Without looking to the primary sources, you are essentially trusting the author and all of his inferences, biases, prejudices, and purposes. The Alamo Reader makes it possible, at least for this sliver of history, to actually puzzle things out yourself, without outside influences. It'd be nice if such a collection of sources could be available for every historical event, since for most of us, who have our daily lives and our dreary jobs, it's impossible to go traipsing around the country, visiting various libaries to see obscure historical collections.
2. Being a historian is really hard. In order to reconstruct an event, you have to collect dozens or hundreds of differing accounts, and from these varying perceptions, attempt to piece together a coherent whole. I finally realized why academics - who do all this research, find all these documents, and annotate those bibliographies - get so bitter towards popular historians, who piggyback on their work, write their bestsellers, and get to appear on the History Channel.
I also learned a third lesson. That I should stop devoting so much time to Goodreads vendettas. My wife actually taught me that lesson, after a week's worth of dinners spent debating Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson's essential credibility.
That week of dinners was followed by a week on the couch. So, lesson learned. Like I said, this is a valuable book.
I have.
I read The Alamo Reader, edited by Todd Hansen, in preparation for reading Exodus From the Alamo. I'd heard that Exodus was controversial, and I wanted to school myself in Alamo lore by going to the source, or rather, the primary sources.
I don't give The Alamo five stars because it's a great book; I give it five stars because of its importance for a certain subset of people who are clinically, perhaps frighteningly obsessed with the battle of the Alamo.
If you are merely interested in the story of the Alamo, this book is not for you.
If you want a detailed account of the 13 day siege and battle, this book is not for you.
If you've ever told your wife, "if we ever get divorced, I'm marrying the Alamo," this book is for you.
The Alamo Reader is nothing more or less than a collection of primary sources from the battle. Everything that we know about the subject - the chronology, the troop movements, the attack, the fates of the garrison - come from these sources. There are interviews, depositions, affidavits, court records, newspaper clippings, memoirs, memos, and letters. Literally, it's just page after page of these reproduced documents, which are categorized into Anglo and Mexican sources, and cover the time period immediately preceding the siege, as well as the siege itself.
The editor, Todd Hansen, who worked on this while in grad school, and must have a very patient wife, does provide limited commentary after each grouping of sources. However, he doesn't go very in-depth, which is part of his stated intent to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions on the veracity of the sources.
I read this book straight through, and I'll admit to being a little flustered and lost at the start. I'm so used to reading passively - having the author tell me what's going on - that I felt unmoored. There was no one to hold my hand, and I kept looking around for someone to tell me what to believe.
Once I realized I wasn't going to get any assistance, and accepted this fact,my enjoyment really heightened. History is a lot like a court case, and you have to put the pieces together by gathering your witnesses, hearing their story, and then judging their trustworthiness by looking at foundational issues (were they in a place to see what they saw?), credibility (did they have motive to lie?), and corroboration (is what the witness reported backed up by other witnesses).
In doing so, I learned two important lessons. Not about the Alamo, but about history.
1. It's really very easy to ingest an interpretation of history that is absolutely wrong. Without looking to the primary sources, you are essentially trusting the author and all of his inferences, biases, prejudices, and purposes. The Alamo Reader makes it possible, at least for this sliver of history, to actually puzzle things out yourself, without outside influences. It'd be nice if such a collection of sources could be available for every historical event, since for most of us, who have our daily lives and our dreary jobs, it's impossible to go traipsing around the country, visiting various libaries to see obscure historical collections.
2. Being a historian is really hard. In order to reconstruct an event, you have to collect dozens or hundreds of differing accounts, and from these varying perceptions, attempt to piece together a coherent whole. I finally realized why academics - who do all this research, find all these documents, and annotate those bibliographies - get so bitter towards popular historians, who piggyback on their work, write their bestsellers, and get to appear on the History Channel.
I also learned a third lesson. That I should stop devoting so much time to Goodreads vendettas. My wife actually taught me that lesson, after a week's worth of dinners spent debating Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson's essential credibility.
That week of dinners was followed by a week on the couch. So, lesson learned. Like I said, this is a valuable book.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review