Texas is legendary for its political figures. LBJ, "Cactus" Jack Garner, Sam Rayburn, ect. But this book covers the lesser known "Dirty Thirty". The Dirty 30 were a group of legislators who banded together to fight corruption in the Texas Legislature. This is a good book for anyone interested in how the Texas Legislature used to be, and how politics still work in some places.

When a history book starts off with a couple of glaring flaws, you have to work at it to regain your enthusiasm. Comanches, not Cherokees, were the scourge of the Texas frontier. They were so bad, they even ran the Apaches to far west Texas. Then, Anahuac is not on Copano Bay, it's over a hundred miles east on the east side of Galveston Bay.

The basic premise of this book is that "real Texans" were not at the Alamo or Goliad. That the real Texans had gone home to get the fields ready for planting after Gen Cos surrendered San Antonio in December, 1835. That it was the "johnny-come-latelys" with no stake in Texas, who continued the revolt against Mexico. One hispanic historian made the comment, "The only real Texans at the Alamo were the eleven Tejanos."

More "in depth" histories have shown that there were revolts in several Mexican states against Gen. Santa Anna. Tejanos and Texians both had grievances against the central government for many years. So, while the "johnny-come-latelys" fought at the Alamo and Goliad, "real Texans", both brown and white, were willing to take up arms against a dictator. The tragedy is that the newcomers discriminated against the Tejanos once the war was won. Midwesterners, who came to Texas after 1900, would repeat this discrimination.

Scott did substantial research in preparation of his work. He tries to look into the minds of the key players of the revolution without taking liberties. The book focuses on the arguable deficiencies of 'general' Fannin that led to the massacre at Fort Defiance, along with the sometimes misunderstood actions of Sam Houston.

Many of the accounts of the Revolution are conflicting, especially regarding the intentions of Houston and Fannin, and I did get the impression that Scott had already picked his favorites when he began writing. Having said that, he presented both sides of the conflicting accounts and the reasons he gave more weight to the accounts he trusts.

Although already an avid Texan, I am chomping at the bit to read more about the events before, during, and after the revolution after reading AFTER THE ALAMO. If you think you know what happened in the 1830's, but are relying on what you learned in school (assuming you took Texas History) you really need to read this book to find out who the real heroes were.

Very readable, very entertaining, and very enlightening.

Many other works have gone into great detail about the major events of the Texas revolution: the Alamo, The Runaway Scrape and San Jacinto. Mr. Scott has taken a great step forward and covered in deep and fascinating detail the 'other' stories of the war, usually mentioned only in passing: Refugio, San Patricio, and the most tragic figure in the saga, Colonel Fannin. I have many other works about this period in my library, and I must say this is certainly one of my favorites. Definitely a must have for anyone wanting to learn more about the aftermath of the Alamo.

I admit I enjoyed the book as light reading. And maybe that's all it's supposed to be after all. But the history in this historical fiction was so loose as to be a distraction to me throughout the book. William Wallace, a famous Texas Ranger, didn't even show up in Texas until late 1835 or 1836, much less get washed up on the beaches of Mexico. But it does deliver a feel of the times that carries you through. Try The Borderland, Gates of the Alamo, or Promised Land for more "historical" fiction that also delivers a great story.

The author attempts to depicted a giant of a man with red hair who is a demon knife fighter and all-around good guy in the period when Texas was finding its freedom from Mexico. He cannot bed the lady he loves because she is married to some old geezer. Are you still awake? Maybe if your readers are all males about sixteen years old you can get away with this twaddle. But once they reach any age and have read a few really good books, this sort of thing is laughable. The Red Ripper, INDEED! Why not The Chartruse Carver? Why not The Scarlet Skewer? Why I read this book to the end is a mystery that will haunt me. Also - the ending was monumentally unsatisfying.

