http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/322587838

How did Davy die? and why do we care so much?

"Just over thirty years ago, Dan Kilgore ignited a controversy with his presidential address to the Texas State Historical Association and its subsequent publication in book form, How Did Davy Die?" "Following the 1975 release of the first English translation of the eyewitness account of Jose Enrique de la Pena, an officer in Santa Anna's army, Kilgore had the audacity to say in public that historical sources closest to the events suggested that Davy Crockett did not die on the ramparts of the Alamo, swinging the shattered remains of his rifle "Old Betsy," but rather that he was taken captive by the Mexican forces and executed upon Santa Anna's order. Soon after the publication of How Did Davy Die?, Kilgore was the subject of articles in Texas Monthly and The Wall Street Journal and was associated with "the murder of a myth" by the London Daily Mail. He received personal insults and intimations of violence from some who considered his reasoned historical argument an affront to a treasured American icon." "Now, in this enlarged, commemorative edition, James E. Crisp, a professional historian and a participant in the debates over the De la Pena diary, reconsiders the heated disputation surrounding How Did Davy Die? and poses the intriguing followup question, " ... And Why Do We Care So Much?" Crisp reviews the origins and subsequent impact of Kilgore's book, both on the historical hullabaloo and on the author. Along the way, he provides fascinating insights into methods of historical inquiry and the use - or non-use - of original source materials when seeking the truth of events that happened in past centuries. He further examines two aspects of the debate that Kilgore shied away from: the place and function of myth in culture, and the racial overtones of some of the responses to Kilgore's work. In doing so, he allows new voices to join in the ongoing discussion of Dan Kilgore's "big little book.""--Jacket.

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