Author Richard B. Winders, the historian and curator at the Alamo, examines events that led to this epic struggle and concludes that in-fighting among the revolutionary leadership doomed the Alamo garrison.

Drawing on numerous diaries, journals, and reminiscences, Richard Bruce Winders presents the daily life of soldiers at war; links the army to the society that produced it; shares his impressions of the soldiers he "met" along the way; and concludes that American participants in the Mexican War shared a common experience, no matter their rank or place of service. Taking a "new" military history approach, Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience...