Review of Alamo Images: Changing Perceptions of a Texas Experience

Authors

Robert A. Calvert, Texas A & M University

Date of this Version

1988

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly WINTER 1988. Copyright 1988 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

Abstract

Alamo Images is a catalog to accompany an exhibition of artifacts, artworks, books, broadsides, ephemera, memorabilia, pamphlets, motion picture posters, and other items relating to the Alamo that were displayed at Southern Methodist University in 1985 and 1986. The stated purpose of the book and of the exhibition was to "help explain both the Alamo of historical fact and the Alamo of our imagination" (p. 17). The general intellectual assumption behind the book was that the myth of the Alamo had evolved into such a historical icon of patriotism that any attempt at sorting out truth from fanciful fiction would lead defenders of the myth to see fact finders as betrayers of Anglo-American values.