Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis

by William C. Davis Narrated by David Colacci

Overview

Three Roads to the Alamo is the definitive work 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 famous and tragic battles in American history—and about what really happened in that battle.

Editorial Reviews

Joseph Gustaitis

While Three Roads is a must read for Alamo buffs, other readers will gain much from its portrait of American frontier life. -- American History

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In 1836, Bowie and Travis, who would lead the 200 doomed Texas rebels at the Alamo, met for the first time at the walled adobe buildings that were largely comprised of the church of San Jose y Santiago del Alamo de Parras. A few days later, David Crockett wandered in from Tennessee, where he had lost his bid for reelection to Congress and vowed never to return. In the siege of the compound, all three would die violently in the predawn hours of March 6. Crockett had long been a legend in his own time when he turned up in San Antonio to join Bowie and Travis in the pantheon of frontier gallants. Davis, a much-published historian of 19th-century America, contends that we "part reluctantly with our myths, and the more so when by removing the fable, we leave a hole in the story that we cannot fill with fact." In weaving the three strands of his narrative, which come together only in the last pages as the frontiersman, con man and entrepreneur join forces in the Alamo, Davis evokes boisterous Jacksonian America. His 187 pages of notes attest to the thoroughness of his research. Of the three, Crockett comes off the best, as inventive, yet not immoral like the other two. Bowie, a forger of land claims, and Travis, an unscrupulous country lawyer, hardly fit our prescription for heroes after Davis is done with them. His relentless search for facts sometimes bogs down the reader in excessive detail, yet that may be the best way to reduce romantic myths to reality.

Library Journal

Sure, many people remember the famous Davy Crockett show theme song, but who was he really, and what about the other two major figures who came together with Crockett in that dramatic last stand at the Alamo? Comparatively little has been written about Jim Bowie or William Travis, and so much of Alamo history is either tremendously partisan, ungrounded in historical realities, or both. Davis ("A Way Through the Wilderness", LJ 2/1/95) has a dependable record of writing and research into early American, in particular Southern, history. His newest work is a readable, stimulating, and exceptionally well-researched narrative history of Crockett, Travis, Bowie, and the westward expansion they helped lead. Davis is the first writer, American or Mexican, to engage in substantial research in the official Mexican archives, and his work is a vast improvement over Don Graham's sophomorically iconoclastic and poorly edited book about the three men, "Duel of Eagles" (LJ 7/90). Highly recommended for any collection concerned with American expansion into the Southwest or Southern history and essential for regional collections. Charles V. Cowling, SUNY at Brockport

Kirkus Reviews

Distinguished historian Davis ably probes the lives of three legendary figures, finding much to illuminate the nature of frontier life in early America. Davis ('The Cause Lost", 1996, etc.) notes that all three were outsize characters. Crockett, schooled in the wilderness as a hunter and trailblazer, served as a soldier under "Andy" Jackson in the Creek War, and was a charming, restless, ambitious figure, literate, a great storyteller and wit, and a nationally prominent politician who saw himself as a champion of the poor. He actively collaborated in the creation of a colorful and somewhat ribald public persona, doing nothing to discourage the rowdy and outrageous tales attached to his name. Jim Bowie was a much darker figure, having been a shady land speculator and a smuggler of slaves. He fled to Texas to escape creditors and forge some new career for himself. While a man of distinctly mixed morals, Bowie was also a brave man in combat, a natural leader, and something of a frontier legend in his own right. And as the movement for Texan independence grew, Bowie became one of its most prominent supporters. Travis was an educated attorney and militia officer whose life had been haunted by failure: addicted to gambling, he foundered as a newspaper publisher and fled to Texas to escape debt. Davis finds him bright, immature, and ambitious, an irresponsible figure who was also undeniably brave in combat. Davis deftly traces their paths to the Alamo, using his exploration of their varied characters to illuminate much about the harsh realities of life on the American frontier and offering along the way a vivid description of the siege of the Alamo and the bloody creation of an independentTexas. A splendid narrative history, perceptive, authoritative, and moving.

From the Publisher

"Exhaustive research by a master practitioner sweeps aside layers of legendry to reveal three giants of the Alamo in their true character and significance. Three Roads to the Alamo will occupy the authoritative high ground for years to come." — Robert M. Utley

"William C. Davis's Three Roads to the Alamo is far and away the best account of the Alamo I have ever read. The portraits of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis are brilliantly sketched in a fast-moving story that keeps the reader riveted to the very last word." — Stephen B. Oates

"Davis, a well-regarded biographer of Confederate figures, has turned over every documentary rock about Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, who had never encountered one another until the Texans revolted in 1835. So this book is effectively three books in one, and colorful ones at that...a dense but flowing narrative." — Bookist

"[A] myth-shattering retelling. Three Roads to the Alamo [is] a major and at times daring study." — Daily Press, Inc. Newport News, Va.

