A Line in the Sand

In John Wayne, American, the authors brilliantly explicated the American myths embodied by Wayne as much as they shed light on the man himself. This book does the same thing, but for a less directly anthropomorphic metaphor: the Battle of the Alamo. Roberts and Olson, historians at Purdue and Sam Houston State respectively, do not think the Texas Revolution of 1836 was motivated by racism and ethnocentrism, as many recent scholars do, but find it legitimately rooted in conflicting views of political freedom and individual rights. The Texans' rebellion against Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had many contemporary counterparts elsewhere in Mexico, undertaken for similar political principles, but forgotten because they failed. After addressing the details of the siege (including Davy Crockett's death), they turn to Alamo myth making, from Adina de Zavala's ""near religious love for Texas and its heroes"" to the familiar 1954-1955 Disney TV series that made the Alamo a national shrine. For Cold War viewers, they argue, the Alamo and Davy Crockett in particular symbolized truth, justice and sacrifice for a noble cause; Wayne's 1960 feature film The Alamo cemented the image. The authors' account of the continual conflicts over the physical and the mythical elements of the legend establishes the Alamo as a focal point of a wider struggle to define, and therefore to control, America's past. (Jan.) Forecast: John Wayne, American generated plenty of television and text punditry on the actor's place in the American mythos. While the Alamo is a less seductive subject, it remains a contentious site. This book will be well reviewed, and could certainly play a role in the closer examination of Texas that the possible (as of this writing) Bush presidency would bring.