Reviews for A Time to Stand

The average rating for A Time to Stand based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-09 00:00:00 Montie Thompson In reading, as in life, the hardest part is often figuring out where to start. We used to struggle with too little information. Books were hard to find or out of print or never got published because the gatekeepers at the big publishing houses didn't think the book was worth creating. If you wanted to read about a certain subject, you'd go to a bookstore or library, where you might be confronted with a few time-tested titles. Things have changed. Now we struggle with too much information. Today, with Amazon and Google Books and self-publishing and the Internet and Wikipedia, it only takes a few key punches, a few seconds, to start drowning in words. In less time than it takes to make a grilled cheese sandwich, you can begin accessing just about every book ever written. Rather than being helpful, it's daunting, and you might be tempted to simply eat your grilled cheese sandwich rather than pressing on with your research. This is especially true for popular subjects. Take, for instance, the sinking of the Titanic, which has always been a favorite subject of mine. If you enter the ship's name into an Internet search, you will be innundated with 64 million results in .1 seconds. Narrow the search to Titanic books, and you have a more manageable 17 million results garnered in a slightly-tardier .12 seconds. Still, that's a lot of knowledge to wade through: Titanic fan sites, Titanic dating sites, Titanic fan fiction, and Wikipedia entries that can be edited by any higher-order primate to claim that President Obama caused the sinking by insisting on universal healthcare. The solution is to find a good starting point. For the Titanic, I'd say, 'start with Walter Lord's A Night to Remember.' It's a great book: highly readable, fast-paced, entertaining, and fortified by invaluable first-person accounts that Lord gathered through interviews. It gives a casual reader everything they'll ever need to know about the Titanic. Moreover, it is scholarly enough to help the more-interested reader separate the wheat (anything by Don Lynch) from the chaff (anything by Charles Pellegrino, any book called The Titanic Conspiracy). Oh, and just to be clear: that analogy is operating under the assumption that wheat is good and chaff is bad. I'm not a farmer, after all. Another popular historical subject, which has given rise to movies, television shows, and numerous polemics, is the battle of the Alamo. Taking place in 1836, the Alamo pitted a small band of American and Tejano revolutionaries against the Mexican army of General Santa Anna. After a twelve-day siege, Santa Anna's men stormed the converted mission at dawn, and killed every defender. The last stand, which killed former Congressman and raconteur David Crockett, as well as former slave-trader and land-fraud artist Jim Bowie, has captured our imagination ever since. As with the Titanic, there are a lot of Alamo books. Some are good, some are bad; many have an axe to grind. The question, becomes, where to start. My answer, as with the Titanic, is with Walter Lord. Lord's Alamo book, A Time to Stand, isn't as good as A Night To Remember. Lord is an oral historian; he relies heavily on anecdotes and firsthand stories of the participants to give an immediate, visceral account. Unfortunately for Lord's style, the Alamo battle occurred a century before Lord's birth. Accordingly, he could only conduct interviews via seance, and I have found no evidence he attempted this feat. Despite this reality, Lord chooses to to maintain his unique brand of anecdotal history. To do so, he is forced to rely on words he did not originally gather, and which sometimes exist in an ambiguous context. The result is a book that lacks historical rigor. It tells the Alamo story thrillingly, but without the requisite skepticism and analysis valued by hardcore history buffs (we are a hoot at parties!). For example, I would cite Lord's treatment of the death of Jim Bowie. Now, there is no concrete eyewitness account of his death. However, looking at Mexican sources, it appears likely that Santa Anna's troopers found Bowie unconscious in bed, blew off his head with a Brown Bess musket (his brains stained the wall for years after), and ran him through with bayonets. This jives with what we know about Bowie before the final assault: that he was dying of typhoid. It's not the most noble end for an alleged hero (if you choose to count Bowie as a hero). Lord ignores the probable and goes with the legend that Big Jim Bowie, famed New Orleans duelist, lifted himself from his cot, fired his pistols, and then pulled his eponymous knife... Propped in his cot, brace of pistols by his side, pale as the death that faced him, was Jim Bowie. He undoubtedly did his best... Actually, Bowie was undoubtedly either (a) unconscious or (b) already dead, but Lord doesn't let a stubborn fact get in the way of a great story. And that's always a problem with a starter-book, since you shouldn't go through the rest of your life with an Anglo myth lodged in your head. Yet, I'd recommend this book because it does several things right. Well, it does one big thing right. First and foremost, it is readable. If you only know the Alamo from Pee Wee's Big Adventure, you might be a little intimidated at the hundreds of books and millions of words expended on a single battle. Walter Lord's A Time To Stand will keep you interested while sheltering you from all the Alamo freaks waiting on the wings to sell you a self-published manuscript. Lord's accomplishment is not something to be sneered at, for the simple reason that thee battle of the Alamo is far more complex than it appears. It has, over time, become much more than a mere fight against all odds. Rather, it has evolved into a timeless microcosm of Anglo-Mexican relations (for instance, check out John Sayle's Lone Star, with its great closing line: "Forget the Alamo"). The enduring complication in Alamo studies is the thorny issue of race: one one side, you have the Alamo defenders, who are predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants who desperately sought freedom and liberty