Reviewed by: The Second Battle of the Alamo: How Two Women Saved Texas’s Most Famous Landmark by Judy Alter Allen W. ElliS The Second Battle of the Alamo: How Two Women Saved Texas’s Most Famous Landmark. By Judy Alter. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020. Pp. xxvi, 156. $22.95, ISBN 978-1-4930-3131-3.) After the famous 1836 siege and massacre at the San Antonio mission during the Texas struggle for independence from Mexico, the Alamo’s fate was not a pretty one. Today, the pride many Texans hold for the Alamo is incalculable, and it is astonishing that there was a time when the remains of the old mission were left to crumble in ruins, only co-opted for military or crass commercial concerns. What little of the physical Alamo that exists in the twenty-first century may well have not existed at all if not for the efforts of two women, Adina De Zavala (1861–1955) and Clara Driscoll (1881–1945). De Zavala and Driscoll were two vastly different women with family roots dating to the Texas Revolution and a common interest in preserving the Alamo and its story. To complicate matters, they had vastly different priorities in how the preservation should proceed. For De Zavala, the focus should be on the “long barracks,” the former mission’s convento that stood to the left of the famous Alamo church and where the most savage final fighting of the battle took place. For that reason, she believed, the barracks must be preserved and memorialized. Driscoll sought to demolish the unsightly long barracks. Her focus was on the Alamo church, which most people recognize as the true Alamo. She aimed to make the church the centerpiece of a memorial garden. Despite their differences, the fierce doggedness of the preservationist pioneer De Zavala and the sophistication and financial support of the well-to-do Driscoll prompted preservation of both the chapel and the barracks with “the plaza stand[ing] almost as the compromise the two women never reached in life, fulfilling parts of each of their visions” (p. 127). July Alter completed this book as a promise to Texas author Debra L. Winegarten, whose goals were cut short by cancer. It is a rather lightweight popular history, sparsely referenced (a scant eighteen endnotes) and containing an equally sparse “Bibliographic Essay.” Some parts are of questionable relevance, such as a chapter on the Alamo in movies, toys, and other popular culture. Numerous errors appear, such as referring to Colonel James W. Fannin Jr. and Captain Juan Seguín as general and colonel, respectively. Though mentioned twice, Seguín is missing from the index. Curiously, she has the hero of the movie The Man from the Alamo (1953) warning the townfolk of “Ox Bow, North Dakota,” rather than Oxbow, Texas (p. 121). The battle for the Alamo’s place in public history continues to this day, as addressed by chapter 10, “The Twenty-First Century and a Third Battle of the Alamo.” Besides representing current arguments about the Alamo’s physical presence in modern downtown San Antonio, Alter makes some cogent observations regarding the Alamo in light of twenty-first-century presentism and [End Page 754] so-called wokeness. Whatever the shortcomings of this book, it highlights the truth of the Alamo as an icon of multiculturalism. The truth is much more complex than modern critics allow. The first battle of the Alamo was a result of efforts to separate Texas from Mexico that were in place well before the great influx of immigrants who left the United States and Europe to start life anew in Texas. These “Texians” joined their native Tejano allies in revolt against a dictatorship. Years later, it was strong, independent women who faced down businessmen and politicians to preserve the legacy of what the Alamo truly stood for. Though De Zavala and Driscoll are long gone, their fight continues. Anyone interested in a more scholarly, albeit more succinct, treatment of this second battle of the Alamo might consult “Retrieving the Bones of History,” chapter 7 of A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory (New York, 2001) by Randy Roberts and...