Tinkle's first book, "Thirteen Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo", was published in 1958. It was only the second full-length, non-fiction book to be published about the Battle of the Alamo, following John Myers Myers' 1948 book, "The Alamo". A.C. Greene, a book critic at a competing Dallas newspaper, listed "Thirteen Days to Glory" in his book "The 50+ Best Books on Texas" in 1998. According to Greene, Tinkle's book "gives the essence of the Alamo story without attempting to exhaust history's explanation", and "is more revealing of the minds and wills that were behind the fateful decision to stay on to death" than other, later treatments of the battle. The book won two awards in 1959, from the Texas Institute of Letters and the Sons of the Republic of Texas. In the 1980s, it was adapted into a made-for-television movie, "", which historian Albert Nofi regards as the most historically accurate of all Alamo films. In 1985, the book was reprinted by Texas A&amp;M University Press.