but also believed in the moral rightness of race-based slavery - and were also illegal immigrants; on the other side, you have the brown-skinned foe, Mexican soldiers who were defending their country but were also led by a dictator with quasi-genocidal tendencies. The result of this battle is a wound that is still raw today, and that is defined strictly in racial/ethnic terms. If you are a Mexican, you mostt likely despise what the Alamo stands for; if you are a Texan, you venerate the Alamo with the zeal of a Catholic in St. Peter's square. And if you are a normal American, you probably don't care that much, unless you have taken on the Alamo as a hobby (and that's where I come in). Despite the quantity of Alamo books, I've found surprisingly few good narratives. That is, there aren't a lot of books that set out to simply tell you, in chronological order, what most likely happened. Instead, most Alamo books can be broken down as follows: (1) polemics, in which a pro-Mexican author argues that a bunch of slave-owning pirates stole northern Mexico; or in which a pro-American author relates how a bunch of square-jawed heroes gave their lives in the name of freedom (and besides, Mexico stole Texas from the Spaniards); (2) cultural histories, in which the battle of the Alamo is placed in a sociological context, and the meaning of America extrapolated therefrom; and (3) books for the enthusiast, in which hundreds of pages are spent debating Suzanna Dickinson's veracity as a witness, or whether the Alamo actually had a basement. These kinds of books are no good for a beginner. They twist facts, distort events, and are often nearly unreadable (a lot of Alamo books, even a few of the most-respected, are just one step up from self-published). A Time to Stand is different. It's valuable because Lord is a polished author working with a professional editor to tell a clear, engaging, character-based story. Despite some factual shortcomings (I've noted one above), the broad particulars are correct. (In other words, you can trust the dates). This might sound like I'm damning with faint praise. And I am. Sort of. But Lord is a very good (if sometimes overly credulous) historian, and he does credit to the Alamo story. He is able to provide context for the battle without getting bogged down in the complex weave of competing constitutions, American immigration, Mexican internal politics and economics, and slavery that set the stage for the famous battle. If you read A Time To Stand, you will know the rough contours of the Alamo story, you will have a pleasant reading experience, and you can decide for yourself whether you want to delve deeper into the story (for instance, you can spend years of your life studying post-Texas-Revolution land-claims, in order to discern the exact roster of Alamo participants; I'm not saying this is the best use of your time, but it's something to consider the next time you are downing a six-pack of Jack's Hard Lemonade while watching Saturday Night Live reruns). Of course, it's worth bearing in mind, besides my other caveats, that Lord tells an an Anglo-centric story. While Lord does give some voice to the Mexicans, most of the voices we hear are white. As a result, the contest often feels a bit simplified. (To be fair, Lord was not privvy to some of the most famous Mexican sources, and even those particular sources are subject to much controversy. But let's not get into that or we'll be here all day arguing de la Pena). In my opinion, you would never want to end your study of the Alamo here. But if you are looking for a place to start, this is my recommendation. It's like a bike with training wheels, but a really cool bike, with streamers on the handles and a waterbottle holder and a headlight. It's fun to ride, but you should be ready, once the ride is over, to move on to something a bit more challenging. A Time To Stand gives you the basic facts you need to embark upon further Alamo studies. It is a foundation for further exploration, just in case you should choose to spend your life studying the Alamo in all its facets. (I can tell you, it's not a bad life, though other options include raising a family, running a marathon, or mapping various deep-ocean trenches). The failings of this book - its reliance on vivid narrative at the expense of accuracy - is also its selling point. In short, you won't get bored. Down in the plaza, Santa Anna's troops had little time to cheer the change in colors; they were much too busy storming the buildings. They moved methodically, from doorway to doorway, always using the same tactics: first a blast from the captured cannon to smash the doors and barricades...next a storm of musket fire to clear away the defenders...and then the final charge. As the Mexicans crashed the barrack rooms, new struggles broke out - more desperate, more fearful than any before. It was an intensely personal business now - pairs of men clutching and wrestling in the smoke filled darkness...

Review # 2 was written on 2018-07-03 00:00:00 Cole Howell Wow!!!! I never read any of Walter Lord's books until I began this one. Most non-fiction history books are long, long-winded and filled with too many pages and details (If you read any of Doris Kearns Goodwins' books you know what I mean!). Yet here is a historian who tackles a topic - The Battle of the Alamo, and writes it in almost novelesque form and after 275 extremely readable pages I have finished and feel really better versed than ever about that battle. Truly one of the most readable books I have read, this books grabs your attention from page 1 and never lets go. The author even has a chapter on Riddles of the Alamo in which he debunks many myths that have surrounded this Battle over the years; along with a listing of all those fighters who were there and who were killed during this savage battle. Heck, I never even heard how much of this battle was actually a siege with daily tightening circles around the mission. The author tackled about 10 topics during his life, wrote the definitive book on the Titanic, and the research is just fantastic. Even if you are not a fan of non-fiction history give this book a chance. I think I picked it up on my Kindle for $1.99. Well worth the purchase!!!!