Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis - Softcover

Davis, William C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060930942 ISBN 13: 9780060930943

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1999

Synopsis

Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive book about the lives of David Crockett, James Bowie and William Barret Travis—the legendary frontiersmen and fighters who met their destiny at the Alamo in one of the most famous and tragic battles in American history—and about what really happened in that battle.

About this title

Review:

Ever since the day in March 1836 when an obscure Spanish mission in Texas fell to Mexican forces led by President Santa Anna, Americans have been exhorted to "remember the Alamo." And remember it we do--primarily as the place where American folk legends Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis met their end fighting for Texas independence. Though it is primarily the Alamo we remember today, the battle itself takes up just a few pages of William C. Davis's Three Roads to the Alamo; Davis is far more interested in what brought three such disparate men as Crockett, Bowie, and Travis to Texas in the first place than in how they died there. As any schoolchild knows, Davy Crockett was the "king of the wild frontier," a bona fide folk hero in his own time who rode his legend to political office first in Tennessee and then as a United States congressman. Bowie was both less well known and less heroic--a land speculator not above resorting to fraud and forgery to get what he wanted, while William Travis, the youngest of the three, brought little but potential with him to Texas.

Davis does a good job of illuminating both the personalities of his subjects and the situation in which they found themselves in Texas. He thoroughly explores the lives of these three men--their successes, their failures, their hopes for the future--and lays out the arguments for and against Texan independence from Mexico in which they found themselves embroiled. By the time Crockett, Bowie, and Travis finally arrive at the Alamo, it seems the inevitable conclusion to the roads they each have been traveling over the course of their lifetimes. Three Roads to the Alamo is a fine piece of historical research and an entertaining read, as well.

About the Author:

William C. Davis is the author or editor of thirty-five books on the civil war and southern history, most recently A Way Through the Wilderness, "A Government of Our Own ": The Making of a Confederacy, and the prizewinning biography Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. For many years a magazine publisher, Davis now divides his time between writing and consulting for book publishers and television.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0060930942
• ISBN 13: 9780060930943
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 816