This is a book that was beautifully written and full of high action and adventure. A mixture of pirates and the likes of Davey Crockett - a mix that I never would have even thought about in a novel, but it is done with grace and a fast pace that it was hard to put down. I never usually read this kind of genre but let me tell you that if you don't either - you should!! The characters were so full and rich with the wonderfully-written scenery that you really felt like you were there. Now, I have to admit I only read this on a dare, and the more I got into it, the more I liked it because it had a different approach to the famous and legendary War of the Alamo. Plus I was raised right in San Antonio all my life until my early 20's, so I also kind of felt a kinship if you would to this novel. But believe me when I say that the heroe William Wallace is brought to such vivid life both as a great knife fighter, but also as a man filled with inner turmoil over his brothers death and a love that is forbidden. The love story is also very well told and not boring for us HE-MAN types. The pirate Mad Jack who saves our hero and teaches him the way of the knife is both engaging and very funny at times to read. The bad guys are very villanously written and a pure delight to read and hate. The action scenes were well written and plentiful as well as all the locations written about made you feel the heat, smoke, and flies buzzing around. I will definately add this fresh and exciting writer to my book-reading pleasure - as well as you should if you like well-rounded stories of high adventure, romance, and heros that are larger than life!

My rating is really 3 1/2 stars...as the previous reviewiers have stated, this book has a lot of previously unknown information and is really written for the Trinity Test/Site enthusiast. Could be a lot more exciting, but well worth the read and should probably be read before you read R. Rhodes "Making of the Atomic Bomb".

If you read one book about the bomb, read Richard Rhodes's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". I read Szasz as a refresher a few days before visiting the Trinity site, and found that it had a number of nice bits of information. (The Trinity site can be visited on the first Saturdays of April & October.)

In The Day The Sun Rose Twice, Ferenc Morton Szasz recounts the story of the Trinity Site Nuclear Explosion that occurred on July 16, 1945. The author does an excellent job tracing critical details leading up to this historical process, thus changing American history and in effect, changing the world around us.

The book is broken down into nine chapters beginning with the origins of Los Alamos. However, Szasz begins by discussing the conceptual revolutions of human knowledge during the late nineteenth-early twentieth century.

The illustrations included in the book give the reader incredible insight into the actual events. "The ball of fire," a photograph taken of the nuclear explosion in New Mexico gives the reader a visual effect of the actual event. Photographs of the people offer the reader a little more insight into those involved with the project. The map shows the reader how much of the state of New Mexico was consumed for this project.

Overall, I found the book to be easy to read, although
I knew very little about the subject matter. I did, however, ain a whole new insight into nuclear weapons. My favorite chapter was "The Blast." Szasz spoke to a number of different people from all walks of life who experienced the blast of the Trinity. I chose this book as one of my book reviews for a history class and I found it to be an excellent read.

Chariton is another writer who is obsessed with the Alamo and this takes away from what this book could have been. Chariton is DETERMINED TO PROVE that Crockett fell fighting ala John Wayne/Fess Parker and this takes up a good portion of the book. Wallace, GET OVER IT ! Chariton even has a photo of Wayne taken from the film THE ALAMO and tries to compare Wayne and Crockett ! This gives you an idea of the mentality of the writer and this book ! If he had left out these silly comparisons, this would be a more readable work. Historians of the Mexican side of the Texas War will notice how Chariton seems to ignore or even discredit the Mexican sources. Ahem, Mr. Chariton, do I detect a bit of "anti-Mexican" sentiment here ? Yes, we KNOW you are a "NATIVE TEXAN" Mr. Chariton, you remind us constantly. But if you wanted to make this a BETTER book, you should have spent more time in FACT, not opinion. And just a little reminder, THE MEXICANS WON AT THE ALAMO !

How many men came with David Crockett to the Alamo? Did Crockett and some of his men surrender and were then executed when Santa Anna said, "I said take no prisoners"? Did a flag fly over the Alamo and what did it look like? Did Travis really draw a line in the sand and tell everyone that wanted to stay to step over it? Or did he say everyone that wanted to go to step over the line? These are just a few of the unanswered questions about the battle at the Alamo that Wallace Chariton tries to learn more about following years of research. And what makes this a special treat is that he tries to answer these and other questions with a sense of Texas humor. Not in a disrespectful way for these true patriots of Texas independence but in a manner that makes the reader want to turn the page and see what the next facts were that have been lost to the years. Chariton does a very balanced analysis on many portions of the legends of the Alamo that most people just take for granted. This book is a very enjoyable read for any person interested in Texas history...something in which every Texan should be interested.

These two authors have come so close to making a benchmark in this type of genre but miss the mark somewhat. This is definately one of their better try's unlike most of their other books. The best one they wrote together is The Aldebaran Campaign.

A wealthy oil tycoon sends a heavily armed band of mercenaries back in time to aid in defending the Alamo from General Santa Ana's 5,000 plus man army hoping to gain prime, oil rich real estate in the present. Action is never in short supply as thousands of Mexican Army regulars hopelessly assault the fort with black powder rifles and bayonettes only to be met with automatic weapon fire, claymore mines, and seasoned 20th century soldiers. The setting is historically very accurate, and the ending is both a surprise and a moral wrapped into one.

If Jeff Long's The Descent was Stephen King meets H.P. Lovecraft, Year Zero is Stephen King meets J.G. Ballard: Morally ambiguous characters weave devious plots amidst death and religious symbolism. But unlike in The Descent, Long loses control of his story in Year Zero.

The first half of the novel is dense and brilliant. Two men loot an ancient graveyard in Jerusalem. A man escapes from prison in Katmandu and flees across Asia as a deadly plague wreaks havoc. Brilliant scientists clone crucified criminals from ancient Judea, searching for a cure for the mysterious virus.

But Long has too many balls in the air; by the second half of the book, the plot spins out of control. One of the clones claims to be Jesus Christ. (Is he? We never find out.) The scientists do absurd, self-destructive things that ensure their deaths. (Why? It's never explained.) A million dying Americans threaten a scientific outpost - their one hope for a cure. (Why? Their motivations remain a mystery.)

Long is so busy striving for the epic, the mythical, the transcendent that he forgets to keep his characters believable, his plot coherent, his loose ends tied up. The world is destroyed, and we don't care. That's a shame, since many of the chapters in Year Zero are brilliant. But as a novel, it's a disappointment.

I fell in love with Jeff Long after reading the " Descent". I've been a fan ever since. When I found this book by accident I was overjoyed. I didn't even know he was scheduled to have a new book out.

I must tell you this...if you read a Jeff Long you will be up till 3am finishing the book. Like the Descent, I was sucked into it after the first few pages. It was fast paced & definitely a page turner. There were a few things that I felt prevented the book from being 5 stars.

He seemed just a tad bit stretched to the limits. There were so many plots going at once. I don't think he gave them the attention they deserved. I wanted to know more about Miranda and her relationship with her father. I was always curious about her father & miranda' mentor. I wish I could remember her name.

In all I really liked this book. I found myself debating the whole cloning thing. I wanted a happier ending but I was satisfied with it. I think you will be too.

I received "Year Zero" the other day and tore into that evening. I found the story very engaging and easy to read. By the end of the first evening I was finished with almost 200 pages, which is almost half the book and a lot for me to read in one sitting. After working on the book the next day I finished it.


The story was what led me to the book - a natural disaster unearths archeological remains from the time of Christ and at the same time unleashes a plague that is destroying man. The main story centers on a group of scientists in Los Alamos, lead by a teen-prodigy Miranda, trying to come up with a cure and one man's, Nathan Lee, quest to find his lost daughter.


The story held great promise, but for what ever reason the author decided not to explore the whole story. I was almost as if the two main characters lived in complete isolation from the world around them. Very little time was spent on the plague - the driving force of the book. It was just presented as the uber-disease that killed everything in its path. Miranda's father played a major role in the government affairs of the time, yet little of what the government was doing to help people was discussed. Los Alamos had divided into several camps that fought amongst each other and no time was spent on the different groups.


This book reminds me of "The Lost World" by Michael Crichton - a book that was meant to be a screenplay. So much was left not explored in the book that when it was over I was left wanting more. Even then ending failed to capitalize on an obvious solution to the problem of the plague. Of course, one could argue that the obviousness of the situation meant that the twist was to not go that route, but everything else in the book went down that path so why not go to the end?


All and all I was very pleased with the book; I just wish it had been longer and more detailed.

This is a very thought provoking book, especially for those who grew up in Texas. When I was in junior high, I took a Texas history class, as all kids my age were required to do, in which I was told the heroic tale of the Alamo, which basically recycled the same cliches one always gets in a history class that is mainly propaganda from one point of view. It wasn't until I read this book in college that I realized there was another side to this story, namely that of the Mexicans.

Long clearly has an agenda here, which is to highlight the flaws in the heroes and motivations of the so-called Texas Revolution (which Long claims was more of a hostile takeover - given the United States' expansionist mindset at the time, he's probably right), and to show that there were other points of view. He does this in an extremely thought-provoking manner, writing the book like a suspense novel. It made me call into question all the blind faith I, and probably most Texans, had in the heroes of the Alamo.

However, there are some serious flaws here. In pursuit of his agenda he makes some assertions without backing them up with facts. And his portrayal of David Crockett betrays an obviously personal bias. He starts out depicting him as a consumate politician who went to Texas hoping to rebuild his political reputation - OK, fair enough, that's probably true. However, his depiction of Crockett's death - on his knees, begging for his life - has no basis in fact. No eyewitness accounts from the period mention this. Admittedly, those accounts are all Mexican, and they may have been biased, since by the time they gave them Mexico had been defeated, and it doesn't pay to brag that one of your conqueror's heroes died a coward, but there's no evidence about his death either way. Scholars are pretty sure he was executed, not killed in battle as depicted in numerous, overblown paintings, but beyond that we don't know. So where does Long get his story?

I don't know what kind of research Long did for this book, so I can't back up any of his claims. However, this book's mere existence at least calls into question all the pro-Texas, pro-American, pro-white mythology that surrounds the Alamo, which can only spark debate and more research into history, and that's a good thing.

P.S. If Long is so biased towards the Mexican side of the conflict, why does he portray Santa Anna as damn near psychotic?

This is a superb account of the Alamo--far and away the best I have read. One reason it is superior is that it gives the Mexican side as well as the American side of the battle--the book is subtitled "The Mexican and U.S. Fight for the Alamo."

The book is also the most objective, in that it does not start with the premise that the Texans were right and the Mexicans wrong. It provides a wealth of information on the political and historical background of the battle, enabling the reader to understand the battle in the context of the larger struggle between the United States and Mexico. Unlike many other accounts, Long's emphasizes that Texas was a part of Mexico; the Texas Revolution was not so much about liberty-loving Texans fighting against a despotic Mexican dictatorship as it was about Americans having migrated to Texas and still feeling primarily loyal to the U.S. rather than Mexico. The reasons for the colonists' loyalty to the U.S. were not always noble--for example, many of them wanted to own slaves, which was allowed in the U.S. but not in Mexico. Long's book is also superior because it provides so much detail. All other books on the Alamo seem superficial by comparison.

As good as this book is, it also has some major flaws. It is written in a somewhat academic, laborious style, so it is not as captivating as accounts written in a more popular style, such as Lon Tinkle's 13 Days to Glory and Walter Lord's A Time to Stand. Also, Long takes a pretty cynical perspective, painting almost everyone, American and Mexican alike, in pretty negative terms. And he seems to prefer melodramatic explanations at the expense of more reasonable, but also more prosaic, ones. That said, this is the closest yet written to being the definitive account of the Alamo.

I first encountered the writing of Jeff Long about ten years ago. I am a climbing enthusiast and I read practically any mountaineering book I can get my hands on. Jeff had written a corker, "The Ascent", as well as the book that formed the basis of the movie Cliffhanger, "Angels of Light".

Imagine my surprise and pleasure, then, when browsing in an Austin Texas bookshop to find that this self-same writer of mountain lore was also the author of a couple of books on Texas history. The first, "Duel of Eagles" was written in 1990. The second, "Empire of Bones", was written as a follow up and covers the events leading up to the massacre that was the Battle of San Jacinto.

"Duel of Eagles" concerns itself with the Mexican-American fight for the Alamo in particular, but also Texas, more generally. It will not be on the recommended reading list of those who treasure the largely fictional accounts of "historical giants" as David Crockett, Sam Houston or William Travis.

It exposes an uncomfortable fact from the history of the United States. And that is that Texas was by and large stolen from Mexico. And it was stolen by a rag tag band of slavers, gun runners and petty criminals (many of whom acted with shocking depravity and cruelty) operating with the open encouragement of the American government. Say what you will about Mexico of the day, it had a constitution, it had a duly constituted government and it was a sovereign power. That didn't stop Andrew Jackson.

But in case you think this is a piece of pro-Mexican propaganda, guess again. Long is as harsh in his treatment of the Mexicans as he is of the Americans. The point here being that he is not afraid to tell the unvarnished truth. For too long Americans, and the rest of the world, have laboured under the impression that the Mexicans were the aggressors. They were not. But just because they were responding to a hostile attempt to steal a huge chunk of their land, does not mean they were any better than the people who were trying to steal their land from them (though the Mexicans had, at that point, abolished slavery - this was one of the grievances that the pro-slavery Texans harboured against the Mexican government).

Long's book is incisively written. He went straight to the primary sources -- journals, letters, articles, government documents and newsletters. The story that emerges is not pretty and is not flattering to the American government or people of the day.

For almost the first time Long tells the Mexican side of the story. For those of you familiar with the movie version of the Battle for the Alamo, it may come as a shock to know that the battle was over within 45 minutes. That Santa Anna brushed aside the token and futile resistance of the militia inside. That far from the glorious and prolonged last stand depicted in the movies, it was a short, sharp and nasty melee. Virtually no Mexican soldiers died at the hands of the Americans. Hardly the American Rorke's Drift.

It is passingly strange that two of the most prominent incidents in American History that are cited for their heroic qualities are in fact largely devoid of any of the heroism with which they have been imbued by succeeding generations of hagiographers anxious to burnish the reputations of men who were in the best light charlatans and boors. These two incidents are the Alamo and the Last Stand at Little Big Horn. This is not to say that the soldiers who fought and died in those struggles did not exhibit great personal courage. What I do mean to say is that they fought for causes that were tinged if not polluted by course and venal motives.

This book is a page turner. It is a necessary anti-dote to the propaganda that disguises itself as the history of the founding of the State of Texas.

We start out with a simple murder. A man's been killed, and the circumstances seem to imply a homosexual liason gone wrong. The problem is that the victim is a security officer at the Los Alamos Atomic Weapons Facility, so someone must investigate thoroughly to make sure nothing's compromised. A peacetime newspaperman improbably turned detective shows up to investigate, and thus begins Joseph Kanon's Los Alamos.

Moving from the desert to diners in New York City, the book has an easy sort of grace to it. The characters are fluent, and believeable, and the plot is fast enough to be interesting. Our hero gets a girl, the bad guys are interesting, it's all worthwhile, far as I was concerned. There are also interesting supporting characters, including General Leslie Groves, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and a bunch of scientists. This makes for a very entertaining book.

One would never know it by the title of this book, but it is, in fact, a murder mystery. The title gives away the fact that this isn't just ANY murder mystery. It takes place during the days of the Manhattan Project. A security guard is murdered, and an outsider is "brought in" to discern the situation.

The big twist is that Army intelligence does not care so much who murdered the guard. Rather, the $60,000 question is WHY he was whacked. Was he simply mugged, as it would appear? Or did it have something to do with the security of the project? That's what the protagonist, Connolly, is there to find out. And fast!

The plot of the book takes a backseat to the historical setting. Kanon does a wonderful job of interweaving the goings-on of Los Alamos. The fictional character of Connolly interacts wonderfully with figures such as General Leslie Groves and the famous physicists involved in the Top-Secret Project. Legendary names such as Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Richard Feynman and a few others enter into the pages of the story.

