Customer Reviews

Remember the Alamo!

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I picked up this little volume,written by Robert Penn Warren, because I really liked "All the King's Men" and much of Warren's poetry. "Remember the Alamo!", however, reads more like a kiddie history of the battle from the view point of the late 1950s. It is an OK read, although, there are some glaring inaccuracies due to Warren using second-hand information (like the escape of Rose). This will never take the place of Walter Lord's superior "A Time to Stand." If you have sixth or eighth graders at home, it might be a nice intro to the battle, but most adults (I suspect) would expect a better performance from a writer of Warren's cailber. [To the publishers--it would be nice, in future editions, if you would reset the several spelling typos found in the book.]

I'm not sure if I got what I paid for. I picked up this book as a quick read for a brief introduction to the Alamo and got exactly that; however, I was disappointed to find out the book reads at a third grade level with below-caliber writing from Robert Penn Warren. Because the book was originally published pre-Civil Rights Movement, the book reeks (especially at its beginning) of anti-Native American sentiment (still portrayed as savages and uncivilized) and occasionally dipping into the anti-Mexican (I guess this one is obvious because it was the Americans versus them). If it weren't scribed by Warren, this book would have been lost a long time ago. I wouldn't even suggest giving this to a child to read because its view points are very biased. Luckily there are better written and researched books about the Alamo.