Penguin Books
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
Key Metrics
- Bryan Burrough
- Penguin Books
- Paperback
- 9781984880116
- -
- 0.93 pounds
- History > United States - 19th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Lively and absorbing. . . -- The New York Times Book Review
Engrossing. --Wall Street Journal
Entertaining and well-researched . . . --Houston ChronicleThree noted Texan writers combine forces to tell the real story of the Alamo, dispelling the myths, exploring why they had their day for so long, and explaining why the ugly fight about its meaning is now coming to a head.
Every nation needs its creation myth, and since Texas was a nation before it was a state, it's no surprise that its myths bite deep. There's no piece of history more important to Texans than the Battle of the Alamo, when Davy Crockett and a band of rebels went down in a blaze of glory fighting for independence from Mexico, losing the battle but setting Texas up to win the war. However, that version of events, as Forget the Alamo definitively shows, owes more to fantasy than reality. Just as the site of the Alamo was left in ruins for decades, its story was forgotten and twisted over time, with the contributions of Tejanos--Texans of Mexican origin, who fought alongside the Anglo rebels--scrubbed from the record, and the origin of the conflict over Mexico's push to abolish slavery papered over. Forget the Alamo provocatively explains the true story of the battle against the backdrop of Texas's struggle for independence, then shows how the sausage of myth got made in the Jim Crow South of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. As uncomfortable as it may be to hear for some, celebrating the Alamo has long had an echo of celebrating whiteness.
In the past forty-some years, waves of revisionists have come at this topic, and at times have made real progress toward a more nuanced and inclusive story that doesn't alienate anyone. But we are not living in one of those times; the fight over the Alamo's meaning has become more pitched than ever in the past few years, even violent, as Texas's future begins to look more and more different from its past. It's the perfect time for a wise and generous-spirited book that shines the bright light of the truth into a place that's gotten awfully dark.
Author Bio
Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair magazine and the author of six books, including the No. 1 New York Times Best-Seller Barbarians at the Gate and his latest, Days of Rage. He is also a three-time winner of the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism.
Born in 1961, Bryan was raised in Temple, Texas, and graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1983. From 1983 to 1992 he was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he reported from Dallas, Houston, Pittsburgh and, during the late 1980s, covered the busy mergers and acquisitions beat in New York. He has written for Vanity Fair since 1992.
In 1990 Bryan and John Helyar co-authored Barbarians, the story of the fight for control of RJR Nabisco. The book, which spent 39 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has been hailed as one of the most influential business narratives of all time. Bryan joined Vanity Fair in 1992, where he has reported from locales as diverse as Hollywood, Nepal, Moscow, Tokyo and Jerusalem.
His subsequent books include:
Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmond Safra, 1992.
Dragonfly: An Epic Story of Survival in Space, 1998.
Public Enemies, 2004. A major movie based on the book, also named “Public Enemies,” is to be released by Universal Studios in July 2009 http://genericoitalia.it/. Directed by the acclaimed Michael Mann, the film stars Johnny Depp as the legendary bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as his nemesis, FBI agent Melvin Purvis. The paperback edition of Public Enemies reached No. 7 on the New York Times bestseller list.
The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes was published by Penguin Press in 2009. The hardcover edition of the book reached No. 8 on the New York Times bestseller list.
And the forthcoming Days of Rage to be published by Penguin Press in 2015.
In addition to consulting work for “60 Minutes” and various Hollywood studios, Bryan has authored numerous book reviews and OpEd articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. He has appeared on “Today,” “Good Morning America,” and in many documentary films. Bryan splits his time between Chatam, N.J. and Austin, Texas.
Source: bryanburrough.com
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