Reading recommendations:

Three Roads to the Alamo

Three Roads to the Alamo

William C. Davis, a distinguished Civil War historian and biographer, illuminates the great western migration of the early nineteenth century through these remarkable figures, representative of the three distinct types of men responsible for pushing American civilization west of the Mississippi.

Through tremendous research and with unprecedented access to Mexican military archives, Davis strips away many layers of myth, legend, and fable that surrounded Crockett, Bowie, and Travis during their lives and even more emphatically after their deaths, portraying them as they really were, heroic and unheroic, great stature and deeply flawed, law abiding and law breaking.

Crockett stood for the thousands who were always on the edge of the wilderness, for whom no home was ever permanent. Bowie epitomized those who invariably followed, the entrepreneurs and exploiters, the men who profited, often outside the law and moved on to the next potential bonanza. And Travis was the man of community and society, the lawgiver, the town builder, even the founder of a state or nation, one of the millions who came to stay and create.

Though Travis, Crockett, and Bowie came from different backgounds and began their lives in different parts of the country at different times, they were united by their Scots-Irish heritage; by the restlessness and ambition that kept pushing them west to the frontier; which moved with them; their involvement in the Texas settlement and revolution; and most famously by their meeting at the crossroads of the Alamo in the swift and deadly battle of March 6, 1836.

Because of their reputations and actions these three men are deservedly the most legendary heroes of the Alamo. However, Davis has uncovered and reconstructed much of what actually happened and he frequently challenges or debunks other versions of the battle, which have prevailed for more than a century.

From the Texas Bookshelves.

Star of Destiny

Much is known about Sam Houston's political and military career, but until Star of Destiny the influence of his wife and children on his life has been overlooked.

Star of Destiny

The letters, which have been unavailable to the public, counteract the myth of the lone hero who conquered the frontier without support or influence of his family.

The author, great-great-granddaughter of Sam Houston and Margaret Lea, has gathered hundreds of letters from family members and interviewed descendants to tell the story of this remarkable marriage.

From the Texas Bookshelves.

Sam Houston

In the decades preceding the Civil War, few figures in the United States were as influential or as controversial as Sam Houston. In Sam Houston, James L. Haley explores Houston's momentous career and the complex man behind it. Haley's fifteen years of research and writing have produced possibly the most complete, most personal, and most readable Sam Houston biography ever written.

These two books will give the reader an abundance of information on the man, Sam Houston. I've enjoyed all two books. I hope the reader will too.

See you at Rylander.

, James L. Haley - Texas Bookshelves draws upon previously unpublished family letters between Sam and his wife, Margaret Lea which reveal a deep interdependency between the two. These letters are astonishingly in their emotional honesty and they reveal aspects of married life in the nineteenth century that are overlooked by most historians., The Private Life of Sam and Margaret Houston, Madge Thornall Roberts, Forward by Randolph B. Campbell 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 tragic and famous battles in American history and about what really happened in that battle., The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis, William C. Davis