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"Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth" (Encore)

Aired on Tuesday, September 7th.

(Note: This conversation originally aired earlier this year.) History is one thing; mythology is another. And at times, of course, these two can overlap, or blur, or get confused. Such is the case with the Alamo, as our guest argues. Longtime journalist Chris Tomlinson is a columnist for The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News, and he's one of the authors of a book titled "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth." As was noted of this work in Publishers Weekly: "Substantive yet wryly humorous.... Skillfully drawing on primary and secondary sources, the authors show that Stephen F. Austin, who established a colony of American settlers in Texas in the 1820s, fought to protect slavery from Mexican legislators' desire to abolish it, and that the independence movement was focused on preserving Texas's slave-based cotton economy. Enriched by its breezy tone and fair-minded approach, this is an essential look at the Alamo from the perspective of today's racial reckoning."

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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