Research Material For Texans

[Jay Edward (deceased)]

The Alamo Reader: A Study in History
Edited  by Todd Hansen
837 pages, illustrated, hardcover: $36.95
ISBN 0-8117-0060-7
Reviewed by Tim Todish
 
My recent MUZZLELOADER article, "The Alamo: Deserving of Being Noted" (May/June 2004), was designed to help those who yearned for more information after seeing the then-newly released movie, The Alamo, directed by John Lee Hancock. In that article I attempted to point readers toward a variety of reliable and readily available books on the Alamo and the Texas Revolution. There is, of necessity, a significant lag time between when an article is written and when it is finally published. During this time lag for my Alamo article, an excellent new title appeared that I feel should be brought to readers' attention.

Todd Hansen's The Alamo Reader is one of the finest compilations of primary source material relating to the Alamo that has ever been published. Organized into sections—Source inside the Alamo, Sources in the Mexican Camp, Sources from the Vicinity, Other Primary Sources and Later Sources—the book presents letters, newspaper accounts and other documents from all sides of the conflict. It also contains a number of carefully chosen illustrations, such as various period sketches of the Alamo's fortifications. The author includes his own well-reasoned commentary, but the real strength of the book lies in the large number of primary sources that are presented. These documents are often contradictory, and readers are allowed to come to their own conclusions about their veracity.

The Alamo Reader is not a book for everyone. There are better titles for those who simply desire a clean and flowing narrative of the historic events surrounding the Alamo. However, for those who like to dig into the actual sources themselves and make up their own minds about the inevitable controversies, Todd Hansen's book is an absolute must.

The Alamo Reader was published by Stackpole Books and is available through major retailers.