Alamo Bookshelf 5: 13 Days to Glory, Bowie's Lost Mine & A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett

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13 DAYS TO GLORY - Lon Tinkle (1958)

This second book-length work devoted to the Alamo is an even better read than the first (see Alamo Bookshelf 3) by John Myers Myers. Tinkle adds new details and new anecdotes, and puts faces on more of the characters in this real-life drama. This book was the basis of the not-so-hot 1987 TV movie featuring James Arness as Jim Bowie, Brian Keith as Crockett (yech!) and Alec Baldwin as William Barrett Travis. An early mass-market paperback edition was titled simply The Alamo.

A NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF DAVID CROCKETT by Himself (1834)
This 1987 Bison paperback is one of many editions of this work. Whichever you happen to pick up, you really can’t go wrong. The plain-speaking narration was unusual for its day (except perhaps to readers of Ben Franklin), and for colloquial humor it was something of a precursor to the work of Mark Twain. Had there been a NY Times Bestseller list in 1834, it would have been near the top. Though this truly is Davy’s own story, it was edited and corrected by a friend.

BOWIE’S LOST MINE - Dr. M. E. Francis (1954)
This slim volume was the first of several books recounting Jim Bowie’s hunt for the abandoned San Saba silver mine, once operated by the Spanish in the Texas hill country. According to legend, Bowie lived among the Lipan Apaches for a time and eventually learned the secret of its location. He then led an expedition to find the mine, but his party of ten was trapped in a day-long battle with a force of 164 Indians. The battle was real, but the rest is still a matter of debate.