Reviews for Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis: Commander of the Alamo, Family 1066 in England to 1836 the Alamo

The average rating for Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis: Commander of the Alamo, Family 1066 in England to 1836 the Alamo based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-27 00:00:00 Samson Mfalila I wanted this book to be so much better than it is, because one of the things that fascinates me about the quote-unquote Old West is how permeable the boundary between the outlaws and the lawmen was. You can see it in a highly compressed form in the careers of the various Earp brothers, but it's visible in the careers of any number of men, how which side of the line they stood on depended on what day it was and which way the wind was blowing. Boessenecker is not interested in this question. He is, in fact, the opposite of interested. He is interested in idolizing the lawmen in late nineteenth-century California and demonizing the outlaws. It is a telling detail that he uses, without irony or any sense of possible problems, the word "badman" to describe the law-breakers he discusses. It is true that some of them were very bad men, but that completely unselfconsious labelling of them says way more about Boessenecker than it does about any of his subjects. Unfortunately, this simple binary of good and bad makes his potentially fascinating subject matter flat and largely uninteresting. He writes flatly uninteresting hagiographies of John C. Boggs, Steve Venard, Ben K. Thorn, Doc Standley, and Tom Cunningham (sheriffs and marshals, and of them, the only one who stands up off the page is Doc Standley, and that because his sense of humor is palpable in the anecdotes Boessenecker relates), and then flatly uninteresting and unnuanced accounts of Captain Rufus Ingram, C.S.A.*, Bill Miner, Kid Thompson and Alva Johnson, Ben and Dudley Johnson, and George and Vern Gates. The last section of the book, about lynchings, was actually compelling despite Boessenecker, because even he couldn't flatten out the deeply problematic nature of the relationship of lynching to the law, and the fact that--especially in regards to the Modoc County lynchings--the law could be so grossly partisan and incompetent as to be practically "badmen" themselves. Boessenecker has no grasp of how to tell a story. He swamps the reader with trivial details, uses the passive voice to elide important questions of agency, and is incredibly frustrating because of his refusal to examine any of the difficult issues raised by the history he presents. On the other hand, he has certainly done his research, so if you need a source for this particular corner of history, he is, if nothing else, a good place to start. --- *Captain Ingram, in the middle of robbing a stagecoach: "Gentlemen, I will tell you who we are. We are not robbers, but a company of Confederate soldiers." The fairies at Captain Ingram's christening clearly forgot to give him the gift of irony.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-03 00:00:00 Eric Bown In terms of reading pleasure, I enjoyed the chapters where I could keep track of everyone. The chapters where I got lost in a morass of names, not so much, however the author does try to help the reader there, even including a genealogy in the chapter where the feud between two families disintegrates into a feud within the one. And I expect most people do better at following the names of the various lawmen and outlaws than I do. In terms of research, however, I thought this book excellent. Boessenecker clearly understands that the kinds of crime bad guys indulged in changed over the years that Westerns cover, which right there puts him ahead of the authors of some books I have read (and way ahead of TV westerns). His footnotes are good, and even within the text I can always figure out what year something is happening. The map he provides in the front doesn't include every town discussed, but you can always get a general idea of where something is happening. Bossenecker provides the dates and locations of dozens of newspaper articles he's used, which is terrifically helpful, because California has a website archiving many of its old newspapers, so the reader can go read the original writeups, if so inclined. Nineteenth century reporting was no more accurate than it is now, but reporters back then didn't pretend to be dispassionate observers and weren't above giving their opinions on things, meaning the writing was often much livelier. But Bossenecker also dug into archives less easily available, providing corrections on the newspaper reports (and, sometimes, on other author's write ups of the events). The occasional photos are always pertinent to the text, and often enhance it (blown up railroad cars, hurrah!). Recommended for anyone interested in the subject.