This book that is highly recommended to anyone who is even vaguely interested in the Manhattan Project - whether they like "murder mysteries" or not. The ethics of making & using the bomb, the political polemics of Communism, the almost paranoia for secrecy @ Los Alamos & brief glimpses of the "gadget's" scientists are all enclosed within this book.

Although the story is fiction, I can't imagine Los Alamos during the mid-1940s being much different than the way in which Kanon describes it in his novel. I can think of no greater compliment to give a work of historical fiction.

This novel is shelved as a mystery but it is every bit as much, or more, a romance. It is told with the hero's first person voice and is set in atmospheric Los Alamos during WW II during the Manhattan Project. I found the setting of the story compelling. The characters are not all white or black, any of them, but shades of grey instead. This rather fits with the setting since many people have mixed feelings nowadays about both Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project themselves. Los Alamos and the atom bomb project are backdrop and setting, however, to a character driven novel that also provides a murder mystery to solve. For those romance readers eager to shake the virginal heroine with the heart of gold and try a flawed heroine instead, this may be your book. This could have been a big groundbreaking novel in the romance genre had it been shelved or classified there and I'm sorry it wasn't.

This book may have been well researched, but the content has many flaws. There are several parts that read just like it came from John Wayne's "The Alamo," a movie I know very well having seen it more than 50 times. The book itself reads more like it was written to be a movie than a novel. The quality of the book was very poor and the editing and typesetting was was not professionally done. If you want to read a quality novel about the Alamo and the Texas Revolution, I suggest 'The Bugles are Silent' by John R. Knaggs.

I've just recently read Dunbar's "Holy Sabbath Morning" and Harrigan's "Gates of the Alamo." Although "Gates" is better written, I feel that "Holy Sabbath" is a much better, and more entertaining book. While "Holy Sabbath" was hard to read at times because of all of the grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, it seemed to give me a better sense of what was happening at the Alamo during those 13 days in 1836. I believe that the mistakes come from the fact that the book was published by a "DotCom" publisher and that the original pages were probably scanned into a computer. When this happens, a percentage of words are bound to be misspelled. The computer sees a "e" as a "o" or a "h" as a "n", so, I do not blame the author for the many mistakes in the book. (One reviewer felt that there was at least one mistake on every page. I don't think this is true but there was one on every other page, at least!) And, I know that Dunbar has been criticized for using dialog and ideas from other sources. Well, this I know is true! Every now and then I came across a line or a situation that came directly from the John Wayne movie! Still, I liked the way Dunbar wrote. He kept the story historically accurate (which is a lot more than I can say for Harrigan!) and Dunbar did a good job of telling the entire story of the siege, not just the final 90 minute battle.
Although other authors go into much more detail in developing their characters, Dunbar's "Holy Sabbath" was very light on development. Still, when dealing with historical characters, it's probably better to let history speak for itself and concentrate on an entertaining story. Dunbar did a good job with Crockett and Bowie but I believe that he went a bit overboard in trying to show that everything Travis did was with an eye to the future and to creating a great name for himself. Travis may have been arrogant, but I don't believe he was as arrogant as Dunbar states. Although I liked Dunbar's "Holy Sabbath Morning" much more than Harrigan's "The Gates of the Alamo," I still believe that the ultimate novel about the Alamo has yet to be written. Until then, I will keep reading what's out there!

Yes, there are some production flaws here. They are not, however "on all 338 pages," nor are they that distracting. Your local newspaper probably has days when it contains more errors than this book, and you don't even notice. That said,I found this book fascinating. Like other reviewers, I read everything I can get my hands on about the Alamo. Most of the time, what you get is the same old thing: the story of Crockett, Bowie, or Travis - or worse, some completely invented character. Here, we have instead the story of the Alamo viewed from all angles. The story is shown (not told) through the eyes of dozens of characters, both legendary and unsung, giving the narrative a nearly documentary feel. I was reminded more of the Civil War novel "The Killer Angels than of John Wayne's movie. .