"A splendid narrative history, perceptive, authoritative, and moving." — Kirkus Reviews

"A stunning work—well written, exceedinly well-researched, interesting and enlightening." — Austin-American Statesman

"Davis has provided a fresh and challenging look not only at the icons of Texas independence but at the March 6, 1836, battle at the old San Antonio mission in which the three heroes died, as did all the other 180 defenders. From the opening pages, in which the three heroes first meet in New Orleans in 1827, to the post-mortem assessment of them, Three Roads to the Alamo is an illuminating, exhaustive but never exhausting book." — Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

"Exhaustive research by a master practitioner sweeps aside layers of legendry to reveal three giants of the Alamo in their true character and significance. Three Roads to the Alamo will occupy the authoritative high ground for years to come." — Robert M. Utley, author of 13 books on Western American History

"The reality really is far more interesting than the myth, as William C. Davis proves in this ambitious, extensively researched and compelling joint biography. Davis. . . brings a sympathetic, nuanced approach to his task of chipping away legends and falsehoods. He injects blood and marrow into desiccated icons. The Crockett, Bowie and Travis that emerge may be less godlike than some might wish—the three were flawed, fascinating, larger than life. But to evoke them as this book does is to give history a deeply human face." — Houston Chronicle

"There is no doubt this book is the best-researched and best-written history of the lives of Crockett, Bowie and Travis yet published. Mr. Davis makes their lives more exciting and vivid than their legens—a must-read for anyone interested in Texas history." — Dallas Morning News

"Three Roads to the Alamo represents a new wave in Alamo literature that is just beginning to appear in print. This book marks a maturing of Alamo historiography and is a must for any student of this epic event....Highly recommended." — San Antonio Express News

Dallas Morning News

"There is no doubt this book is the best-researched and best-written history of the lives of Crockett, Bowie and Travis yet published. Mr. Davis makes their lives more exciting and vivid than their legens—a must-read for anyone interested in Texas history."

Stephen B. Oates

"William C. Davis's Three Roads to the Alamo is far and away the best account of the Alamo I have ever read. The portraits of Crockett, Bowie, and Travis are brilliantly sketched in a fast-moving story that keeps the reader riveted to the very last word."

Houston Chronicle

"The reality really is far more interesting than the myth, as William C. Davis proves in this ambitious, extensively researched and compelling joint biography. Davis. . . brings a sympathetic, nuanced approach to his task of chipping away legends and falsehoods. He injects blood and marrow into desiccated icons. The Crockett, Bowie and Travis that emerge may be less godlike than some might wish—the three were flawed, fascinating, larger than life. But to evoke them as this book does is to give history a deeply human face."

Bookist

"Davis, a well-regarded biographer of Confederate figures, has turned over every documentary rock about Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, who had never encountered one another until the Texans revolted in 1835. So this book is effectively three books in one, and colorful ones at that...a dense but flowing narrative."

Austin-American Statesman

"A stunning work—well written, exceedinly well-researched, interesting and enlightening."

Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

"Davis has provided a fresh and challenging look not only at the icons of Texas independence but at the March 6, 1836, battle at the old San Antonio mission in which the three heroes died, as did all the other 180 defenders. From the opening pages, in which the three heroes first meet in New Orleans in 1827, to the post-mortem assessment of them, Three Roads to the Alamo is an illuminating, exhaustive but never exhausting book."

Robert M. Utley

"Exhaustive research by a master practitioner sweeps aside layers of legendry to reveal three giants of the Alamo in their true character and significance. Three Roads to the Alamo will occupy the authoritative high ground for years to come."

San Antonio Express News

"Three Roads to the Alamo represents a new wave in Alamo literature that is just beginning to appear in print. This book marks a maturing of Alamo historiography and is a must for any student of this epic event....Highly recommended."

null Bookist

"Davis, a well-regarded biographer of Confederate figures, has turned over every documentary rock about Crockett, Bowie, and Travis, who had never encountered one another until the Texans revolted in 1835. So this book is effectively three books in one, and colorful ones at that...a dense but flowing narrative."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177853789
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/10/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

1

Crockett

1786-1815

I never had six months education in my life I was raised in obs[c]urity without either wealth or education I have made myself to every station in life that I ever filled through my own exertions . . .

David Crockett, August 18, 1831

When he wrote his autobiography in the winter of 1833&ndash34, David Crockett insisted that it should run at least 200 pages. That, to him, was a real book. As he wrote he studied other books, counted the words on their pages, and compared the tally with his own growing manuscript. As a result, when published his narrative spanned 211 pages, and he was content. By that time in his life he had been a state legislator, three times elected to Congress, the subject of a book, the thinly disguised hero of an acclaimed play, a popular phenomenon in the eastern press, and touted for the presidency. Yet he devoted more than one-fourth of his own work to his youth: a time when his "own exertions" availed him nothing. He remembered youthful pranks, a few adventures, and vicissitudes that should have made him wise but only left him gullible. Repeatedly he returned to three things he remembered from his first eighteen years: that the father whom he loved was a stern disciplinarian and could be violent; that he wept easily as a child and as a young man; and that he was poor. Certainly it took no stretch of memory to recall the last in particular. For David Crockett poverty was never yesterday.

His was the story of a whole population of the poor who started moving from the British Isles in the1700s and simply never stopped. Despite the misnomer "Scots-Irish," they were almost all Scots, as surely were Crockett&rsquos ancestors.1 Like so many who grew up ignorant and illiterate on the fringes of young America, he knew little of his forebears, and some of what he believed was erroneous. Indeed, that father whom he loved yet feared knew little himself, or else chose not to speak of it. Perhaps the child David did not listen or kept his distance, especially when John Crockett had been at the drink and felt ill-tempered and prone to reach for the birch.

The man David did not even know where his own father had been born, and believed it was either in Ireland or during the ocean passage to the colonies.

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