Lone Star Rising

Here is the little-known, dramatic epic of heroes Sam Houston, Stephen Austin, and a host of others, who turned the Alamo into one of the most successful rallying cries in history.

All Americans, not just Texans, remember the Alamo. But the siege and brief battle at that abandoned church in February and March 1836 were just one chapter in a much larger story—larger even than the seven months of armed struggle that surrounded it. Indeed, three separate revolutionary traditions stretching back...